The burning effect of the sun and fire

It is worth reiterating that while there was no explanation for the dilemma of the human condition—for why humans have been competitive, aggressive and selfish when the ideals are to be cooperative, loving and selfless—humans had no choice other than to block the whole issue from their minds, for the condemnation they otherwise experienced from these ideals was dangerously—even suicidally—depressing.

Faced with the unjust criticism that the cooperative, loving, selfless ideals of life represented, humans eventually learnt they had no choice other than to simply accept their divisive reality as normal and deny the whole concept and truth of ideality. If there is no acknowledgment made of the existence of cooperative ideality there is no issue about human divisiveness, no dilemma of the human condition to become depressed about. The strategy of denial is one humans Page 90 of
Print Edition have employed in many diverse situations. For instance it was used early last century to resist the now-accepted concept of Continental Drift. Opponents of that concept simply maintained there were no plates in the Earth’s crust, in which case there was nothing to drift.

As will be described there are many truths relating to an ideal state that humans learnt to live in denial of because those truths unjustly criticised humans’ corrupt reality. Of those criticising truths the main one that humans learnt they had to live in denial of was the truth of the integrative, cooperative, loving, selfless meaning of existence. While integrative meaning is the most profound and thus important of all truths it is also the truth that has appeared to most condemn humans and, tragically, which humans have most feared and found most difficult to confront. As Plato said, the ‘absolute Good’ was ‘perceived only with difficulty’.

Being divisively rather than integratively behaved and unable to explain the necessary reason for that state, humans have had no choice but to evade or deny the truth of integrative meaning. They have been a ‘God-fearing’ rather than a ‘God-confronting’ species. Integrative meaning is the universal truth, the one great ultimate truth, the truth that, as Plato said, ‘controls everything’ and is ‘responsible for everything’, and is ‘the source…of their [everything’s] existence and reality; yet it is…superior to it [humans’ reality] in dignity and power.’ It is superior to humans’ reality, in fact it is a truth that humans have lived in mortal fear and thus denial of.

Even science was forced to comply with this crucial need to deny the truth of integrative meaning. As will be explained in detail later in this essay, in the section ‘Science—the liberator’, and as is fully explained in Beyond, science has been reductionist and mechanistic, not holistic; it has focused on the details and mechanisms of the workings of our world and avoided the dangerously depressing, whole, integrative meaning-confronting view. In place of the truth of integrative meaning, mechanistic, reductionist science has maintained that evolution is a meaningless, purposeless, random process of selfish genetic opportunism. Such emphasis on selfishness conveniently excused humans’ selfish, divisive behaviour, it avoided the psychological issue of the human condition.

After his description of integrative meaning, quoted in the previous section, the denial-free thinker or prophet, Arthur Koestler proceeded to clearly describe this state of denial of the truth of integrative Page 91 of
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Despite the great danger of acknowledging integrative meaning without first explaining the human condition, there has, in recent times, been a movement by some scientists and science commentators to follow the brave examples of Schrödinger and Koestler and recognise the truth of holism or teleology or integrative meaning. The titles of the books written by these scientists and commentators offer evidence (particularly the words I have underlined) of this recent development. Professor David Bohm wrote Wholeness and The Implicate Order in 1980; professors Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers wrote Order Out of Chaos in 1984; Professor Paul Davies wrote God and the New Physics in 1983, The Cosmic Blueprint in 1987 and The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning in 1992; Professor Charles Birch wrote Nature and God in 1965, On Purpose in 1990 and Biology and The Riddle of Life in 1999; M. Mitchell Waldrop wrote Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos in 1992; Roger Lewin wrote Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos, the major new theory that unifies all sciences in 1993; and Professor Stuart Kauffman wrote The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution in 1993, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity in 1995 and Anti-chaos in 1996.

Complexity results from the integration of matter, and as Roger Lewin wrote in his above-mentioned book, ‘the study of complexity represents nothing less than a major revolution in science’ (p.10 of 208). Complexity/ order/ self-organisation/ integrative meaning gained some recognition when the independent organisation, the Santa Fe Institute for the Study of Complexity was formed in America in 1984. Stuart Page 92 of
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In an article titled Science Friction journalist Deidre Macken, summarised the resistance that scientists who have recognised order/ complexity/ teleology/ holism/ purpose have encountered from the orthodox scientific world. In it she spoke of a ‘scientific revolution’ and a coming ‘monumental paradigm shift’, and said that the few scientists who have ‘dared to take a holistic approach’ are seen by the scientific orthodoxy as committing ‘scientific heresy’. Macken went on to say that scientists taking the ‘holistic approach’, such as the Australian scientists whose books are mentioned above, ‘physicist Paul Davies and biologist Charles Birch’, are trying ‘to cross the great divide between science and religion’, and are ‘not afraid of terms such as “purpose” and “meaning”’, adding that ‘Quite a number of biologists got upset [about this new development] because they don’t want to open the gates to teleology—the idea that there is goal-directed change is an anathema to biologists who believe [evade the condemning truth of integrative meaning by saying] that change is random…The emerging clash of scientific thought has forced many of the new scientists on to the fringe. Some of the pioneers no longer have university positions, many publish their theories in popular books rather than journals, others have their work sponsored by independent organisations…Universities are not catering for the new paradigm’ (Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend mag. 16 Nov. 1991).

It is significant that both professors Birch and Davies have been awarded the prestigious and, at $US1 million, financially rewarding Templeton Prize, for ‘increasing man’s understanding of God’ (The Templeton Prize, Vol.3, 1988–1992, p.108 of 153).

In discussing a ‘scientific revolution’ and a coming ‘monumental paradigm shift’, Deidre Macken was intimating that acknowledging holism or integrative meaning is becoming a trend, but the truth is, until understanding of the human condition was found, holism could not be accepted by humanity as a whole without the disastrous consequences of madness and suicidal depression on a global scale. In his 1987 book The Cosmic Blueprint Paul Davies wrote that: ‘We seem to be on the verge of discovering not only wholly new laws of nature, but ways of thinking about nature that depart radically from traditional science…Way back in the primeval phase of the universe, gravity triggered a cascade of self-organizing processes—organization begets organization—that led, step by step, to the conscious individuals who now contemplate the history of the cosmos and wonder what it all means…There exists alongside the entropy arrow another arrow of time, equally fundamental and no less subtle in nature…I refer to the fact that the universe is progressing—through the Page 93 of
Print Edition steady growth of structure, organization and complexity—to ever more developed and elaborate states of matter and energy. This unidirectional advance we might call the optimistic arrow, as opposed to the pessimistic arrow of the second law…There has been a tendency for scientists to simply deny the existence of the optimistic arrow. One wonders why’ (from Chapters 10,9,2 respectively). The reason ‘why’ integrative meaning was denied was because it was too dangerous to acknowledge without the necessary understanding as to the cause of humans’ divisive, apparently non-integrative condition. Evidently Davies now appreciates this danger. In the last 10 years the focus of his books appears to have shifted from integrative meaning to less confronting issues, in fact to ‘escapist’ issues that allow humans to distract themselves from the real issue before us as a species, namely the human condition. His recent books include The Last Three Minutes (1994), on the ultimate fate of the universe; About Time (1995), on the puzzles and paradoxes of time; Are We Alone? (1995), on the search for extraterrestrial life; The Fifth Miracle (1998), on the possibility of life emerging in the deep, hot subsurface of our planet; and How to Build a Time Machine (2001), on the threat of an asteroid strike destroying life on Earth.

Plato’s use of the sun as a symbol for the truth of integrative meaning is an obvious metaphysical choice for such an all-pervading but totally unapproachable truth that will ‘cremate’ all those who dare to go near it. Interestingly, the first monotheistic religion, the first religion based on the worship of a single god, was introduced by the Egyptian pharaoh and denial-free thinker or prophet, Ikhnaton, in 1377 BC and, appropriately, its object of worship was the sun-god Aton. Of course, the Earthly equivalent of the sun is fire, which, with its burning heat and blinding glare, is the other obvious choice of metaphor for the unapproachable ‘universal first principle’ and ‘absolute form of Good’ of integrative meaning or God.

Thus in Plato’s cave allegory, both the ‘sun’ and the ‘fire’ represent the cooperative ideals of life or integrative meaning, the truth of which so condemned humans and which they have understandably lived in such fear of. Plato made this association clear, saying, ‘the light of the fire in the [cave] prison corresponds to the power of the sun’ (p.282).