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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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II. Pedia Sapiens: A Planetary Progeny Comes to Her/His Own Actual Factual Knowledge

2. Perennial Wisdome: An AnthropoCosmic Code

Hannaway, Owen. The Chemists and the Word. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. A study of how the science of chemistry arose from the literal, medicinal basis of Kabbalistic and Paracelsian alchemy. In the 17th century, chemical studies were seen as engaged in reading a natural scripture.

The fundamental doctrine in the world view was the macrocosm-microcosm analogy; the belief that there existed a correspondence between the powers and virtues operative in the universe (the macrocosm) and those operative within the organs of man himself (the microcosm). Man was viewed as a condensation of the whole universe. (22)

Harris, Errol. Cosmos and Theos. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1992. A sequel to Harris’ book Cosmos and Anthropos (Current Vistas) which goes on to explore the moral and theological implications of his integral philosophy of an evolutionary genesis.

Hardly yet is it recognized that there is a single creative principle that specifies itself dialectically in a scale of ascending physical, biological and sentient forms, a principle that may justifiably be described as the light of the world and of mankind…..There is a sense in which, as we have seen, the Word is made flesh in each and all of us, so far as our rational self-reflective minds are the product of the immanent activity of the universal organizing principle in human personality. (195)

Heehs, Peter, ed. Situating Sri Aurobindo: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. The British-Indian editor, based in Pondicherry and Auroville, is an author of many volumes on this perennial Eastern sage (1872-1950). Four thematic sections - Poetry and Criticism, Political and Social Thought, Philosophical Thought, and Spiritual Thought – consider the scope of his integral vision from poetry, to positive psychology and ethical cultures. As noted in Historic Prescience (Chaudhuri 1960), Aurobindo sought to recast eternal cycles of return into an evolutionary ascent from mind and matter to awakened beings, knowing consciousness and numinous overmind. His epic poem Savitri: The Eternal Feminine advises that only the sacred unifying wisdom and love she symbolizes can save and restore the profane male world.

Heninger, S. K. Binary Systems, Ratios and Esthetic Judgments in the Renaissance. Brink, Jean, et al, eds.. The Computer and the Brain.. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1989. A noted scholar offers insights on the pervasive analogic, dialectic and textual mindset of the period. By the human act of identifying and “naming” everything in the vast natural cosmos, it becomes converted into script.

The creatures of our universe comprise a system exactly like a motivated vocabulary. Each thing is a signifier directly linked to a prior signified that predetermines its character. That is what is meant when we say the world is a book of nature. This is why I could say that Adam, when he named the creatures, created a verbal universe exactly analogous to God’s creation. This is why language works: it is validated by a divine dispensation that similarly is in force throughout creation.

Jackson, William. Heaven’s Fractal Net. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2004. A professor of religious studies artfully conveys how self-similar patterns suffuse all of nature, literature, cultures and especially religious wisdom. Jackson’s postmodern, illustrated survey runs, for example, from Dante’s Divine Comedy and traditional Dogon tribal designs to Taoist gender complementarities, patterns of cognitive evolution and Goethe’s natural wholeness. What is implied throughout is a spontaneously organic cosmos made knowable and liveable because the same pattern and process recurs and resonates over and over.

Jeffery, David, ed. By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979. A scholarly work that perceives this distant mirror as distinguished by a concept of “referral” whence everyone and thing in some reflective way refers to or corresponds with each other, and their Divine Creator. A principle then also known as emblematic, exemplary, sympathetic, Indra’s web, today as self-similar, iterative, scale invariance. The questing of human inquiry has long tried to touch and evoke such a natural creation which somehow universally repeats itself. By this ingrained code, the textual character of God’s works, its perennial essence and purpose would be revealed for edification and avail. A notable chapter in regard is “Number as Cosmic Language” by Russell Peck. At earth’s hour, however might humankind altogether come and be able to realize the Code is truly parent to child “genetic” in kind?

Jones, David and John Culliney. Confucian Order at the Edge of Chaos: The Science of Complexity and Ancient Wisdom. Zygon. 33/3, 1998. The ancient energizing and ordering principle of li in its corporeal and social activity can be encountered once again through nonlinear dynamics.

Jones, David and John Culliney. The Fractal Self and the Organization of Nature: The Daoist Sage and Chaos Theory. Zygon. 34/4, 1999. The dynamics of Yin and Yang are reinterpreted in terms of a scalar cosmos where the same pattern and process recur at each stage and instance. As a result, ones personal selfhood is both unique and seamlessly affinitive with a holistic, participatory universe.

Kim, Eunsoon. Time, Eternity, and the Trinity: A Trinitarian Analogical Understanding of Time and Identity. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010. In our worldwide 21st century, such timeless matters are being engaged anew with a promise of finally touching their veracity. A Soongsil University, Seoul, theologian presses Thomas Aquinas’ insight that everyone and thing is analogous to each other and an iconic image of their Creator. This project is pursued within the “pan–en-theistic” turn beyond a “pantheism” of not only a numinous nature but also a separate, distinct (implied male) Divinity. (See John Cooper in this section) Over the centuries, this human = universe = God “exemplarism” is still the grand default secret and answer, which is at last gaining scientific verification via the complexity cosmos.

Therefore, a kind of via analogia through the following Trinitarian triple analogy, analogia vitae, analogia relationis, and analogia communicationis, centered in the unique and the only true God-given analogy, Jesus Christ, is a key to grasp more properly the biblical teaching concerning God’s eternity and its relation to time. (2)

Kim, Heup Young. Sanctity of Life: A Reflection on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debates from an East Asian Perspective. Das, Pranab, ed. Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2009. The Kangnam University, South Korea, theologian of Confucian and Christian affinities finds a Catholic emphasis on individual ensoulment at conception to slight humanity’s encompassing dignity, which can open to a true sense of persons as divine children. The second quote is cited in this chapter.

The Kangnam University, South Korea, theologian of Confucian and Christian affinities finds a Catholic emphasis on individual ensoulment at conception to slight humanity’s encompassing dignity, which can open to a true sense of persons as divine children. The second quote is cited in this chapter.

Klauder, Francis. A Philosophy Rooted in Love. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994. A study of the “perennial philosophy” of Thomas Aquinas and the Analogy of Being, a “likeness or similarity” by which the extant world and its Creator can be known.

Kries, Mateo and Alexander von Vegesock, eds. Rudolf Steiner: Alchemy of the Everyday. Stuttgart: Vitra Design Museum, 2010. An illustrated volume for a consummate exhibit on Steiner’s life (1861-1925) and his contributions from art and architecture to economics, health, and every realm of body, nutrition, community, and soul. The Austrian “mystical philosopher, social reformer, and ecotericist” is the founder of Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, and many other gifts, now spread across the globe. This practical guidance springs from his school and legacy of Anthroposophy, within the Romantic school of Wolfgang Goethe, which realizes and shares an encompassing spiritual milieu and wellspring. And Rudolf Steiner was a staunch, fierce opponent of Adolf Hitler, whose SS troopers once destroyed his unique Institute buildings.

As this edition avers, at the secret heart wisdom of his thought lies a perennial affinity between human and universe, verily each person is an iconic microcosm of the numinous macrocosm. “Human beings are the alpha and omega existence; they have created this cosmos so that they can experience and discover themselves as free beings who act out of themselves.” An “Archetypal Biogenetic Principle” as a “recapitulation,” a popular motif in his day also held by Sigmund Freud, between human beings, historic humankind, and cosmic evolutionary life engenders this once and future genetic correspondence. “But we can find the foundation of this creation in ourselves, Steiner would add; in Klee’s experience of art we may experience the essence of our own creativity as the essence of all creation.”

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