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REVISIONING THE THEOSPHERE:
"HELPING GOD BE BORN"
Adam Blatner
In the last several years there have been a number of books summarizing advances in science regarding progress made in cosmology, geology, evolution, and so forth. This essay is a response to two recent endeavors. One is Chrstopher Potter---especially his concluding chapter---in his excellent book, You Are Here: A portable history of the universe. (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). Another recent book is by Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Dilemma. Books on the argument from design and other contemplations of the interface of science and metaphysics are also part of this complex that has stimulated my thinking in ways that will be discussed below. It seems to me that these and other authors have come to the edge and then paused: I suspect that the vaster implications of human existence go beyond ordinary rational modes of thought. Perhaps this is because we are hampered by some old assumptions that need to be at least reconsidered.
My thinking found resonance in another source: Prof. David Christian of San Diego wrote on page 236 in a booklet that accompanies a DVD series titled Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity (put out recently by the Teaching Company) the following lines that Prof. Christian said:
"If our descendants survive disaster, are there new thresholds of complexity waiting to be crossed? Perhaps, like eukaryotic cells in the Cambrian era, they will become so interdependent that they will turn into a single Earth-spanning organism, capable of managing 'Gaia'."
"New thresholds of complexity"? That to me means more cooperative and collaborative action---far, far more. That would require more general social maturity, peacemaking would be a skill developed in the mainstream secondary school curriculum, and so forth. It would require the establishment of an infrastructure of skills and attitudes and knowledge that goes beyond our comprehension at this point, but I daresay we can imagine it.
I would add that this new “organism” would also (a) open more to the Greater Wholeness and be capable of a level of what we call mystical communion both within itself and with "higher" or more inclusive psychic fields; perhaps (b) open communications with other sentient species in the cosmos in ways that go beyond the limitations of ordinary space-time; and this more information-exchanging organism might transcend the limitations imposed by ordinary space-time and planetary ecology. Indeed, what I’m suggesting in this essay is that consciousness can conceivably develop to this extent, but it will require many discoveries, paradigm shifts, and collective socio-spiritual forms of development in the course of that development—and it might take thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. I would go further and suggest that this is the trajectory intuited by mystics such as Teilhard de Chardin when he talks of the opening of the “theosphere.”
The Evolution of the Theosphere
Teilhard described some turning points in evolution, from the atomic through the emergence of large masses of mineral compounds, planets, and geological forms—but not yet life. He called this phase the geosphere.Life appeared—we don’t know how yet—but it is not implausible to consider the possibility that there are other dimensions operating in the shift towards increasing complexification of matter. From the first pre-bacterial compounds through several shifts of complexity and emergent qualities, we have today an incredibly varied and complex biosphere.
Soon after or possibly concurrent with the emergence of the biosphere the most rudimentary forms of mind emerge. (Indeed, DeQuincey argues compellingly for interiority, subjectivity, mind-like dynamics operate even at the sub-atomic level, are integral as a dimension in existence—and he draws on a goodly number of philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead to make this argument.) As mind becomes more complex, it becomes able to communicate with other minds, and this might be the beginning of the next level, what Teilhard called the noosphere.
With the emergence of consciousness capable of reflecting on its own existence, this uniquely human capacity (at least on this planet) also began to envision a greater wholeness, a living dynamism that included individual, separate existence. A number of writers more recently have written books about the history not just of Western religions, but of all religions, of the very notion of there being a Greater Integrity to existence. Teilhard called this growing sensibility the theosphere.
One problem in this schema is the Western tendency towards associating monotheism not just with the underlying principle of unity, but rather with a single being. God is imaigined not as the over-all field of becoming, but the image is personfied as not just a single pervasive force—the single force—in the cosmos, but a force that has a will, a focus of intension, a specific desire. (The idea that God might desire everything to become more in more interesting ways seems to be beyond many early prophets. Some Hindu theologies might come closer.). This view of a more patriarchal, king-like god certainly supports monotheistic clerical establishments, but it denies the idea that God enjoys, celebrates, emphasizes the way Divinity can express itself through an innumerable variety of forms and activities—a variety that enjoys expanding, splitting off variations, creatively elaborating in all possible ways. This “Creative Advance” (a term used by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead) is truly glorious, a zillion times more glorious than the obsolete patriarchal image of a single king on a throne. (Tillich wrote about a "ground of being," and that's good, but doesn't capture the dynamism of becoming, or the underlying lure towards becoming, the value inherent in every event.)
Similarly, a trend in the evolution of all of the above has been an expansion of variety and complexity and integration and types of harmony and balance. It has not been a reduction to a single victorious species and a defeat of all other species, or other variations of lifestyle within our own species. That was a temporary world-view—only a few millennia in duration—, an expression of a stage of immature but necessary development as humanity learned to operate in collective endeavors.
The Metaphor of Birth
This image is used for several reasons: First, it is a shocking reversal of the image of the all-powerful nature of Divinity, a personified force with single intention—and an obvious projection of a parental transference. If we can imagine God as Daddy—or Mommy, even—dare we imagine God, even for purposes of mind-expansion—as Baby, needing us to take greater responsibility in order to bring the Theosphere into greater Actuality? (Nikos Kazantsakis hinted at this in his book, The Saviors of God, written in 1923).Second, the metaphor of birth suggests a radical phase shift, from the intra-uterine protection to the relative open-ness of the post-birth world. Another example might be that of God awakening, from our consciousness as sentient beings being half-asleep to more fully awake. (What if the million years before the present and the million years into the future represent for God what the three seconds that it takes for us to make the transition from vivid dreaming to waking up?)
A third use of the metaphor is to consider the nature of the baby’s nervous system the months before and the year after birth: Neurons are seeking and finding their home location in the brain, moving, sending out connections along the way, and building other connections as they settle in. Indeed, evidence of synapse building and pruning—and the pruning also of millions of nerve cells!—all hint at the complexity and glory of what that phase-shift from total dependence to modified dependency (birth) to growing independence (the first twenty years of life) might be.
Now what if, by analogy, our whole beings were sort of “cells” in God’s awakening mind, birthing, multi-dimensional (beyond merely space-time-matter-ordinary known forms of energy) existence? What if our job is to help God awaken by making connections with others, by learning and sharing, creating and showing what we’ve created, enjoying and playing in all possible ways, and creating further new ways to learn, adventure, play, enjoy, and live? What if our consciousness of all these activities was paired also with a growing awareness that all this is part of a common purpose.
Glorifying God is very patriarchal if it is all in a “you’re so great” format. But what if God were anything but vain, and the glorification that was most enjoyable for all is a mixture of you’re so great and we’re so great (in part because we're an intimate part of this greatness) and this (world, life, mystery, beauty, unfolding, and Greater Unfolding) is also so great, and love for it all.
Higher consciousness is needed at this point to counter the problem of evil: There’s a tendency to want to fight, struggle against, contract and sulk, feel victimized, take preventive aggressive action against imagined threats, and at the same time forget that these defensive-aggressive actions on our part are part of the very evil that we want to fight against. I envision a gradual growth of peacemaking as a fundamental skill.
All this recapitulates the emergence of childhood—and I confess I view humanity as going through all the steps of early through later childhood—and getting for the majority hung up on them. Because humanity can become very clever in some roles, this can obscure many dynamics that are fundamentally immature. Pride adds to this state of prevalent denial. I envision an opening to psycho-social maturation as practical psychology—the teaching of social and emotional skills—becomes mainline and begins to penetrate the worldview. Such skills are also related to attitudes shifting, the growth of more inclusive ideals—including spiritual metaphors—and many other developments—political, economic, social, ecological—that are part of humanity’s further evolution of consciousness.
Re-Defining Theosphere
Theology is overly caught up in the Western historical separation of spirituality and life. There’s religion and there’s living, the sacred and the profane. What if this duality begins to break down, and we begin to recognize that it’s all God, worms and heroes, poop and fine art, it’s all part of the Great Becoming? In such a world, political action and family relationships are not separate from religious ritual. We can still imagine religious ritual as an exercise in communion or for other purposes, but sincere idealistic entrepreneurs inventing or marketing a good product should not be thought of as being less holy than a pious monk.In other words, theosphere includes all the creativity that is aimed at greater integration, variation, differentiation, re-evaluation, innovation, improvement, consolidation, and many other activities. Along with that there is a growing awareness of the unity of all endeavor—that’s all we have to do. We don’t have to make that relationship to the Underlying Unity or Source so important that it obscures the other efforts.
It’s like the idea of having a map of where we’re going: It would be foolish to think that gazing at the goal, or looking at pictures of the final destination is going to help that much. A bit of reference to the goal on the map, some use of the map—sure, that’s good. But it’s equally important, more important, to attend to the many other aspects of the enterprise—packing, maintaining the health of the pack animals or the upkeep of the car, careful driving—the whole fantastic enterprise of creating improved roads—makes a lovely metaphor: Because all those components and collective endeavors (such as road-building, bridge building, engineering, manufacture of materials, etc.) are as much part of the goal as the supposed goal.
I’m suggesting that any activity that furthers our development and creativity is also part of the theosphere, and that this is not moving towards a single point, but rather—if a spatial metaphor is needed, it might be visualizes as an expanding upward cone, or perhaps even better an expanding sphere of endeavors! It occurs to me again to imagine not only the embryology of a complex organism like a human, but to recognize that along the way there are entirely new cells that never existed before being formed and evolved—an astonishing variety of new stuff. And then later in development, every new skill, idea, ability, relationship, type of relationship experienced by the infant and young child expresses this. Dare we deny the glory of this incredible metaphor to God?
(In the olden days, stability and power were highly valued, so God, too was imagined to be stable, unchanging, something that could be rested into. For people whose lives are turbulent, such images are comforting. At a certain point in evolution, though, growth and creativity become a more appealing goal.)
Re-Envisioning an Ideal Future
To restate some of the above, the metaphor of birth speaks to a significant phase shift in the not only of Humanity’s relationship with God, but possibly of the nature of Divinity in this Universe. (I will not presume to contemplate the God beyond this Universe.) Extending the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, our existence operates at the fulcrum of noosphere and theosphere, the world that has moved from animal sentience into reflective consciousness and an increasing degree of awareness of our embedded-ness in a greater Unity that people call variously God, Brahman, Allah, Great Spirit, Tao or by other names.I envision our participation in an accelerating expansion of complexity, integration, and heightened capacity to communicate. Some of these expansions are technological (e.g., the internet, satellite communications, etc.), and some are sociopolitical.
I think that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift that includes scores of components shifts, including the shift towards greater psychological-mindedness, honoring imaginativeness and creativity, and appreciating collaborative rather than competitive activities.
Much of the world has not caught up with this shift, and many of the “cultural creatives” may be misunderstanding the nature of this shift. (Of course, it may be me who is making the mistake.)
The phase shift is from our collective consciousness being grounded in our material and individual being-ness and perhaps towards the development of systems that include many more individuals at a level of integration heretofore undreamed-of.
We-Bonds of Mass Construction
I “heard” this phrase in a reverie a few nights ago, a play of reversal on the recent political phrase, “weapons of mass destruction.” What if a more powerful agent for change---more powerful than atomic and hydrogen bombs---may be the growing capacity for people to transcend narrow tribal, national, and individual interest and participate in peace-making in a more vibrant way?What’s needed is the implementation of hundreds of tools and millions of people in developing a foundation in which the norm is consciousness raising and conflict resolution. The human tendency towards pursuing “getting it”—enlightenment, reward in paradise, money whatever—it’s still greedy-grasping—, individualistic one-up-man-ship, mixed with the lack of knowledge and skill in more subtle and nuanced types of diplomacy—these and other factors may be ameliorated over multiple generations as new norms of emotional and social intelligence become more widespread.
I envision wider and wider networks of caring and pleasant people working in more complex sets of common purpose, at thousands or millions of separate endeavors, building integrations among these efforts—and knowing that such integrations need to be made (i.e., the we-bonds).
I dare envision future eras in which humanity isn’t all that special, that there may be millions of Star-trekkers arising from thousands and ten thousands of extra-terrestrial species, all bent on again the common purpose that is best expressed poetically as Helping God be Born.
An Expanding Circumference
It has been said that God is a circle the center of which is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere. (The source of this statement according to webpages on the internet vary from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles to Blaise Pascal or even St. Augustine!) This phrase implies no boundary, and each soul open to development. Interestingly, I think this could also be reversed, generating certain other implications: Perhaps God might also be imagined as a Circle the center of which is nowhere and the circumference is everywhere. Less emphasis on the need of the individual to be immortal, more opening to the expanding circumference being the lure in all possible directions.Teilhard spoke of the culmination of the evolution from geosphere through theosphere towards a point---he called it Omega (as in the two ends of the Greek alphabet, alpha and omega). Even before knowing about the cosmology commencing with the "Big Bang," Teilhard envisioned meaning in the process of evolution. (He was a Jesuit working as a paleontologist, I think, in China. The Catholic Church hierarchy felt his writings to be too disturbing and silenced him from teaching. His writings really emerged after his death in 1955 and have become gradually more influential.) One interpretation of the Omega point---suggested in the wording---indicates first an expansion but then a re-focusing. God as unity is still imagined as a relatively one-kind-of-thing. But Omega may be a construct just to suggest direction. I think that it's just as possible that this future be imagined as not a closing down to a point but rather a continual opening. This jibes more with God being imagined as what Whitehead called the Creative Advance. That God is awakening in this universe and we’re only half-way there, half awake—humanity and perhaps other sentient life.
This idea of not only expanding, but making a transition to a different sort of complexity, is partly in response to some findings of cosmology. We seem to be at the apex of the cosmos in terms of circumstances that support life. A few billion years earlier and many planets that formed didn’t have adequate variety of elements and other circumstances that would support the evolution of conscious life. A few billion years from now, cosmologists are suggesting that not only our suns, but many if not more stars that are in the medium range—the kind compatible with life as we know it—may be burning out, and for a number of other reasons, the universe as we know it may be dissipating.
If this were so, what is the meaning of our lives? I think we are part of the transitions of material organization into psycho-spiritual and possibly transcendental systems. The “we” would have to evolve socially so that community at a high level of functioning would be basic to almost all of human-born existence. I imagine more collectives, more complexities, more working out and working through throughout life. I imagine more interplanetary, inter galactic travel, probably through psychic channels rather than the vastness of space. Of course this is far out, it’s supposed to be— but back to the metaphor of God being Born:
Multi-Functional Cells
In the metaphor of a multi-dimensional “God Becoming,” with us as the cells, we, too are multi-dimensional. Unlike actual organic cells in our body, we can function in many ways in God’s body. We can use our minds and muscles to build, cooperate, discuss; and our potential for sensuality to enjoy. The idea that we should not enjoy ourselves and get back to work is foolish, based on an immature either-or, work-or-play, not both-kind of thinking.In this imagining, God enjoys through our enjoyment just as we enjoy the enjoyment of our taste buds or sexual organs or touch in a warm bath or shower or the touch of kindness from a friend. God enjoys our dancing and singing. (I heard someone say that there are some Australian tribes who say that humans exist so that the gods can have a vehicle for the enjoyment of singing and dancing. I like this a lot.)
Other functions are also holy: As we love each other, share kindness and nurturance, bring each other forth in our potentials, excite and entertain each other, soothe and comfort, work out problems in peace and diplomacy, give and take a bit, concede and make compromises, struggle and surrender, balance and explore—all of these are different dimensions of our being and of God’s existence, also.
Certainly it’s not a matter of obeying a set of rules developed by one small tribe of people. That was a historical series of events that need not tie down our continued creativity in the present. Creativity also includes thoughtfulness about how the creativity will be used. (Sometimes I imagine humanity to be like five year olds to whom someone has given loaded real guns to play with as toys. Sigh.)
Ultimately, it is our potential as cells to work in community, in collective endeavors, to be both I and We, that will mark the next phase shift. It is only through becoming more harmonized in various collectives that the system can advance to the “next level.” I don’t deny that this change will involve as many sub-parts shifting accordingly as the change mentioned at the beginning from one-celled to many celled animal, and then to more complex forms.
In my wild fantasy, the millions of “Star-Trekkers” from many planets and stars become far more integrated psychically than anything portrayed by the time-bound Star Trek programs. I imagine whole systems of people, collectives, communing with other systems, in the thousands, and millions, and billions: I imagine this being what helps God become more aware in certain ways, an awareness born of the common experience of all the units and the greater complexity with its emergent processes. Perhaps, shifting the metaphor, this is what’s needed to empower the angels, and then with their growing psychic unification, the archangels, and so on up the angelic hierarchy.
All cells, tissues, and organs are nevertheless part of us as physical organisms, and by analogy, all levels of individual, group, and wider and wider collectives can be imagined to be forcing an emergence of a super-human collective species that is partly what would be considered “angelic” by today’s separated beings. (I’m reminded of the last verse of Amazing Grace: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,...”)
But the metaphor doesn’t culminate with a king- or central-person - type of glory-heaven. Rather, the glory lies in the celebration of the infinite and expanding variety (and integrations, harmonies of this divergent creative product and process)— that’s the key. This God image is the Great Becoming of which we are all parts, and it doesn’t stop elaborating new ideas, games, play, discovery, institutions, and everything else. We get to be part, and it’s glorious; but much of who and what we are must be surrendered at many levels!
The surrender of the need to greedy-grasp our own individual being-ness, to never die, or to imagine living on as individuals, is part of the old worldview. The idea of dissolving completely into a great game is harder to sell as fun. Yet this is what offers supreme bliss, in the writings of many spiritual teachers—especially from South Asia.
I’m still constructing this, and welcome input. Warmly, Adam
References
Blatner, A. (other papers on this website at the bottom of the webpage titled Papers, various papers on spirituality)DeQuincy, Christian. (2002). Radical nature: rediscovering the soul of matter. Montpelier, VT: Invisible Cities Press.