EFFICIENT CAUSALITY: DISSIPATIVE STRUCTURES

The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System -- the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.

(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 136)

What Baha’u’llah means by upsetting the world’s equilibrium by a vibrating influence is that humankind is moving—being shoved may be more accurate—into a higher complexity of life.  One way to see something of how this happens is by studying what are known as dissipative structures.  Progressive Revelation, by which I mean the appearance of not only a new, more complex, and higher consciousness, but also the infusion of higher energy vibrations of spirit, drives what de Chardin called the “complexification” of life.   He noted: “The phenomenon of growing consciousness on earth, in short, is directly due to the increasingly advanced organization of more and more complicated elements, successively created by the workings of chemistry and of Life.” (Pierre-Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man: 69)  How are processes in chemistry examples of increasingly advanced organization of life?

The term dissipative structure was coined by chemist Ilya Prigogine, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work on these structures.  Dissipative structures describes the dynamical, coherent space-time structures that form in open systems in which an exchange of matter and energy occurs between a system and its environment in a reproducible steady state.  This reproducible steady state may be reached by natural evolution of the system, by artifice, or by a combination of these two.  Examples in every day life include convection, cyclones, hurricanes, and living organisms. 

Open systems differ from closed systems, which lack any means to advance or have exhausted all internal power to transform.  A closed system is called intransitive for it can only stay in that state of equilibrium.  Only a power from outside will change it.  That was characteristic of the human world in the nineteenth century, thus the world’s equilibrium had to be upset or opened by Revelation.   

But open systems, because of their nonlinear, replicative iterative interactions with the environment, can form dissipative structures that exist as long as the system is held far from equilibrium due to a continual and rapid flow of energy or matter through the system.  (A simple calculation performed over and over again is iteration.  A nonlinear relation is a relationship that modulates. It does not repeat its iteration exactly or repeat the exact difference of ratio.  Thus, even when the action (iteration) remains the same, the result each time is a little different, so the relation changes over time.) 

A system that exists far from thermodynamic equilibrium efficiently dissipates the heat generated to sustain it, and has the capacity of changing to higher levels of orderliness.  It is in constant but orderly change.  Dissipative structure is a name for the patterns which self-organize in far-from-equilibrium dissipative systems.  (Science calls these self-organizing systems because they don’t see the higher order intelligence ordering them—a spiritual template to grow into and a vibrating influence retuning them.) The movement to a higher order creates irreversible processes, in chemical, biological, or social systems: even Nature itself evolves 

All open systems contain subsystems that continuously fluctuate or vibrate.  These systems are characterized by the spontaneous appearance of symmetry breaking and the formation of complex, sometimes chaotic, structures where interacting particles exhibit long range correlations.  At times a single fluctuation or a combination of them may become so magnified by positive feedback that it eventually shatters the existing organization.  At such revolutionary moments, or "bifurcation points", it is impossible to determine in advance whether the system will disintegrate into "chaos" or pass through chaos and leap to a new, more differentiated, higher level of "order". The latter case defines dissipative structures so termed because they need more energy to sustain them than the simpler structures they replace and are limited in growth by the amount of heat they are able to disperse.  This upsets existing equilibrium by infusion of higher energy from new order.

Dissipation bleeds a complex system of many conflicting motions, eventually bringing the behavior of many dimensions down to one.  But the outcome is not strictly determined, though parameters to a solution do exist.  Destiny, or final cause, exists but not as an “only this and none other” state.  Hiding within a particular system could be more than one stable solution, more than one way to newly organize and coordinate all things.  But a final form is not strictly destined from the outset, because in chaotic systems of nonlinear relations there is an orderly impulse and a disorderly impulse acting together and reciprocally.  They continuously decouple and couple, giving rise to turbulence and coherence simultaneously.  Instability and chaos always exist, because the universe is recreated at every instant.  But it is being recreated into new form according to fixed principles.    

Chaotic and near chaotic systems bridge the scales or levels of being and form.  When a system turns chaotic parts have infinitely many values, like the infinite potential states of a photon before a decision collapses it into one condition.  This cosmic soup of particles dances into and out of view with breathtaking rapidity.  Here is where complexity makes its appearance.  By complexity I mean a sequence of bifurcations of scaling, doublings and halvings and each bifurcation means that the pattern of repetition is breaking down a step further.  These are modeled mathematically as fractals.  

At bifurcation points and moments, where motions appear to join or converge, the surfaces divide, or diverge, forming separate levels or layers.  Each surface is really a pair of surfaces, so that, where they appear to merge there are really four surfaces, and four becomes 8, 8 becomes 16, on to infinity for all we know, but these likenesses create harmony and resonance.  There are infinite perfections within each organism and condition, but one condition cannot become another condition, because there are singular boundaries between realms of existence.  That is, the nonlinear dynamics of phase transitions create resistance fields of turbulence and levels of creation exist (solid-liquid-gas; mineral-vegetable-animal; body-soul-spirit).

All things are created in pairs.  If a photon splits into its pairs—particle and anti-particle—each one of the pair also periodically splits--bifurcates.  But at some point this periodicity breaks down into chaos.  But in the middle of chaos a new complexity forms, semi-stable structures and cycles appear until a new stability emerges, which go through their own accelerating cycle of bifurcations, revealing a hidden order there too.  (Remember “the world’s equilibrium hath been upset” and not just a part of the world.)  The universal pattern of complexity is that patterns appear simultaneously on different scales because they are within a coherent field.  Dynamic processes coagulate into stable forms when their vibrations slow down, or reach a kind of maturity, like a swirling cloud of cosmic gas slows into a planet.  These shapes are embedded as potentials in the fabric of motion, and these shapes achieve material form as they move through the ethereal fluid of the universe, which is divine thought, and experience a kind of friction.   

Thus chaos is also a function of perception.  The energy in systems exists on many levels, only one is the level of what we know as everyday perceivable objects.  On the microscales there are countless particles forming and reforming.  On macroscales there are particles—planets and other stellar objects—forming and reforming.  The operations of energy are processes of consciousness in action.  Systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom have infinite dimensions, infinite modes or processes of action. Only the Manifestation grasps all the connections in infinite systems.

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle

The Evolution of Creation

The sun is born from substance and form, which can be compared to father and mother, and it is absolute perfection; but the darkness has neither substance nor form, neither father nor mother, and it is absolute imperfection.

(Some Answered Questions: 89)

Cosmologically, at any level and for any species of life, creation starts with the formal cause linking with the material cause.  Form is imprinted upon chaos, or the formless substance (One Matter) which is capable of assuming any form, because all forms are within it as potential. 

The essential relationships composing Nature are fixed and enduring, because they are an expression of the eternal Will of God.  “God hath created a relation between the sun and the terrestrial globe that the rays of the sun should shine and the soil should yield. These relationships constitute predestination, and the manifestation thereof in the plane of existence is fate. Will is that active force which controlleth these relationships and these incidents.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, 198) 

But that same Will is also the power to alter the combination of these essential relationships to evolve the whole of creation itself.  The appearance of a Manifestation of the Divine Will is religion in its most abstract and all-inclusive sense, the binding together of all things. But change also occurs: “Briefly, the supreme Manifestations of God are aware of the reality of the mysteries of beings. Therefore, They establish laws which are suitable and adapted to the state of the world of man, for religion is the essential connection which proceeds from the realities of things. The Manifestation—that is, the Holy Lawgiver—unless He is aware of the realities of beings, will not comprehend the essential connection which proceeds from the realities of things, and He will certainly not be able to establish a religion conformable to the facts and suited to the conditions. The Prophets of God, the supreme Manifestations, are like skilled physicians, and the contingent world is like the body of man: the divine laws are the remedy and treatment.” (Some Answered Questions, p. 158)

Now the universe is a nested hierarchy of invisible and visible fields, with the visible ones being the lowest on the hierarchy.  The highest and largest field is also the first and foundational.  Hence Christ referred to Himself as "the Alpha and Omega."  In physics: “Many theoretical physicists now think that the fundamental fields of physics arose from a higher and more inclusive field, the primal unified field of the universe; in the same way, at every level of organization, new morphic fields may arise within and from higher level fields.  Creativity occurs not just upward from the bottom, with new forms arising from less complex systems by spontaneous jumps; it also proceeds downward from the top, through the creative activity of higher-level fields.” (The Rebirth of Nature: 196)

These lower fields coming out of the higher ones are made in the image and likeness but not the nature of the higher. We all know the Biblical statement that man is created in the image and after the likeness of the Manifestation of God, but further: “Verily, God has created the animal in the image and likeness of man, for though man outwardly is human, yet in nature he possesses animal tendencies.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 262.)  And: “As preordained by the Fountainhead of Creation, the temple of the world hath been fashioned after the image and likeness of the human body. In fact each mirroreth forth the image of the other, wert thou but to observe with discerning eyes.” (Compilations, Huququ'llah)

This appearance of the higher in the world of the lower is the cause of the transformative evolution of the lower: Manifestation in the world of man; man in the world of nature; the higher self of man in the environment of his ego self.  This is creative evolution from the top downward.  But, let us recall that Revelation is the causer of all causes.  Another creative cause of the universe is that of inner development of form into new form.  This is creation from past to future, from simple to complex, lower to higher. 

In the 1930’s and 40’s a new idea came into the thinking of biologists, the idea of morphogenetic fields.  Morphogenetic fields, writes biologist Rupert Sheldrake, “were like the known fields of physics in that they were invisible regions of influence with inherently holistic properties, but they were a new kind of field unknown to physics.  They existed within and around organisms, and contained within themselves a nested hierarchy of fields within fields—organ fields, tissue fields, cell fields.”  (The Rebirth of Nature: 108-109)

Morphogenetic fields, he said, acted like magnetic fields and, indeed: “Magnetic fields were in fact one of the principal analogies used by the proponents of morphogenetic fields.  Just as cutting magnets into pieces gave rise to small but complete magnets, each with its own magnetic field, so cutting up organisms like flatworms gave rise to pieces with complete flatworm fields, enabling them to regenerate into flatworms.” (Rebirth of Nature: 109)  Later physicists, too, discovered that fields of light in laser form acted like the flatworm.  They called it the hologram.

Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation states that organisms and their fields have an intrinsically evolutionary nature.  The formative activity of the fields is the means by which the habits of the species are built up, maintained, and inherited.  Self-organizing systems at all levels of complexity work, in Sheldrake’s theory, through a process called morphic resonance, the influence of like upon like through time and space.  It is, too, a nonphysical force.  Thus, morphogenetic fields are not really physical things and features occupying some region of space, but patterned and structured information that enable species to build, regulate and maintain themselves, and to enable communication with members both before and after themselves, making a continuous field through time.  They are probably another name for the semi-physical fields of energy around the body through which flow what the Chinese call Chi, and that acupuncture taps into at its nodal points.    Fields are within and surround their representatives, because the information that structures the field of objects is also encoded within every organism, so that every member of the species is both a unique representative of the field and its complete embodiment.

Morphogenetic fields also operate like formal and final causes operate.  Formal cause is the generative cause of life, but final cause is the attracting cause of evolution.  Thus: “Like entelechies, morphogenetaic fields attract developing systems to the ends, goals, or representations contained within themselves.  Mathematically, morphogenetic fields can be modeled in terms of attractors within basins of attraction.  The mathematician Rene Thom has expressed this idea as follows: ‘All creation or destruction of forms, or morphogenesis, can be described by the disappearance of the attractors representing the initial forms, and their replacement by capture by the attractors representing the final forms.’” (Rebirth of Nature: 109)  This is as Baha’u’llah described creation: “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)

Finally, morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields resemble formal cause in that, when a new morphic field has come into existence with the first of any species “of the many energetically possible ways the substance could crystallize, one actually happens.  The next time the substance is crystallized anywhere in the world, morphic resonance from the first crystals will make the same pattern of crystallization more probable.  A cumulative memory will build up, but also a certain predictability and ossification will occur.”  (Rebirth of Nature: 111)  We know this as the 100^th monkey principle.

Hence: “living organisms inherit not only genes but also morphic fields. The genes are passed materially from their ancestors and enable them to make particular kinds of protein molecules; the morphic fields are inherited non-materially, by morphic resonance, not just from direct ancestors but also from other members of the species.  The developing organisms tune in to the morphic field of its species and thus draw upon a pooled or collective memory.” (Rebirth of Nature: 112) 

Next post will describe dissipative structures to see how they, too, are formal and final images in the likeness of the creative action of Revelation. 

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle

The Causer of Causes

Even ethereal matter, the forces of which are said in physics to be heat, light, electricity and magnetism, is an intellectual reality, and is not sensible. In the same way, nature, also, in its essence is an intellectual reality and is not sensible; the human spirit is an intellectual, not sensible reality.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 83)

Spiritual causality is of another order than the causes we see at work in this world. Spiritual causality is manifested through Aristotle’s four causes of a created thing: formal, final, efficient and material. These four stages of creational causality are, in relation to spiritual causality, as its signs and effects.  It is as ‘Abdu’l-Baha described how we know of invisible matter:  “If we wish to deny everything that is not sensible, then we must deny the realities which unquestionably exist. For example, ethereal matter is not sensible, though it has an undoubted existence. The power of attraction is not sensible, though it certainly exists. From what do we affirm these existences? From their signs. Thus this light is the vibration of that ethereal matter, and from this vibration we infer the existence of ether.” (Some Answered Questions:189)

  As we infer the invisible ether from the signs of its material manifestation, so, through study of the four causes, we can infer another kind of cause, spiritual causality.  I state this apropos Baha’u’llah statement: “When the eyes of the people of the East were captivated by the arts and wonders of the West, they roved distraught in the wilderness of material causes, oblivious of the One Who is the Causer of Causes, and the Sustainer thereof, while such men as were the source and the wellspring of Wisdom never denied the moving Impulse behind these causes, nor the Creator or the Origin thereof.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 144)

Revelation is the causer of causes.  It is spiritual causality and it manifests in this world through the four causes, formal cause being itself different from the other three.  In the world of creation, formal cause is the first cause and final cause is the last cause, the culmination of a morphogenetic process of manifestation.  But, while they are separate they are inseparable.  Theirs is the union of active and receptive by that attraction which is innate relation—the primal oneness is a polarity.  The formal cause connects with the final cause through the efficient and material causes into a relationship of developing sequences, as the seed and the fruit are connected.  In fact the attraction between formal and final generates the links between efficient and material.  The seed is drawn towards its final form of fruit and, conversely, the fruit attracts the seed to it.  The stages of the tree’s growth are the way to realize this mutual longing.

While the formal cause is the environment of all, the final cause is the focal point of development and progress, what the goal of the work of efficient cause working upon the material cause is to realize.  The final cause is the appearance of the whole complex environment rolled into and within one Figure.

The wave and the particle are complementary states of the photon, both its focal point and the energy radiating from it: wave and particle are the same yet different.  Together particle and wave create a field of influence, the circumference and the pivot of the compass.  Similarly, the whole of the higher spiritual world, the Divine Will, which surrounds the creational world manifests in a focal point, a Manifestation, Who radiates out via His Words over the whole earth the powers of that spiritual world to transform this lower one.  This is true on many levels.  For the individual human being the body is the material focal point for the powers of the soul, and the brain is the physical seat of the whole possibilities of mental intelligence. In fact, this relationship is a universal law: “When ye consider this matter with care, it will become apparent that this is according to a universal law, which one can find at work in all things: the whole attracteth the part, and in the circle, the centre is the pivot of the compasses. Ponder thou upon the Spirit: because He was the focal centre of spiritual power, the wellspring of divine bounties…” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 62)  Thus, the whole is also the center; that is, it manifests as the center of a lower order.

To understand Revelation’s causal creative action on the cosmos, it seems that Revelation is the exemplar of formal causality, meaning that it is the cause of formal causality which is the cause of the other causes.  Revelation is the Causer of causes, but so is formal cause, except for Revelation which creates it.  Rather, formal cause is the Manifestation of the Divine Will, the Primal Point appearing in “the midmost heart” of this world in the form of a Revelator.  This first form is the active force, the generative form, but the Divine Will holds all forms within it. 

Environmental processes are ecological.  Phrases such as “spirit of the age” or “simultaneous discovery”, and “the time is ripe” and the like, indicate environmental process at work which are everywhere at once.  Environmental processes are not just sequential, but both non-sequential and sequential, constantly and reciprocally modifying each other.  Simultaneity concerns a manifestation of innate reciprocal relationships.  These are inferred and seen because at sufficiently high speeds sequencing reveals or flips into structure, the non-sequential or formal.  Jung called such manifestations of the union of spirit and matter “synchronicity”, calling synchronicity “an acausal connecting principle.” (See Jung’s book Synchronicity)   In fact, they are not acausal, but formal cause.  That is why new environments appear suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, as the brilliant insight, the great inspiration, powers emerging onto the landscape of our minds without warning. 

It is for this reason that, unless we know the pattern, the structural characteristics of an environment, and unless we understand the interaction of the formal cause, which is the essential form, and the final cause, or the intended manifest form, our time can only appear chaotic and irrational.  The environment is an active process pervading and influencing every facet and event of a situation.  Every Revelation is a new environment of humanity, but is also a part of a larger environment of divinity. 

The Divine Will is the First Cause of a new creation, not first in time but in form.  It manifests in a Revealer whose Words set the process of transformation going.  He is Formal Cause, His Words as influences and powers working in time are better described as formative causation, for they are generating new forms.  

Till now I have examined the relationship of causes primarily from a scriptural view, for that is where we can understand something of spiritual causality as it connects with formal cause.  We need now to look at this relationship from the complementary and subordinate knowledge structures of science and art and by the analogies they provide further bring out spiritual causality by comparing these thoughts with what we know about physical fields in Nature and of human invention.   Here we also move from formal cause, which is the definition of a thing, the calling it into being, to formative causation, which is transformation, the unfolding of potentials, the calling forth of more being.  That is, we are moving from one metaphor to another, from looking at the Divine Visage imprinting Itself in the mirror of creation to the painter painting her painting.

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle

Formal Cause

(T)here is a spiritual dimension to formal causality, as there is to all acts of creation.

(Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Media and Formal Cause: ix)

I am trying to discover for myself what a spiritual causality is and how it works, using statements from the Bahá’í Writings and the four causes of Aristotle.  

The next step is to distinguish the four causes from each other, for there is much confusion about them.  As the giver of definition, formal causality is often called something like the image of the thing to be created conceived by the maker, inventor or artist.  Thus, it is like a blueprint showing how the final cause, the purpose of the thing, can be realized through the efficient cause working upon the material cause.  But it is a mistake to identify the blueprint with the formal cause, just because it seems to be what the builder works from.  The blueprint itself causes nothing.  It is rather the final picture of what is to be the result of many prior causes and actions.  Hence the blueprint idea is actually much closer to the final cause, what pulls the efficient work toward it. 

The final or manifest form in organic being is the end form of that formative process, which is also the fully manifest or mature form of the essential form in matter.  The interaction and union between the formal and final forms, the first or formative and final or teleological causes, provides, also, a regulative function.  That is, the goal of any work  helps decide what to do next, what parts to keep and which to have come to an end, as they move the whole of evolution towards its destined end.  Formal cause is the imprinted pattern to be realized.  It is the beginning of what will become a chain of events to the present.  Final cause suggests the future influencing the present in the sense that it is what a thing is to become that helps determine its present stage of development.  It is the organic constraints upon the spirit.

Because all other causes and forms are within the formal cause, there is, too, a reciprocal relation between the formal cause and the efficient cause, for the efficient cause must takes its direction and authority from the formal cause in order to realize the final cause, and the formal cause must modify and react to the work of the efficient causal agents in their own creativity.  The efficient cause is the work of all humanity responding to the “imperatives” of the morphogenetic form.  The material cause is the established organic forms of social and intellectual existence which must undergo transformation to be aligned with the new morphogenetic or archetypal form.  Now this process goes on at many levels simultaneously, it is a nested hierarchy of fields of development, all proceeding from the original, essential form and all finding coordinated expression in the final form.  In a nested hierarchy, a ground is both ground for other things and is itself but a figure in a larger ground. 

Yet, and it is a BIG yet, as container or ground of all other causes, formal cause is not a part of the order of development.  I said it was the beginning, true, but remember Baha'u'llah speaks of creation as having existed "from the beginning that hath no beginning, apart from its being preceded by a Firstness which cannot be regarded as firstness." (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 140) That is, formal cause does not begin any temporal sequence, for that is the realm of efficient cause moving toward the final cause.  Formal cause is spiritual.  The whole order of development is the realization in organic, temporal form of the formal cause.  One author put it thus: “The ultimate completion and perfection are accordingly not something to be worked out by a cause.  Rather, it is something that is there in its finished and complete perfection before there can be any question of a cause going to work….These effects preexist and are pre-contained long before the causes that produce them go into operation.” (Owens quoted in Media and Formal Cause:60)   The effects are possibilities within the formal cause itself. 

I mean that formal cause does not create results by knocking against anything, by being the first in a sequence of actions upon something other than itself.  Billiard ball metaphors do not capture how it influences creation.   That is efficient causality.  It does so, rather, by Being itself flowing through Its quality of creator and leaving an imprint of light, or code of information, upon creation.  It is a “vibrating influence” as in: “All that is known owes its renown to the splendour of Thy Name, the Most Manifest, and every object is deeply stirred by the vibrating influence emanating from Thine invincible Will.” (Selections from the Writings of the Bab:195)  Traditionally, form actualizes potential, making or forming something into the kind or type of thing that it is.  But existing forms must be trans-formed by further actualizing of their potentials. 

Though, as Baha’u’llah says, everything must have a cause and a builder, He is not speaking of an efficient cause, a cause within time and temporality.  This may be difficult to grasp, because it goes against what is generally considered to be how cause and effect works, which is what material science is based upon.  Material science seeks to establish a strictly physical sequence of causation for all phenomena, which being in time and organic flow this causation can only be linear, sequentially efficient causality, like the mechanized assembly-line that builds our cars.  Efficient causality works on the premise of A before B, where A is both necessary and possibly sufficient to cause B within time. 

Logos or the Word as cosmological formal cause is simply BE.  It starts from the assumption that an energetic, patterned and influential spiritual world precedes, not sequentially but formally, the material, quantitative world of effects.  Spirit is the plane of causation modulating into matter, the Word made flesh.  It is the first principles and laws of spiritual genesis flowing into laws of material generation of the new which is also renewal.  Spiritual causation is not linear and sequential, but formal and simultaneous; “Be and it is”. Like the image appearing in the mirror, the whole reality appears simultaneously and imprints its image upon the mirror.  Spirit is a resonant structure with a vibrating influence.  It is not like painting where the painter laboriously transfers the image in his mind to canvas.  

A closer analogy to spiritual cause is the imaginative causality characteristic of myth.  In myth the formative principle is “let this be”, the “And God said” of the Bible. This is similar to the kind of non-local everything is in everything causality science is now exploring in Quantum Mechanics (sometimes called “the science of possibility”), Chaos Theory, and Complexity science.  It is a fluid metamorphosis of one thing into another, as in a dream, or the everywhere–at-once power of a field to bring forth novelty.

Again, when considered closely, this first form, the Formal Cause, is the animating power animating the final cause and all other causes, for the active force and that which is its recipient are the same yet they are different.  This is the Glorious Structure of the soul’s mysterious relationship with the body at every level of being and every stage of growth.  That is, it is the relationship of the formal cause, (the innate character or imprint that is soul), with the final cause, (the inherited physical character), through the efficient cause, (the character acquired through education, knowledge and learning), to act upon and transform the physical and intellectual material of creation.

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle

The Eternal Cosmos

Know that it is one of the most abstruse spiritual truths that the world of existence -- that is to say, this endless universe -- has no beginning.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions:179)

‘Abdu’l-Baha goes on from this statement to say that: “…as the Essence of Unity (that is, the existence of God) is everlasting and eternal -- that is to say, it has neither beginning nor end -- it is certain that this world of existence, this endless universe, has neither beginning nor end. Yes, it may be that one of the parts of the universe, one of the globes, for example, may come into existence, or may be disintegrated, but the other endless globes are still existing; the universe would not be disordered nor destroyed.   On the contrary, existence is eternal and perpetual. As each globe has a beginning, necessarily it has an end because every composition, collective or particular, must of necessity be decomposed. The only difference is that some are quickly decomposed, and others more slowly, but it is impossible that a composed thing should not eventually be decomposed.

It is necessary, therefore, that we should know what each of the important existences was in the beginning -- for there is no doubt that in the beginning the origin was one: the origin of all numbers is one and not two. Then it is evident that in the beginning matter was one, and that one matter appeared in different aspects in each element. Thus various forms were produced, and these various aspects as they were produced became permanent, and each element was specialized. But this permanence was not definite, and did not attain realization and perfect existence until after a very long time. Then these elements became composed, and organized and combined in infinite forms; or rather from the composition and combination of these elements innumerable beings appeared.

This composition and arrangement, through the wisdom of God and His preexistent might, were produced from one natural organization, which was composed and combined with the greatest strength, conformable to wisdom, and according to a universal law. From this it is evident that it is the creation of God, and is not a fortuitous composition and arrangement.

Then it is clear that original matter, which is in the embryonic state, and the mingled and composed elements which were its earliest forms, gradually grew and developed during many ages and cycles, passing from one shape and form to another, until they appeared in this perfection, this system, this organization and this establishment, through the supreme wisdom of God.” (Some Answered Questions: 179-183) 

In its essence Nature is also a metasensible creation: “For example, the power of intellect is not sensible; none of the inner qualities of man is a sensible thing; on the contrary, they are intellectual realities. So love is a mental reality and not sensible; for this reality the ear does not hear, the eye does not see, the smell does not perceive, the taste does not discern, the touch does not feel. Even ethereal matter, the forces of which are said in physics to be heat, light, electricity and magnetism, is an intellectual reality, and is not sensible. In the same way, nature, also, in its essence is an intellectual reality and is not sensible; the human spirit is an intellectual, not sensible reality.” (Some Answered Questions:83)

Thus there are actually two essential states without beginning, the Revelation and Creation, spiritual and material, first and final, whose eternal union forms what Baha’u’llah calls “the B and the E” in a formal sense.  That is the One Message and the one Matter in their primal, original states are locked in eternal embrace, BE; the former continually acting upon the latter, the latter continually receiving the former.

I said that Revelation imprints the first or archetypal form, the essential morphogenetic form, upon the cosmos.  This archetypal imprint of Revelation upon creation is what I call “the received Primal Form”.  Out from this imprinted form comes all life.  In the creational world of change and development, when the “B” and the “E” are joined and knit together that is the manifestation of the pre-existent relation and order.  Forms change and evolve so that past forms are related to present forms, but past forms are “not in the form thou seest today.” 

Last post I quoted Baha’u’llah’s statement that the complementary powers creating the world are the active force and that which is its recipient.  Baha’u’llah says of these two powers and conditions: “These two are the same, yet they are different.”  This is the “Glorious Structure”.  In the world of natural creation, the active force and that which is its recipient mirror the higher revelation/creation union, but with this difference: Active force and its recipient link not just into a formal relationship (these two are the same) but also into an efficient B and E cause and effect relationship of developing sequences in matter, (yet they are different) as the seed and the fruit are connected yet separate states of the same thing.  This is because every Revelation recreates the universe: progressive revelation is also the progressive unfolding of Nature.  No doubt the careful reader sees Aristotle’s four causes—the formal, final, efficient and material causes—at work here     

The formal cause is the active force or seed.  The final cause is the recipient, or fruit, the efficient cause is the tree itself and the material cause is the earth.  The formal cause is the first cause and final cause is the last cause.  The formal cause is inseparable from the final cause because, when considered closely, this first organic form of seed is both formal and final cause, for the active force and that which is its recipient are the same yet they are different.  As Eric McLuhan writes: “Nature and the four causes are one…Formal cause is the ground for the material, efficient and final causes; in that sense, it ‘contains’ all the other causes.”  The formal is the push to the final, the final, the telos, is the pull to itself, yet all comes from the formal because the final is contained within it as part of the ground plan of action, of regulation and coordination of efforts and effects.  Thus the formal is the hidden, archetypal laws of the cosmos—the received Primal Form.  But in the universality of life and definition all the causes are indispensable parts of a single Reality.  But the formal is the exemplar.  That is, formal cause “is not infinite but de-finite.” (Media and Formal Cause:128)  This is the natural cosmological structure.

But cosmological for human beings is not Nature but the union of an outer human social order, whose greatest form is civilization, with the universe within of human thought.  Revelation here is not just divine energy pouring into the molds of the natural world and driving them toward fruition, but divine consciousness enlightening human thought and behavior: i.e. not just energy but intellectual and social pattern.  This pattern is called the Kingdom of God on earth of Christianity. The “pattern laid up in heaven” is Plato’s image for the ideal city of his Republic (“In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter; for he will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other.”—Book IX of The Republic).  Augustine had his City of God, Aeneas is said to have founded Rome, “the eternal city”, upon a divine pattern after fleeing Troy, and the construction of the human city upon some sacred pattern was behind the founding of civilization myths of the ancient world.

How Revelation interacts in the human world to build the divine civilization also revolves around Aristotle’s four causes as effects and instruments of spiritual causality, but with the addition of human creativity.

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle

Spiritual Causality: (Part I) Divine Creative Thought and Will

It is He Who hath called into being the whole of creation, Who hath caused every created thing to spring forth at His behest.

(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 193)

Last post ended with a brief look at the concept of emergence, stating that emergence is actually two movements; an emerging into the world of time and organic process of a spiritual power, so that an emerging of qualities that were latent and inactive can occur within the organic material world.  What is the spiritual cause of this?  Of course we cannot really know, as it is beyond our ability to grasp.  But we can, by analogy and metaphor, obtain some inkling of it.  “Oh that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a metaphor.”

One way to get a handle on the notion of spiritual causality is to look at what traditional theology calls Logos, the Word or Revelation of God, and its relation to the cosmos.  Theologically, Logos is the cause of the cosmos.  It is what changes the “without form and void” of pure primal matter, which is the One Matter of the alchemists, into forms and life.  But Logos is not something originating from or existing within time or temporal sequence.  It is not part of the cosmos that it forms.   “Know thou, moreover, that the Word of God--exalted be His glory--is higher and far superior to that which the senses can perceive, for it is sanctified from any property or substance. It transcendeth the limitations of known elements and is exalted above all the essential and recognized substances. It became manifest without any syllable or sound and is none but the Command of God which pervadeth all created things. It hath never been withheld from the world of being. It is God's all-pervasive grace, from which all grace doth emanate. It is an entity far removed above all that hath been and shall be.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)

Logos as the manifest divine Utterance is the power to call things into being.  As power to create and then transform creation, Logos makes the thing into what it is essentially, and perpetually builds upon that metaphysical origin and pattern of information in a process of unfolding potentials and capacities.  Naming a thing is the act of spiritually defining it, meaning giving it essential spiritual structure and manifest material existence.  When uttered by the Manifestation, the name is the thing’s individual logos or reality.  Logos is the constitutive utterance.  It gives definition.  This definition is the potential for the thing to evolve as an integrated and progressively unfolding whole. 

The Reality of Logos is outside creation, likewise the “action” of Logos as spiritual cause is also not part of the order of development.  That is, it is not the first step in a linked series of actions or causes that bring things into being.  Baha’u’llah states: “His creation had ever existed beneath His shelter from the beginning that hath no beginning, apart from its being preceded by a Firstness which cannot be regarded as firstness and originated by a Cause inscrutable even unto all men of learning.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)

It is a metaphysical power and action that has physical manifestations.   Spiritual causality is the appearance of eternal forms in temporal forms which unfold and manifest by degrees the potentials of the natural and human worlds.  Its action is associated more with ideas and images like the imprint of light, the reflection in a mirror.  (See the previous post titled The Divine Imprint, January 13, 2013) With the reconfiguration of eternal forms by the utterance of the Word the archetypal temporal forms of creation also reconfigure.  

As I said, the Word is the reality and it is first in importance, but it is not first in a sequence of actions connected on the same plane.  Rather the Word and what it creates are eternally co-existent and connected, but infinitely different.  “Verily, the Word of God is the Cause which hath preceded the contingent world—a world which is adorned with the splendours of the Ancient of Days, yet is being renewed and regenerated at all times.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140-141)  This precession is not in time but in importance.  The Word does not just precede any particular thing, but the whole contingent world.

The Manifestation knows essential forms, but He speaks existent forms.  Human intelligence has no access to the divine realm of essences, and we think and speak and create forms of existence after the image and likeness of His existent ones.  What are reflected in the mirror of creation are the forms of the Word as divine thought connected with the forms imagined and created by human beings.  “Praise and thanksgiving be unto Providence that out of all the realities in existence He has chosen the reality of man and has honored it with intellect and wisdom, the two most luminous lights in either world. Through the agency of this great endowment, He has in every epoch cast on the mirror of creation new and wonderful configurations. If we look objectively upon the world of being, it will become apparent that from age to age, the temple of existence has continually been embellished with a fresh grace, and distinguished with an ever-varying splendor, deriving from wisdom and the power of thought.”  (The Secret of Divine Civilization:1)

The forms of natural beings that every Manifestation speaks are the Will of God.  “Say: Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator. Its manifestations are diversified by varying causes, and in this diversity there are signs for men of discernment. Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of Providence ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise. Were anyone to affirm that it is the Will of God as manifested in the world of being, no one should question this assertion.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:142)

The essential relationships composing Nature are fixed and enduring, because they are an expression of the Will of God.  “God hath created a relation between the sun and the terrestrial globe that the rays of the sun should shine and the soil should yield. These relationships constitute predestination, and the manifestation thereof in the plane of existence is fate. Will is that active force which controlleth these relationships and these incidents.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, 198)

Nonetheless, though the essential relations are fixed, the forms they create through their interactions change with every divine utterance as these relations, which are the laws of Nature, themselves evolve and develop.  “In every age and cycle He hath, through the splendorous light shed by the Manifestations of His wondrous Essence, recreated all things, so that whatsoever reflecteth in the heavens and on the earth the signs of His glory may not be deprived of the outpourings of His mercy, nor despair of the showers of His favors.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah: 61)

These forms developmentally link through time and history as the varied results of the reciprocal action of two complementary powers.  “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today. The world of existence came into being through the heat generated from the interaction between the active force and that which is its recipient. These two are the same, yet they are different. Thus doth the Great Announcement inform thee about this glorious structure.  Such as communicate the generating influence and such as receive its impact are indeed created through the irresistible Word of God which is the Cause of the entire creation, while all else besides His Word are but the creatures and the effects thereof.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)

        This discussion, abstract as it is, provides context for an examination of the varied interactions—“Such as communicate the generating influence and such as receive its impact”—between the two great creative powers in the world, the active force and that which is its recipient.  That examination can be carried on within Aristotle’s discussion of the four causes for any created thing: the formal cause, the final cause, the efficient cause and the material cause.  I am going to concentrate on the least understood of these causes, formal cause.

A direct link to my book, Renewing the Sacred is http://tinyurl.com/cndew5a It is now also in Kindle

Sciences of the Spirit

In addition to the material sciences, we shall need to teach the Sciences of Spirit.  What is this Science of Spirit?  That is for future man to ascertain and fervently apply to all life upon this planet.

(Stanwood Cobb. Thoughts on Education and Life: 55)  

Sacred science stretches the idea of knowledge to include again, besides the human relations with Nature and with each other in society, the relations of the soul with that which is Divine and transcendent, the invisible powers that govern and drive the universe.  The great enemy of symbolic thought is literalism, whether religious or scientific, for relationally all is metaphor.  The symbolist method of thought is essential for the creation of sacred sciences.  Symbolism says that the material manifest form is real and worthy of study, but that it is also linked with a higher, essential form of itself, a spiritual Reality, which working together in reciprocal interaction with the material create a sacred science.  Sacred science would connect these dimensions of creation within one symbiotic relation, so that the path to truth can be complementary, a reading the spiritual from the material, or, reading the material from the spiritual.  In this spiritual or sacred science the harmony of science and religion would be apparent and investigated by the one mind, for human consciousness in all its varied cultural forms and individual appearances is still one.  I am currently undertaking this kind of reconceptualizing of history, sociology and economics, the three disciplines that Shoghi Effendi encouraged youth to study.

He, for example, “advised young people to study deeply such subjects as History, Economics and Sociology as they are all related to the teachings and aid in understanding the Faith.” (Lights of Guidance: 629)  He also advised them to study “History, Economics or Sociology, as these are not only fields in which Bahá'ís take a great interest but also cover subjects which our teachings cast an entirely new light upon.” (Compilation on Scholarship:12)  These two statements indicate the reciprocal relation between the knowledge in these disciplines and the Bahá’í Teachings.  But these reciprocal relations must be brought out.  Hence: “Shoghi Effendi has for years urged the Bahá'ís (who asked his advice, and in general also) to study history, economics, sociology, etc., in order to be au courant with all the progressive movements and thoughts being put forth today, and so that they could correlate these to the Bahá'í teachings.” (Compilations on Scholarship:18)

To show something of that epistemological interplay between reason and Revelation—i.e. to study these subjects because they help to understand the Faith, to study them because the “teachings cast an entirely new light upon” these same subjects, and to correlate the two—is the goal of many scholars and writers.  To get a foothold in this new terrain however a spiritual perspective is needed.

The suggested interplay between the Faith and human knowledge hinges on the complex interplay between Divinity and humanity. That interplay operates through several relations, with different forms and is comprehended through various metaphors. One relation is between the eternal and temporal as dimensions of existence.  There is the creative interplay of Mind and matter as dimensions of creation.  There is the spiritual/organic interplay as rhythms of growth, and the sacred and profane as moral dimensions of spiritual principle and virtuous action.  The interplay between humanity’s two greatest means of generating knowledge, reason and faith, and their two large containing forms, science and religion, is the interplay of consciousness and being.  The sequential unfolding of an inner structure simultaneously enfolding into an outer structure that mirrors it and reflects back to it is the interplay. 

This unity in diversity, this movement of a diverse spiritual whole that is reconstructed into a differentiated organic whole in another and smaller plane, can be summed up in Aristotle’s four causes: the formal cause finding its mirror-form in the final cause through the interaction of the efficient cause upon the material cause.  But then there is a reply of the final cause back to the formal, so that interaction and interrelation occur, so that not just a one-way relation is shown but a relationship is formed.  One implication of that last statement is that there is a delicate and extensive connection between divinity and humanity that not only shapes perception, but also acts as a timing mechanism bring forth further stimuli and response from both: the interplay is an interaction.

One way to see this comes from reflecting on the phenomenon and nature of “emergence.”  I mean that in discussing novelty or when seeing something new or for the first time, or noticing, perhaps with surprise, a sudden added complexity of a phenomenon, we use phrases like “an emerging reality” or “an emerging pattern of life or society”, even calling the universe itself an emergent thing.  The word “emerging” is often coupled with another word “shaping.”  Hence we get complete phrases such as shaping the new emerging reality.  If asked the meaning of these kinds of phrases we generally focus upon the noun, “reality”, its shape and history, its now visible pattern, and so on.  But focus upon the adjective “emerging” leads me to ask: From where does the reality or pattern emerge?  From a spiritual perspective here are two answers to this.  First, something is emerging into the world or human consciousness and, second, something is emerging from the world and human consciousness, the second emergence dependent upon the first.  The too often one-sided discussion of emergence only focuses upon the second emergence from the world without seeing it as caused by a prior emergence into the world.

I mean that, if a pattern or power is emerging, it already exists somewhere, just not here in this world, or in our consciousness which alone can “see” it as a pattern.  The first power existed in a spiritual dimension and it emerged into our world.  It startled into activity or stimulated into action some latent power or capacity within the human reality, our idea of emergence conceptually registering this switch from quiet potential to active ability.  It emerges, that is, into awareness.  Powers, therefore, exist in both places and we know them to be there only when they move.  The causal sequence being, that is, “emerging into” so that something may be “emerging from.” 

A profound reconfiguration of the human intelligence is going on.  Faculties that I named in my book Renewing the Sacred as the sacred heart and spiritual mind are awakening.  Reconfiguration is necessary, for humanity is not merely at the end of an era, or a style of thought, nor is it just that nations have become entangled in political gridlock or government entered into final form of society called liberal democracy.  Neither have we arrived just at some temporary cultural impasse.  We are, in fact, at the end of days of humanity as we know that term.  If this is the end of history then nothing from the past or anywhere else in creation will navigate us through this new voyage, for all but the soul is trapped within the morphic field of intellect, and it is the soul that is voyaging, using the mind and body as its ship and oars.  The end of days is the edge of eternity.  We stand on the brink staring out over a shoreless ocean of divine thought which flows out from that center which is the beginning of all things.  We must not just be renewed but also made new.  The old forms have been retrieved, but enfolded within a new more comprehensive state called the Revelation of “spirit of truth”, the Most Glorious Manifestation of God, Baha’u’llah.