The Unity of the Trinity. (Spirituality & Prayer)

Warren, I honestly think you delude yourself if the whole church is going to engage in meditation along the lines you are suggesting. I think, to some extent, that Benedict is correct in his description of the average Christian as a "simple person". We're simply never going to see all Christians one day engaging in some form of Christian yoga gazing blankly into space or contemplating their navels or the gentle sounds of their breathing. Where Benedict I think is wrong is that he seems to posit the problem as one of intelligence or brain power. I think the problem is more associated with the lack of seconds in a lifetime, or each day, to do all the things we'd like to do. None of us have time to study all the big questions: we're engaged in earning a living, bringing up kids, making our way in the world, getting our end in (for boys), gettin' a bit of lovin' (for girls), keeping warm and comfortable. I engage in a lot of "mulling" — or "meditation" — but none of it is involved with any of the metholodogies of John Main or Laurence Freeman. I suspect "Christian meditation" is never going to be part of the mainstream however much I also believe there is great good in the practise of meditation. And none of that is to dowplay the crucial role in society that people who do engage in those meditation methodologies do play.

Down through history I think ALL civilisations and local societies have been controlled by "small elites". That's life and I don't see it changing. The average yokel is basically pummelled by the influence the various elites are constantly trying to exert on "the societal paradigm". What can change is the "paradigm" or "mindframe" in which the great majority perceive of their place in the world. What's changing today is "the mindframe". But it is a slow process. The ideas of leading edge thinkers like Einstein take centuries to percolate down until they are part of the "ordinary paradigm" in which people think about their lives — and Life.

To me the BIG breakthrough in fundamental physics is not the particulars of all the laws in quantum physics. It is the "paradigmatic shift": once at the paradigmatic level science saw itself as eventually being able to answer "all questions". It saw itself as eventually coming up with all the scientific equations that would "explain life". The earth shattering realisation they eventually came to is that at the end, or bottom, of all their searching there is nothing but more uncertainty (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) and just more Mystery. In a sense I think it can be argued that the theologians had arrived at that conclusion a couple of millenia before. The irony today is that it is the conservatives, the fundamentalists and the insecure remnant who are driving religion down the pathway that Newton and the early scientists tried to take humanity four hundred years ago. They are today the one's trying to replace the inherent "uncertainties and unknowables about life" with their own little certitudes, pet theories, superstitions and dogmas.

I think the big insight of Quantum Physics is that it shows us that uncertainty (which leads to anxiety and insecurity) is inherently "built into the very structure of life". The corollary is that "just because we don't know the answer to something we are NOT FREE to substitute any answer — to invent some superstition, dogma, old wives tale or mythology — to explain whatever it is that doesn't have an answer. We (humanity) somehow have to "live with the lack of answers" and not get all stressed or insecure about it and go running to some authority figure such as the pope looking for answers."

I think where you and I differ in our outlook is that you seem to posit that "meditation is the answer to everything". I suspect it is part of an answer but there's no more going to be some "magic bullet" coming from the realms of Christian meditation than there is some "magic bullet" coming from Quantum Physics, or, say, something like modern Genetic Science. As you argue we are looking for the unity — and relationship between everything — including between every discipline of human thought and behaviour.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]

Thanks, Warren, I certainly appreciate your learned approach to my childhood conviction of unity with surety of no separation only apparent differences. As a child I was not an intellectual and so was a simple folk. I knew it was, for me, simple reality (truth ... but I did not know there was anything else, and nowadays everyone claims truth though they talk differently). Benedict's simple folk seem to me to be people who find life more comfortable if the go along with what they are willing to accept as authority. Their mistake is that they have been led to believe authority comes from being in a direct line of succession and not as one firmly based on being balanced in every way known to humanity.

Being free of all judgment of others, of all prejudice and bias, of dependance on rational approaches as the only means of knowledge ... one can easily have the brain's activity stilled to allow something of the divinity to take possession. I have not heard of Jesus having done heavy study so maybe he was simple folk. However he was not one to blindly go along with 'authority' when he could see that it was taking advantage of simple folk of his time. My impression is that he was one that relied less on learning than on the Spirit within him. He attacked the direct line of descent 'authority' for what was evidently wrong but he did not belabour the issue. He concentrated more on the positive side of building up the Reign od Abba which was more learnt by a contemplative life. (As an aside, I'd like Catholica to be doing the same).

Francis

My purpose is to remember the love that created me in God one with my brothers and sisters and with all life. My function is to extend that love and unity each moment to all.

Warren,

If you want to equate reason with Aristotelian syllogisms, then yes, you are right. But modern science, which is certainly based on reason is not limited by Aristotle. Aristotle said a lot of things, particularly about the natural sciences that we know are just not true.

Bohr, Schrödinger, Planck and Heisenberg did not dream up quantum theory by reading St. John of the Cross or the Bhagavad Gita. They did it by observation of physical phenomena and drawing particular conclusions.

It was not surprising that when Rutherford postulated atoms as having a nucleus with revolving particles, that his successors tried to apply Newtonian physics to that, but it didn't work. It was through observing that it didn't work that quantum theory evolved. The extent to which the various players in quantum theory applied "reason" in coming to their conclusions can be seen from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics

The fact that the end results, their conclusions, do not fit the Newtonian model is neither here nor there. The process by which they came to their somewhat startling conclusion (for the times) was through observation and deduction which is what we normally mean by "reason".

The fact that chaos appears to be part of reality, or that two things can appear to be in different places at the same time, or two different things at the same time is something that does not accord with our common sense. And it was something that Einstein could not accept ("God does not play dice"). But that does not mean that quantum physics is "contrary to reason". It just means that there is more to reality than we thought there was.

If reason means the classical either/or logic of separation and as far as I know that is what it is generally considered to mean then Quantum Theory goes beyond reason.

That may have been the classical concept of "reason" because by operating on that principle solved most scientific problems - and still solves most scientific problems for large bodies. As I understand it, we still send probes to Jupiter using Newton with a bit of adjustment for Einstein, but I also understand (am I wrong?) that the computers on board the craft that keep it going work on quantum principles.

But I don't see how designing a Jupiter probe can be regarded as anything but the exercise of "reason" whether we are talking about the macro elements of the right angle and velocity of the rocket or the micro elements that make the computers work.

Bud, you say
The proof of the puddin’, it seems to me, would be to put contemplation to the test, and see if it works.

According to Ken Wilber that is exactly what has been happening for thousands of years and it does work. He says that the tests conform to the criteria of scientific experiment and he discusses this at length in his book “The Marriage of Sense and Soul” especially chapter eleven.

I should also have mentioned that there is continuous research on contemplation going on at the University of Pennsylvania as reported in the book by Newberg and Waldman How God Changes Your Brain.