Ontogenesis/Cosmogenesis, an Analysis and Synthesis

QUESTION Based on universal understandings of cosmic origin and evolution, what faith convictions (certitude) and rational conclusions can all religions and civilizations accept and advance in the justification of individual human rights, global civil harmony and ecological sustainability?

Given the global social and ecological crises present and pending, the answer to the question may be nothing less than a universal imperative. If the genesis of the cosmos and the genesis of the individual are essentially co-extensive and co-dependent, then faith (religion) and reason (science) should recognize the common and necessary mutuality of both to moral / civil convergence.

If morality and civility essentially codepend in ontogenesis and cosmogenesis, then understandings of faith / reason convergence should be made to constitute the basic fabric of learning from a child’s earliest years. The consistency, continuity and credibility of faith and reason in the learning experience essentially enable personal / social capacity for trust relationships.

Historically all learning (worldviews) contribute to the ethical / civil purpose of social harmony. Religion and public education together are morally compelled to preserve this historical purpose. Toward the convergence of ethical / civil purposes in understanding ontogenesis and cosmogenesis, an analysis and synthesis in the form of an Open Letter has been submitted to Pope Benedict XVI. To the same end, I am submitting here below the same "Analysis and Synthesis".

  A PURPOSE to Every Season The Church Year begins with the Season of Expectation celebrating the mutuality of the Divine/Feminine Supposition. The Church Year ends reflecting on Alpha/Omega, Word-made-flesh. Alpha/Omega seamlessly transforms the Cosmos in the Expectations of Light — what is the Psychic Precondition of Communal Harmony, what is Trinitarian Resonance in Ultimate Reality.

 I. Evolving Consciousness

1. For five decades I’ve been struggling to develop an understanding and theory of “ultimate reality” in a way compatible with Catholic Faith Tradition and cosmic evolution. On the way I came to discover and have grown with such visionaries as Thomas Berry (1) and David Toolan (4). Everything in nature is essentially connected and dependent; by which essential dependence all nature experiences infolding (implication) and unfolding (explication).

2. The relationships of the individual to the whole (cosmos) and of the whole to the individual have been the nuclear preoccupation of my thinking, for these relationships are to me fundamental to understanding Self (self), Religion and Eucharist. What religious and “Eucharistic” thinking are about is: the relationship of the individual to the whole and about mutuality and dependency in the becoming (genesis) of the individual and the whole.

3. The many individual geneses, taken totally, are the expressive dynamisms of the whole universe, of the cosmos. Individual genesis is “ontogenesis”. The genesis of the universe is “cosmogenesis”. The individual and the whole, the person and the cosmos, are means/end (alpha/omega) to each other.

4. I have a theoretical sense that constellations of Psychic Precondition, the superstring theory of everything (2), exist in infinite realms of consciousness — what is “divine instance”. The calculus of superstring theory allows for multiple universes, what are realms psychically open and immaterial in character. This suggests that there are hierarchical constellations of interactive harmonic energy, qualified psychically but not necessarily physically — what are the precondition of reflective consciousness and the post-condition of after life.

5. Energy resonance preconditions the expansion of cosmic substantiation (light energy), the psychology of physical constructs and the energetic relationships within and between them. The various hierarchies of psychic consciousness function in multiple realms of rationality and may be accessed by intentional focus, whether within or outside physical constructs. An analog of hierarchical “precondition” may be suggested, for example, in the signs of the zodiac under which insights into predispositions of emotional / rational intelligence and the indigenous wisdom of ancient cultures have basis.

II. Relational Identity

1. Psychic Precondition invests a constellation theory of harmonic complexity that functions in and across hierarchies of cosmic energy, what are “possible universes”. Covenant trust is sustainable bonding across barriers. Prior realms of harmonic resonances envelope the later realm complexes of energy / matter — which is to say that evolving energy / matter supposes the prior realms of energetic resonance — Psychic Precondition.

2. The expanding potentials of cosmic amplification are actualized in individuality; individuality capitulates actuality; thus the saying “ontogeny capitulates phylogeny”. We cannot understand ourselves except we understand how we belong to the cosmos, to nature. “Belonging” is not obsessive possession rather “belonging” pertains to the harmonic continuity of transformational relationship, of the self and other, of selves “expanding into each other”. Being “Eucharist” is about relating affirmatively to one another, but more than that, it is the expenditure of self in other-interest. We are “in” each other as we are “in” ourselves, whether we are obsessive and consumptive or whether altruistic and giving.

3. When consumerist obsession drives predation, the soul of self and other is trashed. The way to destruction and extinction is the way of out-of-control consumption, predation. The messianic lesson of ontogenic / cosmogenic fulfillment is the way of altruism, of Eucharist. When we behave obsessively, consumptively, we are predatory and destructive of each other; and when we are altruistic and giving we attend to each other and the universe we co-inhabit. This is the lesson of divinity, of Light.

4. The lesson for humanity is that when we affirm divinity — Essential Eucharist — we affirm higher consciousness and conscience; their affirmation expands moral, social consciousness and harmonic community. We affirm ourselves when we affirm each other. When we are predatory we cause darkness to overcome light; we breach trust. Excessive ego-affirmation overreaches, disorders self and the holy continuity of the cosmos. Jesus Christ the universal Exemplar of authentic divinity / humanity embodies in / for us true altruism and authentic self-affirmation.

5. Mutual implication and explication are of the essence of ontogenesis and cosmogenesis. “Cosmogeny” is about the implicate potentials of the expanding cosmos and “ontogeny’ is about the explicate actualizing of the cosmos in individuality. Ontogeny and cosmogeny are essentially codependent in the mutual expression of inherency / coherency. The individual supposes the cosmos as the cosmos supposes the individual. The implication of individuality in the cosmos supposes the explication of the cosmos as well as self-explication.

III. Covenant of Trust

1. Psychic Precondition (predisposition) permeates dark and light energy; alterations and bondings of wave resonances weave complex patterns of continuity and stability, more enduring than erratic physical bondings that are subject to entropic degrading. Human soul, Earth-soul and intentional consciousness are commonly stabilized and secured in faith awareness, in the resonant compatibilities of preconditioned harmonics accessible for attenuation.

2. Harmony is about affirmative relationship, about expanding one another’s potential by energy attenuation. Implication / explication is the way of self-fulfillment, of fulfilling one another and of amplifying cosmic potential. “Divine instance” is about enlargement of cosmic potential and the amplification of Self in other. Divinity is the Word/Work of cosmic amplification, of cosmic self extenuation and fulfillment in divinity. In the principled correlation of divinity / humanity, humankind supposes divinity even as divinity supposes humankind. The reconciliation of the divine and the human is necessarily ongoing and changing, and by it human awareness amplifies.

3. Earth-life, for example, interactively builds on gradations of light complexes which endure in phases of wave / particle iterations. Self-reflectivity finds its grounding, its continuity, its subjectivity, its stability and its amplification in preconditions of resonance. Intuitional reflectivity communicates consciously and subconsciously with energetic (spiritual) insights that are intentionally accessed. We personally metamorphose from within the “sea of infinite substance” (St. John Damascene’s description of God); we are nurtured in amniotic consciousness and delivered purposely in / from the Cosmic Womb.

4. The universal (cosmic) psyche of purposefully patterned resonances (Intelligent Design) influences social (memetic) patterning and comes to be culturally encoded. Gene-coding implicates resonance patterns in psychological development. These patterns are rational complexes that inform religious consciousness and form the faith-basis of moral relationship. “Moral ordering” is a complex of evolving insights, woven in patterns of purposeful, cultural consciousness and in communion with the reflective resonances of Psychic Precondition; the evolution of intelligence occurs by the process of “trimorphic resonance” (3) and by implication in subatomic (wave / particle) renewal.

5. The psychic connection between the living and the “non-living” is a long celebrated awareness, recognized in Christian experience as the “Communion of Saints”. The holiness of cosmic order characterizes the holiness of the living person and the preconditioning of intentional faith-life. We, who have experienced the passing of a specially loved one, experience a new closeness and “communion” of psychic awareness that was not possible previous to the passing of the loved one. The holistic journey of deep cosmic faith-life is real. Awaken to its possibilities. We belong to it and we can own it consciously.

References:

(1) Thomas Berry, “Evening Thoughts, Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community”, Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker, 2006, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco

(2) Brian Greene, “The Fabric of the Cosmos. Space. Time. And the Texture of Reality”, 2004, Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, NY

(3) Sylvester Steffen, “The Possible Journey, Uncompromised Trust”, 2006, www.authorhouse.com                                                              

(4) David Toolan, “At Home in the Cosmos”, 2001, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY