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Friday, January 15, 2010
Philosophy ... Spirituality ...

During the spare moments at work, I sometimes surf the net for something interesting to read (not unusual in today’s workplace). Today I was skimming thru a free PDF of the book “Norman Einstein”, a criticism of integral philosopher Ken Wilber.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Wilber, although no one interested in modern philosophic speculation can discount him. Nonetheless, author Geoffrey Falk has attempted to de-bunk him, or at least expose Wilber’s significant flaws. Wilber certainly does have a large and loyal following; if you are not one of them, then you probably won’t care about 60 or 70% of what Falk writes about. He goes into great detail. Since I never took the bait from Wilber (given that it was clear to me right away that the guy had significant anger issues, and had not found inner peace), I didn’t need to be let off the hook.

However, there is an interesting article in the appendix on how Wilber misunderstands and misinterprets the ontological paradigms regarding the reality behind quantum physics as postulated by the late, great physicist Dr. David Bohm. I won’t try here to explain what Dr. Bohm is getting at, except by contrast to the prevailing Copenhagen interpretation of quantum phenomenon. According to the Copenhagen disciples, “weird things happen” on the micro level. Get over it. There is no explanation. This is where physics ends. There’s nothing more to be explained through research, as we can never dig any deeper due to inherent uncertainties and fuzziness in our ability to observe tiny energy interactions.

Well, if that’s true, then metaphysical speculation fans like Ken Wilber (and myself) would be quite disappointed. That’s why David Bohm is so attractive to most of us. He comes up with some mathematically supportable if not yet empirically testable ideas on what might lie deeper than what we can detect. I’ve read a bit about his paradigms, but to be honest I didn’t really grasp them too well. But today, while reading about Wilber’s problems with Bohm’s ideas, I started “getting it”. Well, up to a point, anyway. Mr. Falk did a pretty good job summarizing what Bohm was getting at, and why it is such a huge paradigm shift.

And I really enjoyed it! This is what makes me happy – having an intellectual breakthru in my own old, misfiring grey matter. And I actually had a bit of this happiness today. I had the “AH HA!” moment, when I could see bigger things, have expanded visions of reality. The holography and implicate order paradigms regarding the reality in which quantum mechanics manifests itself are making a bit more sense. OK, these are not proven facts, just theories (as yet unprovable theories). But they are fun to explore with your mind. At least for me.

For various reasons that I don’t fully understand, Wilber doesn’t think that Bohm was on the right track regarding “meta reality”. But as I indicated, I don’t really understand Wilber either. And to be honest, from what I know of Wilber, I don’t want to.

Another recent bit of intellectual searching during my break time involved Zarathustra, the Persian prophet who more or less founded (or grounded) Zoroastrianism. Yes, he’s the guy that Nietzsche was referring to the book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. Well, actually Nietzsche was going off on a “God is dead” tangent, and didn’t really care that much about the real Zarathustra. But I do. Why? Because I’m a big fan of the intellectual interpretation of Jesus as a Jewish apocalypticist. This to me is the most powerful way of understanding Jesus, the real Jesus. This makes a lot of puzzle pieces fall into place.

So why is Zarathustra important to understanding Jesus? Well, Zarathustra seems to be the first historical instance of a prophet calling for belief in a single god; he may be the earliest historically verifiable voice favoring monotheism. Before him, religion was animistic, polytheistic, nature-based, and mediated by shamans who used magical procedures to make the “forces of the universe” cooperate with one’s desire for good crops, more children, better fortune, etc. You didn’t have an individual relationship with these forces; they didn’t care much about you, and they didn’t call you to moral and ethical responsibility.

But Zarathustra, who lived around 1000 BCE or even earlier, may have planted the seed for the big change in the way people thought about both themselves and the “great forces” beyond their control. And that big change eventually manifested itself into the Jewish faith (via the influence of Zoroastrianism on the Jews during their exile in Persia), and later Christianity and Islam. But even better regarding Jesus – Zarathustra was also an apocalypticist!

It’s like he gave Jesus the blueprint for his own movement. Zarathustra called for an “end of time” to come in the future, whereby a human-like “savior” would mediate the purification of the world. Those who were good would be raised from the dead, while the evil ones would be swept aside. The Zoroastrian God (Ahura Mazda) would now be in control, and humans (the good humans, anyway) would live according to the ways of good — i.e., the Kingdom of God.

Yes, there is pretty good evidence that Zarathustra was saying all of this more than 1000 years before Jesus adopted it as his own mission in life. That’s another example of the kind of “big idea” that I enjoy having.

So yea, I do live a lot in my head. But I did do one thing today to re-connect with reality. I signed up for a donation to the Red Cross thru payroll deduction to help fund their relief efforts in Haiti. My donation was small; but I recall hearing Bill Clinton (a big fan of Ken Wilber, incidentally) say on the radio that whatever amount you can give will help. Perhaps I can wrap my mind around implicate orders and apocalyptic inspirations in the ancient Middle East. But as to how and why a God who has a relationship with us, as Jesus and Zarathustra seemed to believe, or an integral kosmic karma, as Ken Wilber might prefer, allows such terrible tragedy and suffering in this world . . . not much that I can say. Nor anyone else who cares. Thus DIDN’T speak Zarathustra, Jesus, Ken Wilber . . . or me.

◊   posted by Jim G @ 11:14 pm      
 
 


  1. Jim,
    I know little of Wilber/Bohm and really have nothing to add to your comments but to say I agree with you that the place where the “weird things happen” is definitely NOT the place to stop one’s thought and/or study. I agree that that is precisely the point where things get interesting. And I might add that it is likely at that point where the new advances in physics will take place, where there will be a paradigm shift of some kind.

    As to your second “intellectual search”: I can’t say that I consider myself an apocalypticist—that is, if one defines that concept as the “good guys will go to heaven” and the “bad guys will be doomed to hell.” I see people as much more complicated than that. However, it may be that by “apocalypticist” you mean something more like the world is doomed no matter what. I can’t say I agree with that either. Frankly, I think that for each individual the world comes to an end at death. As to what may happen to generations later and/or the world in general, I think it’s just too difficult to predict. One simply cannot predict what may or may not happen five minutes from now—much less 500 years from now to say nothing of 5000 years from now.

    As to Zarathustra being the “first” to call for “belief in a single god”: I found myself thinking of Akhenaten of Egypt who perhaps preceded Zarathustra by 300+ years. Akhenaten was the pharaoh who was a “fan” of the ONE GOD—the Sun (Aten). Some years ago I spent quite a period of time studying the Egyptians of the time and was astonished and intrigued at the resemblance of the Egyptian worship of the Sun God to so many tenets of Christianity. For one: Did the concept of the “resurrection” come from the Egyptians and their beliefs in the after life (which then led to their mummification practices)? For another: Akhenaten held that the Sun God’s (Aten’s) rays blessed each and every individual lovingly. How much closer can you get to the Christian idea of the God who loves everyone.

    Furthermore, there are some scholars who hold that Abraham himself got his idea of the One God from the Egyptians. Lots of argument regarding this point. However, I’ve come, over the years, to consider that Abraham, Moses, etc., got their God concepts from the Egyptians.

    So I tend to think that rather than the earliest connection to Jesus being Zarathustra, it is the Egyptian Akhenaten. Unfortunately, the Egyptians didn’t care for Akhenaten’s brand of “One God” ideas and threw out his concepts. Yet if one looks at Akhenaten’s ideas, one can’t help but be amazed at the resemblance to those of Christianity And this back in the 1300s B.C.E.

    Then also all the thinking by the Greeks about the “being beyond being”, the Master Craftsman, etc., were not their original ideas but old concepts (from the Egyptians) they elaborated on in their own unique way.

    But then again, who cares who got the idea first. However, it is interesting that the Christian ideas, seemingly so unique, simply are not. Maybe Nietzsche should have written “Thus spoke the Akhenaten.”
    MCS

    Comment by MCS — January 17, 2010 @ 7:25 am

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