BEGINNINGS, METAPHORS, HOLONS, HIERARCHIES, ENTELECHY, AND THE KOSMOS

EXPERIENCE

Since we all live in every moment in experience, this is my starting place.
Without awareness we could have no idea of ourselves or the world around us.

 

METAPHOR

It is my experience that metaphor is absolutely central to our human life and expression. Metaphor is a description of something represented in language capturing some interesting aspect or likeness as it arises in us as a conscious concept. It can be novel and creative and tends to evoke particular responses from each of us. Writers use metaphors to help us capture the vividness of lived experience, and certainly succeed when a person says, "I liked the book more than I liked the film!"

 

LIFE FROM THE INSIDE

Since I am beginning this written expression from an "I" position, I am expressing what we can call "LIFE FROM THE INSIDE", from my own viewpoint - my version of reality. In ways which are not understood, we all, as sentient beings, have a quality or attribute which we call "consciousness" or "awareness".

 

OUR SENSES

Life emerges for each of us in what we see, hear, feel, smell and taste (our five senses), shaped by what we can call "a living memory" or an "up-and-running I." Each new experience is made sense of in terms of what we already know. In a sense we do not see what is there, but rather what we notice or pay attention to.

Somehow out of the living memory there emerges a sense of "this is ME" and the sense that other people are very like us but also unique and different.
We can therefore be interested in how each individual experiences, thinks and feels. In a way the world around us seems obvious but sooner or later we try to make sense of it. This description of personal experience, or if you like an "I, YOU AND IT awareness system", could be called the life of the mind.

 

THE DOMAINS OF OUR EXISTENCE

This refers to everything in our world and in the big sense the whole Kosmos. ( the Greek word Kosmos means everything, including things, processes and all that makes them possible).

This domain is, however (from the subject's viewpoint) brought forth by what we can call our minds.

PERSONAL REALITY

There is a necessary phenomenon of personal "reality", which arises in complex ways, such that living with others, and living in language, allows attempts to find consenses of what things are and what they are not.

 

EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING

Thus we experience things, by our system being stimulated by things which "enter our senses", and the experience has a reality, and authenticity known to the person having the experience.

Since we learn from an early age to hear names for what we see, hear, feel, smell and taste, and since we experience "connections", we emerge in language, repeated over and over until the linguistic experiences become cued and patterned, though subject to conscious revision and updating every time we are not sure what "a thing" is or what a word means.

STORIES

From listeners and story hearers, we become speakers and in fact story tellers. If the stories are intriguing, interesting, picturesque, diverse and inviting, our creative spirit is activated.
Perhaps we can say that we all tell stories, whether we are conscious of it or not.

 

DEFINING METAPHOR

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase, or conceptual issue, is described or denoted in a way that is different from the literal object, idea or action or quality which it primarily and usually expresses.

The notions "resemblance" "analogy" or "other representation" all come to mind.

I assert along with George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, that what might seems to be "a poetic device" or "authors rhetorical flourish", is in fact characteristic of all human languaging.

Our conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

 

LANGUAGE

In the 'LIFE FROM THE INSIDE" descriptions from Humberto Maturana, we live in experience, and the languaging which springs from it.

A property of language is the sound (phonics or phonetics) which conveys "experiences in itself" (elaborated by Yehuda Tagar in his expositions on "Philophonetics").

What happens to us when we hear particular sounds and noises? For example, the cutting sound of "K" is altogether different from the soft hissing sound of "S".

In language we bring forth meanings (semantics) and in all advances in learning, increasing distinctions are drawn, depending as Gregory Bateson says in discovering differences, "and particularly differences that make a difference".

Language is also sequential, and this sequence (syntax) is critical in elaboration of "connection" or links (such as that between subject and object for example).

Mathematics is a kind of language to do with quantity and number and manipulation of these things, and language and mathematics can be represented in symbols (semiotics). There are countless symbols to be found in the domain of written or drawn human representations.

In summary, in language we experience highly diverse sounds, specific meanings, necessary sequences and intriguing representations.

Since language is so sequential it becomes automatic to connect subject and object and what emerges is a trend to explain things.

EXPLANATION AND THE OBSERVER

It is explanation that gives rise to the idea that explanations (hypotheses) can be tested in order to confirm or refute them.

The experiencer can begin to see herself or himself as an observer of everything that can be experienced, and increasingly to know that everything that is said or written is said or written by an observer.
It becomes logical to state that the observer needs to be included in all explanations about what is observed.

 

SCIENCE
Ordinarily we think of making hypotheses, designing experiments which are able to test these hypotheses, and either proving them or disproving them.
Of course many experiments are inconclusive. .In science there is over and over again a responsibility to rethink explanations.
When we include the observer in the explanation we may be more ready to be less dogmatic about what people call truth.
Francesco Varela proposed that four operations are criteria of validation for an explanation to be scientific.

(1) DESCRIBING A PHENOMENON THAT HAS BEEN EXPERIENCED IN A WAY THAT ALLOWS OTHERS TO AGREE OR DISAGREE AS TO ITS EXISTENCE. (2) PROPOSING AN EXPLANATION FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THIS PHENOMENON. THIS EXPLANATION IS A GENERATIVE MECHANISM IN THE SENSE THAT WHEN THE MECHANISM OPERATES, THE PHENOMENON WILL APPEAR. (3) DEDUCING (FROM THE FIRST EXPERIENCE) OTHER EXPERIENCES THAT COHERENTLY WOULD ALSO BE EXPECTED TO RESULT FROM THE OPERATION OF THIS MECHANISM (IF IT IS GENUINE IN THESE TERMS) (4) EXPERIENCING THE OTHER PHENOMENA THAT WERE DEDUCED IN (3).

In essence this procedure for a scientific explanation begins and ends with "an experience".

This is in a sense "a creation in language which works in practice". Most people would not think of science in this way. WE can think of science as one of a series of discourses about which human beings can have consensus beliefs.

 

LANGUAGE - AN INEVITABLE CONCEPTUAL TOOL

Much of our language emerges from our embodied position.
Things are inside or within, or outside.
They are in front or behind, above or below.

We are responsive to what we feel.

LIVING IN A MULTIVERSE

The recognition that each person has her or his personal reality means that there are as many versions of reality as there are conscious beings. On earth, this presently means some six billion versions of reality.
It is also possible for us to open our minds to actually create listening and reading time for the purpose to grasp peoples unique ways of thinking and explaining their worlds to themselves and others.
We can then dare to take responsibility for our own ways of thinking!

ILLNESS AS EXPERIENCE

Since experience is necessarily subjective, we need to recognize that we cannot feel another person's experience.

Much distress expressed by patients is that "the doctor didn't believe me!"

Chronic fatigue syndromes are regarded by many doctors as if they either do not exist, or are a variety of psychological disorder. Of course they could emerge as a product of many different life circumstances and happenings.
Whatever this is, the experience is authentic.
Chronic fatigue syndromes are in fact a graphic description of exhaustion, tiredness, inability to do things, and inevitably the frustration, let down and disappointment about the lack of fulfilment of every day experience.
Unless the person is lying , we would do well to accept the "authenticity of lived experience".

If indeed there is also "mind-fog" (a metaphor), concentration difficulties, short-term memory difficulties, the frustration is compounded as is the potential for despair.

Much has been made of the possibility that chronic fatigue syndromes are a psychological or psychiatric disorder.

There is much about the premorbid (before illness) lifestyle and achievement record of many C.F.S. sufferers, as well as from their subjective experiences which does not fit easily with such ideas.

It must, however, be inevitable that even the most resilient person would be dismayed by the experiences of such severe fatigue, particularly if a pain syndrome (fibromyalgia) is part of the suffering.

THE DOMAIN OF THE "IT"

Because of my medical background, I feel grateful to have been introduced to the scientific method, and to the kinds of operations that are used to make sense of the domain of the "it".

It is somehow wonderful to discover the concepts of physics from atoms to galaxies and the concepts of chemistry and biology.

I believe that human beings gain by understanding biology, and grasping the inevitability of evolution.

THE RICH DOMAIN OF EXPERIENCE

It is equally wonderful to see the beauties of nature, to hear the harmony and rhythms of music, and to feel the bodily experiences of all that is pleasurable. The subjective "I" is our essence.

 

CURIOSITY

Without fully knowing it, I experienced an urge to know more, to understand more fully.

I came to sense that it is better to respond to differences with curiosity rather than any scepticism or hostility.

In this frame of mind I have experienced the retelling of great classical stories such as "The Search For The Grail", in a workshop conducted by Jean Houston, and the visiting of my own life to examine myself in a workshop on "Ritual, Myth and Healing" conducted by Ralph Locke, using the stories of
the Cherokee people.

More recently, my background of encountering Prostestant Christianity in my childhood in a local Methodist Church, gave me a basis of comparing concepts from the Jewish Kabbala, Vedic Chakras, and Christian sacraments as expounded by Caroline Myss.

Exposure to the ideas of archetype from Carl Jung, as well as developmental psychology beckoned me to look for a fuller conceptual basis to take in the whole field of human thought.

When I read or listen to a polymath such as Carl Sagan, or a creative therapist such as Milton Erickson or Bradford Keeney, I feel a certain longing.

In this longing, life feels all too short to hope to explore the fields that I want to know about. I sometimes try to list some of these fields of interest.

ASTRONOMY and COSMOLOGY
CREATIVITY and INVENTIVENESS
BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY,(especially molecular biology) and ECOLOGY.
(including PERMACULTURE)
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, LINGUISTICS, COMMUNICATION
MEDICINE, GENETICS, NUTRITION
RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY
ALL DOMAINS OF EXPERIENCE
POETRY, LITERATURE, VISUAL ARTS
MUSIC
ETHICS
ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY,PALAEONTOLOGY,
MYTHS, LEGENDS, STORIES OF ORIGIN

There must be many more.

This is a good place to talk about Ken Wilber, who I believe is one of the worlds great thinkers about who we are, and what is a capacity to gain an integral vision which is inclusive and respectful of the widest fields of knowledge.

Wilber constructs the history of evolution as the human being emerges in "Up From Eden".

He speaks painfully and joyfully about his own amazing relationship with his deeply loved wife Treya Killam Wilber in "Grace and Grit".

Perhaps, however, the epitomy of his work is experienced in "A Brief History of Everything", "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality" and "The Eye of Spirit".

Wilber develops an expansion of Arthur Koestler's concept "the holon", and after countless hours of thinking, how to place our concepts of self, life, mind and spirit.

The first chapters of "A Brief History of Everything" deal with the material cosmos and the emergence of life.

The middle chapters explore the emergence of mind or consciousness, through five or six major stages in human development. In this he explores the field of sexuality and gender in different eras.

He then explores religion and psychology evoking in the most profound way the emergence of "Spirit in action" or if you like, "the Divine".

Like many of us, at first Wilber thought that his many maps of the descriptions of parts and wholes could somehow be accommodated in some grand scheme.

The hierarchy of holons had similarities but also some profound differences which required a quite different large map - one with four territories represented as four quadrants.

So let us examine, with Ken Wilber, the principles which appear to fit with all aspects of what we as human beings can know.

This is indeed a Grand Scheme, and one which has the potential to allow us to reconcile ideas which in past ages have seemed to be conflictual.

 

WHAT IS A HOLON (A WHOLE/PART)?

Tenet (i)
Anything that is a unit in itself can be called "a holon". The unit is a whole in itself and a part of some other whole.

An atom is whole in itself, yet also part of a molecule. A molecule can be part of another whole (for example "a cell"), and a cell can be part of a whole (for example an organ which is part of a whole organism).

There are wholes/parts all the way up and all the way down.

A substantial particle is a holon, so is a symbol, an image and a concept.

A letter is a holon, so is a word, and a sentence.

Tenet (ii) HOLONS HAVE PROPERTIES

TO MAINTAIN WHOLENESS AND PARTNESS

(1) PRESERVING WHOLENESS THIS CAN BE CALLED 'AGENCY"

(2) BEING PART OF SOMETHING ELSE THIS CAN BE CALLED "COMMUNION"

SELF TRANSCENDANCE

AGENCY ¨ HOLON Æ COMMUNION

DISSOLUTION

If a holon doesn't maintain it's wholeness, it disintegrates.

Tenet (iii) HOLONS EMERGE

If it becomes part of a bigger holon, the new holon transcends and includes the component holons.

We often don't understand the transformations in ascending holons.

Evolution involves selections of transformations like this. This natural selection seems to involve punctuated leaps, a kind of wildly transcending process.

Wilber says the drive to transcendence is built into the very fabric of the Kosmos itself.

(a)unions emerge from fragments

(b)there is a creative advance into novelty

We can say creativity is a property of Kosmos.

Holons are emergent.

Tenet (iv) HOLONS EMERGE HOLARCHICALLY (A NATURAL HIERARCHY)

A cell is holarchically arranged.

You can't avoid hierarchy.

Tenet (v) THE CREATIVE PATTERN

The transcend and include pattern is the creative pattern. If you destroy any holon you destroy all the levels above it, but none of the levels below it.

This works for any holarchy.

MORAL DEVELOPMENT
BIOLOGICAL SPECIATION
COMPUTER PROGRAMS
NUCLEIC ACID TRANSLATIONS
WHOLES DEPEND ON PARTS BUT NOT VICE VERSA
The not 'vice-versa' is the holarchy.

PHYSIOSPHERE BIOSPHERE NOOSPHERE THEOSPHERE

Tenet (vi) DEPTH & SPAN

The number of levels in any holarchy is called its 'depth'. The number of holons on any given level is called its 'span'. Evolution produces greater depth, and less span.

There are fewer organisms than cells, fewer cells than molecules, fewer molecules than atoms, fewer atoms than quarks.

The emergent has an increase in embrace, inclusion, identity and enfoldment.

Honouring holons is crucial to the notion of environmental ethics.

The emergence of consciousness is immanent-emergent from the Kosmos. Evolution has direction. It is consciousness that gives us the ability to converse and to draw all the distinctions that are part of our knowing.

This gives a new meaning to our grasp of what has been mysteriously called Spirit.

Evolution unfolds a spectrum of depth, and depth unfolds consciousness which realises itself more and more.

Depth is everywhere -

CONSCIOUSNESS IS WHAT DEPTH LOOKS LIKE FROM THE INSIDE, FROM WITHIN.

Transcending and including, bringing forth and embracing, creating and loving .............. life is a verb ...............

What is the point of these descriptions?

KW: Well, several. For one, because the universe has direction, we ourselves have direction. There is meaning in the movement, intrinsic value in the embrace. As Emerson put it, we lie in the lap of immense
intelligence, which by any other name is Spirit. There is a theme inscribed on the original face of the Kosmos. There is a pattern written on the wall of Nothingness. There is a meaning in its every gesture, a grace in its every glance.

We - and all beings as such - are drenched in this meaning, afloat in a current of care and profound value, ultimate significance, intrinsic awareness. We are part and parcel of this immense intelligence, this Spirit-in-action, this God-in-the-making. We don't have to think of God as some mythic figure outside of the display, running the show. Nor must we picture it as some merely immanent Goddess, lost in the forms of her own production. Evolution is both God and Goddess, transcendence and immanence.

It is immanent in the process itself, woven into the very fabric of the Kosmos; but it everywhere transcends its own productions, and brings forth anew in every moment.

Q: Transcends and includes.

KW: Indeed. And we are invited, I believe, to awaken as this process. The very Spirit in us is invited to become self-conscious, or even, as some would say, superconscious. Depth increases from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious, on the way to its own shocking recognition, utterly one with the radiant All, and we awaken as that oneness.

What do you think? Is that crazy? Are the mystics and sages insane?
Because they all tell variations on this same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering that you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion.

Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help.

But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity - a total embrace of the entire Kosmos - a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature."

Wilber's great contribution comes in terms of allocation of holons and phenomena of human interest into four domains.

When we locate the subject under discussion to its place in the four quadrants, we no longer have to see science and religion as incompatible and we can find new ways of honouring each other in discovering the meanings and the contexts for every point of difference.

I want to turn to the things that I like to do in the course of my clinical work.

I emphasize that although I present these ideas formally, you can find a natural flow, and many different orders or sequences for whatever is needed to develop therapeutic connections and helpful outcomes.

A. I like to repeat a person's name, and ponder:
(1) Its meaning.
(2) Is the person called by this name?
(3) Does he/she like it?
(4) Who/what does the name connect to?

This explores:
WHO ARE YOU?
WHO DO PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE?
WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

B. On the way to exploring problems, it can be useful to discover how each person thinks, what are his or her values, and preferences as to what to do.

Then we face:
WHAT IS (ARE) YOUR PROBLEM(S)?
WHAT IS BEHIND THE PROBLEM?
WHAT REALLY IS THE PROBLEM?
and
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
WHAT ARE YOU SEEKING OR HOPING FOR?
together with

BE AWARE OF WHAT YOU KNOW ALREADY,
WHAT HAVE YOU TRIED ALREADY?
and WHAT ARE YOU READY FOR?
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN OVERLOOKED?

C. What have you learned in your journeys so far?

D. If I as therapist get off track, I would like the person to let me know, and often ask the patient/client to tell me if I am getting it wrong.

E. What is the time scale for solving the problem(s)?

F. Can you connect to your own commitment to heal? (This is an idea to discover "The ecology of mind" of each person.)

The same qualities that are needed in a therapist are to be awakened in the client.

(1) BE A PERSON OF INTEGRITY
(2) BE FULLY PRESENT IN THE SESSION
(3) RESPECT YOUR OWN * INTELLIGENCE
* WILL
* FEELINGS
* WAYS OF KNOWING
* SKILLS

(4) BE COMMITTED TO FINDING THE DIFFERENCE THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

(5) ARE YOU PREPARED TO THINK , REFLECT, AND WORK ON THESE MATTERS?

(6 )WHO ELSE MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP IN THIS QUEST?

(7) THIS SESSION CAN AWAKE A CO-CREATIVE PROCESS

(8) CREATION NEVER CEASES .............. LET IT UNFOLD

(9) YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS FOR YOU. LET YOUR LIFE BE FOR GLADNESS JOY AND
ENDLESS CURIOSITY

(10) CONSIDER "THE FOUR QUADRANTS OF KEN WILBER, AND THE "GREAT SPIRAL"
OF DON BECK AND CHRIS COWAN