Prelude
I'd like to clear up a little terminology I use in the
title before I wrap up this blog series. Redux is a word
derived from the French language, and literally means return,
though in its original context referred to the
return of feudal landowners from years spent fighting the Crusades in
the Middle East during the Middle Ages. I'm not a Christian
Crusader (though I'm sometimes accused of being an Evolutionary
Crusader), but before I began this series I hadn't returned to the
blog for more than a year, a year that certainly felt, in my
personal life, like a prolonged war.
Kosmos, spelled with a K, is an early Greek term meaning the
totality of existence, including not only the physiosphere and
biosphere, but also the noosphere, the sphere of mind and culture,
and if you like the theosphere, the sphere of spirit. This
differentiates it from the most common usage, Cosmos, which typically
refers to the physiosphere (as in Carl Sagan's famous book "Cosmos")
and sometimes including the biosphere. And as I noted
earlier, since Kosmos is all-inclusive, once it has become
Significant Other, as in my case, divorce is simply not an
option - there is literally no where else to go!
I also want to explain a little of my process here on this blog,
which is also the process in my art-making. When I begin I have
a faint inclination of where I want to go, what my goal is...but it
is faint, a seedling at best. I begin, I take two steps
forward, one step back, then another back, then another
forward...and then, if all goes well, if my faith allows it, it just
tumbles out. It is almost another voice, maybe my deeper self,
who knows? And when it's finished, I almost always step back
and wonder, where the fuck did that come from? And BTW, this is
not channeling, this is not a visitation from on external entity
whether Abraham or Hierarchy or Seth. This is simply
creativity. And in that, it may simply be the evolutionary
impulse unfolding, from rocks to roses to Rumi to... who knows?
Fugue
Rocks to roses to Rumi...physiosphere to biosphere to noosphere.
This suggests a hierarchical progression, or perhaps more
appropriately a holarchical progression, meaning a progression that
transcends previous levels yet also includes and embraces them.
Transcend and include, a series of nested emergences,
where each level is a whole that becomes a part of a bigger whole.
For instance, to use the physical world as an example, atoms are
wholes that are transcended by molecules, which in turn still include
atoms. And there's more. To paraphrase Ken Wilber, the lower is
more fundamental, the higher more significant – atoms are
fundamental to molecules, meaning molecules could not exist without
atoms, but atoms can do just fine without molecules. However,
molecules are more significant than atoms, hold meaning and qualities
that atoms by themselves can never have. In the same way, the
physiosphere is more fundamental then the biosphere since the
biosphere could not exist without the physiosphere - no rocks means
no roses, yet rocks don't need roses to rock and roll. But
the biosphere holds more meaning, more information if you will.
And of course, the noosphere is more significant than the biosphere,
holds more meaning and information, but take away the biosphere and
the noosphere simply disappears. Biosphere more fundamental,
noosphere more significant.
This is where a seeming paradox appears when it comes to Kundalini
awakening. This is fundamentally (pun intended) a physical
process arising out of the biosphere, or to put it more succinctly,
out of the body as an element or an expression of the biosphere.
Its first manifestation is a decidedly biological one, in and of the
body, and its continuing presence seems to act on bodily
processes, including the biological brain. The traditional
literature describes this as an awakening of dormant possibilities
lying asleep in the body; the Hindu version describes it as a coiled
snake slumbering at the base of the spine. And I can assure
you, it is an unforgettable biological/physical experience when it
arises. But if we go back to this holarchical notion of
physiosphere to biosphere to noosphere, isn't it a regression to
return to the biosphere, to bodily processes? Could this be, to
put it in Ken Wilber's terms, an odd example of the
pre/trans fallacy, meaning misinterpreting a regression to
pre-conventional or pre-rational experience as
a trans-conventional or trans-rational experience - or in this
case, mistaking a pre-rational or simply biospheric experience for a
trans-rational or higher noospheric experience?
I think a way around this paradox is not to think of Kundalini as
an awakening, but rather as an emergence. I know I'm splitting
hairs here, but emergence puts us squarely back on the evolutionary
track. Not dormant energies waiting to be awoken from slumber,
but possibilities emerging under the necessary conditions. In
my case the necessary condition was my having utterly failed in the
noosphere, crashed and burned. All webs of interlocution had
unraveled in a dead end, and as you might remember, suicide was
looking decidedly warm and fuzzy. With the noosphere barren and
dry, webs frazzled and disintegrating in heaps all around me, how
could I possibly evolve in any meaningful way? Why bother?
I call it a grace, this emergence of previously undreamed energies
and possibilities. It was as if the presence of the theosphere,
the sphere of spirit, sensing my connection to the noosphere as
nearing complete disintegration, reached across the void and yanked
me up by my bootstraps (or more appropriately, my spinal cord)
through the vehicle of the biosphere. This was not a
regression, but in fact a jump start, an overriding of my
quickly failing noospheric holon. A classic case of agape, the
love of the higher reaching back to the lower, embracing the lower in
its web of interlocution. And I did nothing to deserve this -
no devotional practice, no high ethical standards, no exceptional
life of service or humility. Perhaps the one positive act
I made was accepting all responsibility for the mess I'd made of this
incredible miracle of life that I was granted, and even that was
far more an act of despair then one of courage.
But grace doesn't let you off the hook. Oh no. An
interlocution with the Kosmos is not a one way conversation, a
one-and-done deal and now back to the good life defined
by a great plate of lasagna and a little
nookie (neither of which, by the way, is precluded - remember,
transcend and include!) . A process is begun, a new
responsibility is in effect because this web of interlocution is
evolution itself, and you have to own it. If that Mother of all
Significant Others asks "What are you, why are you here, what
are you doing here?', you better get down to business and come up
with some answers! Which is why, to come back full circle,
art-making and indeed all creativity in any walk or circumstance of
life has such a deeply moral and deeply energizing
dimension, operating in the imperative to evolve our
noosphere through the creation of webs of interlocution
that are the hallmark of that very noosphere, the sphere of mind
and culture, the sphere of us. Rocks to roses to Rumi to...who
knows?
The End...for now...