Reading a new book, "Consciousness Better Explained" by Alan Combs, we come up again with the question posed by Schuon and de Chardin - is the evolution of consciousness imaginary (Schuon) or real (de Chardin)? In this, Combs (at this point in my reading) has now doubt - it is evolutionary. Within a vast sweep of philosophy and psychology, he sketches the work of Piaget, whose ground-breaking efforts on child development is well known to all who have taken an undergraduate course in psych, and maps this onto the work of Jean Gebser, who sees the same patterns unfolding within social development. Gebser, looking into anthropological ethnography for resources on pre-historic humans, sees human societies as a whole progressing from the "archaic to the magical, mythical, mental and integral" modes of thinking for populations at large. The archaic would represent stone-age peoples, including the few vestiges left in near - modern times in such places as New Guinea and Australia, the magical to early historic and late prehistoric populations - and many "primitive"cultures such as certain American Indian groups into the 19th century- the mythic to early literate cultures such as the Greek, Roman, Judaic and early Christian ascendancies, the mental to the current modern stage, and the integral to that which is to come. I have yet to reach the integral stage in my reading, but I am sure it will be good - Combs will probably have us casting off our lonely modernistic view to hold a more quantum-related idea of the wholeness and interrelated-ness of human kind and the universe at large.
Combs will not be simplistic in his expose, and I look forward to it, but the development of his thesis is already problematic. To site a few examples, he is right in ascribing a sort of childishness to the "magical" peoples,with whom I lived in South America. Never able to quite pin down exactly what was childish about them, I should have resorted to Gebser for the answer. For instance, one member of the tribe I lived with who had heard about the Christian god from missionaries asked me, in all frankness, "Does God have shoes?"; that is, is our god a reflection of us (or rather, we a reflection of him) who would wear shoes? From another angle, we can go back back to the 19th century in the last desperate years of the Plains Indians, when many tribes gathered for the Ghost Dance which included a belief that the magic buffalo would come forth and cast Western man from his territory, reclaiming it for the Indians. Part of the magic of the ceremony, too, was that warriors would be immune from bullets. Neither forms of magical thinking proved correct, appearing all the world as childish wish-fulfillment.
Yet, we have in Harner's book on shamanism an entirely different picture of magical thinking: that it is not only real (the spirits and the miracles that they can produce in middle earth), but integrative; that is, that it relies on the belief that all beings, human and otherwise, as well as all things, are connected. Is this not integrative? Harner would claim that these archaic or pre-modern "doctors of spirit" were - and are now - more integrative and thus more advanced than we of the modern, particularist way of thinking. Frithjof Schuon might disagree on this one point - he saw pantheistic forms of thought (that is, a belief that spirit resides in things alone rather than emanating from one integral source) as degenerate, although Harner believes that the shaman DOES understand this single source - but he certainly believes that modern thought has fallen - from the heights, as he saw it, of the high middle -ages. By contrast, this is a time that Combs sees as others do - as a dark age.
In their discrepancies, I will note the two's different views on art. Combs takes the standard belief that Renaissance art shows a great stride in evolution by creating perspective. In creating perspective, it not only made art look real, but gave the viewer a sense of his own individuality by locating him outside the picture. For Schuon, this was a catastrophe and the sign of the impending fall of humanity. By locating the viewer outside of art, the new perspective made the art -work itself the most important element, not what the picture (painting, frieze, whatever) DID for the viewer. The central idea of old art, according to him, was to provide a bridge to the Transcendent - to God - not to elevate the artist and his skills. Thus for Schuon, integration was lost to isolation and individualism, which he foresaw as accelerating to the point of human societal collapse - both physically and morally. Without God as the ultimate symbol (as we can understand God) of integration, what would we have left?
And yet - the early cultures, as I understand them, were so tribal. The Jews, for instance, were furious that Paul preached an equality with gentiles - so much so that many rejected the divinity of Jesus on the face of it. Early Christians were far more open, it is true, welcoming in just about anyone - with a strong caveat. If you did not accept the invitation, you were either physically destroyed or considered psychically damned. Schuon would have an answer for this - I'm sure he would say that the world was not perfect then, but better - but this leaves room for much doubt. Certainly, Combs and de Chardin have a point - that we are, physically and emotionally, more accepting now of a unity of man. But as many in the West, and now other areas, plummet into a lack of a belief in the sacred, are we really advancing?
I will keep open for Comb's next chapters. Really, this question is the question of the era - are we rising into a more integrative spirit, or plunging more into a near-sighted materialism? Much more to come, hopefully from a new and encouraging vantage point, FK
Combs will not be simplistic in his expose, and I look forward to it, but the development of his thesis is already problematic. To site a few examples, he is right in ascribing a sort of childishness to the "magical" peoples,with whom I lived in South America. Never able to quite pin down exactly what was childish about them, I should have resorted to Gebser for the answer. For instance, one member of the tribe I lived with who had heard about the Christian god from missionaries asked me, in all frankness, "Does God have shoes?"; that is, is our god a reflection of us (or rather, we a reflection of him) who would wear shoes? From another angle, we can go back back to the 19th century in the last desperate years of the Plains Indians, when many tribes gathered for the Ghost Dance which included a belief that the magic buffalo would come forth and cast Western man from his territory, reclaiming it for the Indians. Part of the magic of the ceremony, too, was that warriors would be immune from bullets. Neither forms of magical thinking proved correct, appearing all the world as childish wish-fulfillment.
Yet, we have in Harner's book on shamanism an entirely different picture of magical thinking: that it is not only real (the spirits and the miracles that they can produce in middle earth), but integrative; that is, that it relies on the belief that all beings, human and otherwise, as well as all things, are connected. Is this not integrative? Harner would claim that these archaic or pre-modern "doctors of spirit" were - and are now - more integrative and thus more advanced than we of the modern, particularist way of thinking. Frithjof Schuon might disagree on this one point - he saw pantheistic forms of thought (that is, a belief that spirit resides in things alone rather than emanating from one integral source) as degenerate, although Harner believes that the shaman DOES understand this single source - but he certainly believes that modern thought has fallen - from the heights, as he saw it, of the high middle -ages. By contrast, this is a time that Combs sees as others do - as a dark age.
In their discrepancies, I will note the two's different views on art. Combs takes the standard belief that Renaissance art shows a great stride in evolution by creating perspective. In creating perspective, it not only made art look real, but gave the viewer a sense of his own individuality by locating him outside the picture. For Schuon, this was a catastrophe and the sign of the impending fall of humanity. By locating the viewer outside of art, the new perspective made the art -work itself the most important element, not what the picture (painting, frieze, whatever) DID for the viewer. The central idea of old art, according to him, was to provide a bridge to the Transcendent - to God - not to elevate the artist and his skills. Thus for Schuon, integration was lost to isolation and individualism, which he foresaw as accelerating to the point of human societal collapse - both physically and morally. Without God as the ultimate symbol (as we can understand God) of integration, what would we have left?
And yet - the early cultures, as I understand them, were so tribal. The Jews, for instance, were furious that Paul preached an equality with gentiles - so much so that many rejected the divinity of Jesus on the face of it. Early Christians were far more open, it is true, welcoming in just about anyone - with a strong caveat. If you did not accept the invitation, you were either physically destroyed or considered psychically damned. Schuon would have an answer for this - I'm sure he would say that the world was not perfect then, but better - but this leaves room for much doubt. Certainly, Combs and de Chardin have a point - that we are, physically and emotionally, more accepting now of a unity of man. But as many in the West, and now other areas, plummet into a lack of a belief in the sacred, are we really advancing?
I will keep open for Comb's next chapters. Really, this question is the question of the era - are we rising into a more integrative spirit, or plunging more into a near-sighted materialism? Much more to come, hopefully from a new and encouraging vantage point, FK
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