VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twindividuality

6. Bilateral World Religions and Science

Brown, C. Mackenzie. Hindu Perspectives on Evolution: Darwin, Dharma, and Design. London: Routledge, 2012. Akin to Clinton Godart’s volume herein about Japanese encounters, a Trinity University professor of religion illustrates receptions in India across colonial and modern periods by sages such as Sankara, Swami Vivekananda, and expecially Sri Aurobindo. As also the case in Japan, the Eastern milieu tends more to Henri Bergson’s and Peirre Teilhard’s numinous advance from fertile matter to spiritual consciousness.

Brun, Rudolf. Cosmology, Cosmic Evolution, and Sacramental Reality. Zygon. 37/1, 2002. An innovative attempt to integrate Holy Scripture and the Book of Nature via the nonlinear sciences. A dynamic, self-developing cosmogenesis with a Divine future is seen to emerge through a universal creative process in self-similar effect everywhere.

Cambray, Joe. The Emergence of the Ecological Mind in Hua-Yen/Kegon Buddhism and Jungian Psychology. Journal of Analytical Psychology. 62/1, 2017. The author (search), who has a doctorate in chemistry, a masters in counseling psychology, is currently president of the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA. This paper continues his project to marry widely separate psychic and physical aspects into a common, meaningful synthesis. As a natural expression, Rhizome flora, which is an underground root network for spreading ground plants, is availed. Carl Jung (Plato before, search James Olney for both) drew upon this metaphor for an abiding guidance from which life and persons arise. Postmodernity, however, takes the opposite view of a random meander without any deep source. Into the 21st century, Cambray wonders if new findings of cosmic webworks, which seem akin to neural networks, along with dark energies, could aid and inform a vital expansion.

The complexity associated with deep interconnectedness in nature is beginning to be articulated and elaborated in the field of ecological studies. While some parallels to the psyche have been made, Jung’s explicit contribution by way of the image of rhizomes has not been considered in detail. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze acknowledges borrowing the term from Jung, though he disagreed with Jung’s Empedoclean use of the term. The paper presents some fundamental properties of rhizomes along with contemporary scientific research on mycorrhizal (fungal) networks. Comparisons are first made with classical symbolic forms. Then comparison of rhizomal networks is made to those found both in mammalian brains and in recent images of the ‘cosmic web’ …. one of the largest structures in the known universe as clusters of galaxies which form into filaments. An additional comparison of the emerging image of the universe as a whole with the ancient Chinese Buddhist cosmological vision from the Hua-Yen School (Kegon in Japan) again reveals profound parallels. (Abstract edited excerpt)

Cosmology has now identified a pervasive force permeating the entire universe, previously unrecognized until mapping the sectors of darkness revealed regions of voidness and their evolution in time. The results point to a new, unknown force, ‘Dark Energy’, generating increasing regions of relative ‘no-thing-ness’ and producing the intricate patterns of the Cosmic Web. Even though the details may reveal differences with the insights of Hua-Yen cosmology, we are left to ponder the remarkable capacity of the meditative methods of this school to create such a far-reaching vision and more generally how the nature of mind increasingly seems to reflect the universe in which it emerged. (Conclusion, 26)

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away – an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 4, 1961)

Chilton, Paul and Monika Kopytowska, eds. Religion, Language, and the Human Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. A Lancaster University linguist and a University of Lodz philosopher achieve a unique collection that joins these prime realms by way of a numinous synthesis of literacy and spirituality. Among the 17 chapters are Speaking about God in Universal Words, Metaphor, Imagery and Vernacular in Vaisnava Hindu Traditions, The Muslim Prophetic Tradition, and Cognitive Pragmatics and Allegory in Christian Discourse. Their intent is to show how much our religious heritage, broadly conceived, has a deeply literal and rhythmic basis. Of especial note is God, Metaphor, and the Language of the Hemispheres by Iain McGilchrist, reviewed herein.

This volume brings together linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and religious studies in three sections. Part I surveys the development of modern studies of religious language and the diverse disciplinary strands that have emerged. Beginning with descriptive approaches to religious language and the problem of describing religious, chapters introduce the turn to cognition in linguistics, theology, and especially metaphor. Part II continues on metaphor - the natural ability by which humans draw on basic knowledge of the world to explore abstractions and intangibles. Part III seeks to open up new horizons for cognitive-linguistic research on religion, looking beyond written texts to ritual, religious art, and religious electronic media.

Chittick, William. The Anthropocosmic Vision in Islamic Thought. Peters, Ted, et al, eds. God, Life and the Cosmos. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002. Written in collaboration with the Harvard University Confucian scholar Tu Weiming, this definitive essay of the book finds a deep accord between the Chinese concept of an organic, encompassing cosmos and the essence of Islamic philosophy, which is most expressed in a mirror correspondence between numinous macrocosmos and microcosmic human person. By these insights and qualities, Islam may gain an Eastern dimension to complement its Western origins.

Chittick, William. The Heart of Islamic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. An introduction to the source and depths of Islamic and Sufi wisdom. What is significant is that their cosmology of quality and quantity, original One and manifest many, scale of microcosm and macrocosm, gender complementaries, sentient intellect and ascendant soul is finding affirmation in humankind’s genesis vision, as is each traditional cosmology and sacred path.

The existential angst of so many modern intellectuals, who find themselves beleaguered by a hostile universe, is utterly inconceivable in the Islamic intellectual tradition, for which the universe is nothing if not a nurturing womb.

Choi, Kwang Sun. Ecozoic Spirituality: The Symphony of God, Humanity, and the Universe.. New York: Peter Lang, 2015. As the quote cites, by virtue of a comparison across a millennium span of eastern and western sages, namely Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) and Thomas Berry (1914-2009), a Honam Theological University, Korea scholar proposes a 21st century synthesis of this once and future familial trinity. I was a friend of Thomas Berry since the 1980s, and publications person for the American (Pierre) Teilhard Association, of which he was long president. I have helped edit his writings such as The Universe Story (1992) and a number of Teilhard Studies. In this work, his Ecozoic age would replace the Anthropocene if we peoples might avail the natural revelation of a numinous ecological cosmos and reinhabit Earth communities in a sustainable way. Zhou Dunyi, as an epitome of Chinese Confucian wisdom, similarly evoked an organic milieu graced by a harmony and balance of masculine yang and feminine yin complements. Kwang Sun Choi goes on to broaches a “theo-anthropo-cosmic” essence to join the triume transcendent, immanent and manifest phases.

This book guides the reader to the emerging Ecozoic Era when humans will be present upon the Earth in a mutually enhancing manner. Indeed, this book calls for an Ecozoic spirituality that is timely and much needed. It also illustrates an important direction for theology and spirituality and for deep ecumenism that is yet to be fully realized and opens more doors for such dialogue. By giving special attention to the integral relationship among God, the cosmos, and humanity, the works of Thomas Berry and Zhou Dunyi provide insights that speak to the current ecological crisis, a cosmological context for developing an Ecozoic spirituality, while helping to advance clear values and ethical parameters that lead to a more authentic human presence on Earth.

Zhou Dunyi was a Song dynasty Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher and cosmologist. He conceptualized the Neo-Confucian cosmology of the day, explaining the relationship between human conduct and universal forces. In this way, he emphasizes that humans can master their qi ("vital life energy") in order to accord with nature. He was a major influence to Zhu Xi, who was the architect of Neo-Confucianism. Zhou Dunyi was mainly concerned with Taiji (supreme polarity) and Wuji (limitless potential), the yin and yang, and the wu xing (the five phases). He is also venerated and credited in Taoism as the first philosopher to popularize the concept of the taijitu or "yin-yang symbol". (Wikipedia)

Clarke, John James. The Tao of the West. London: Routledge, 2000. Further thoughts on the intersect of an Eastern sense of a holistic, ecological cosmos spontaneously engaged in self-creation and the Western deterministic mechanical paradigm which defers to transcendence.

Clayton, Philip. Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. A philosopher of science at the Claremont School of Theology carefully explains an imminent paradigm shift from an insensate, mechanical cosmos based on the method of physical reduction to the incarnate evolutionary rise of a nested hierarchy of complex life, intelligent reflection and spiritual values. Also noted in Part I: Current Vistas.

Clayton, Philip. Pantheisms East and West. Sophia. 49/2, 2010. The Claremont School of Theology scholar and author revisits this venerable and lately revived vista whence “the transcendent is in the immanent, and the immanent is in the transcendent,” rather than their separation and opposition. The paper was presented in a Pantheism panel at the Parliament of World Religions in Melbourne, December 2006, some other talks there are in this issue. See also Philip’s 2013 chapter Panentheism in the Tapestry of Traditions in the work he edited with Loriliai Biernacki.

In the West panentheism is known as the view that the world is contained within the divine, though God is also more than the world. I trace the history of this school of philosophy in both Eastern and Western traditions. Although the term is not widely known, the position in fact draws together a broad range of important positions in 20th and 21st century metaphysics, theology, and philosophy of religion. I conclude with some reflections on the practical importance of this position. (Abstract)

Clayton, Philip, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. A collection of 57 articles by leading authorities arranged in six sections: Religion and Science in the World’s Traditions, Religion in the Light of Science, Major Fields of Study, Methodological Approaches, Main Theological Debates, and Value Issues. A major yet fragmentary volume which still seems more concerned with preparing for the comparative task than actually carrying it out. The question of what kind of universe and evolution does “science” infer, contingently pointless or a purposeful emergent complexity and moral sentience, is not sufficiently recognized or formally addressed.

Cohen, Adam, et al. Religion and Culture: Individualism and Collectivism in the East and West. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Online August, 2016. Cohen and Jacob Miller, Arizona State University, and Michael Shengtao Wu, Xiamen University, China, review how these widely accepted, generally appropriate, global complements similarly distinguish their relative belief and ethical systems.

Religion is an important topic to understand in cross-cultural psychology. More theorizing and empirical work has gone into Western religions than Eastern religions. We briefly review work on cultural differences among Western religious groups, using the framework of individualism and collectivism. Such work raises questions on how religions and cultures affect each other, how diverse cultural groups are, and how confounded country and religious identities are. We then ask some of the same questions about Eastern religions and propose new questions for a cross-cultural psychology of religion, such as what counts as a religion, and whether there are nonreligious parallels of religious constructs that serve similar functions (e.g., belief in a just world [BJW], or social axiom of reward for human application). In all, we propose that a greater attention to both Western and Eastern religions in cross-cultural psychology can be illuminating regarding religion and culture. (Abstract)

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