BESHARA

KATHlEEN RAINE The Puer Eternis PETER YOUNG The New JOHN BARROW The New Cosmology

WILLIS HARMAN For a New Society, A New Economics plus the Global Survival Conference, The Visit of the Dalai Lama, Stephen Hirtenstein on The Abrahamic Tradition, dom Sylvester Houedard on Meister Eckhart, Richard Twinch on Paul Davies' 'The Cosmic Blueprint', reviews of books on Zen and Science, Visual Islamic Arts at the Royal College of Art and more ... Ismail Hakki Bursevi's translation of and commentary on

FUSUS AL-HIKAM

by Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi

rendered into English by BULENT RAUF with the help of R. Brass and H. Tollemache

The Fusus al-Hikam is one of Ibn 'Arabi's most important works. It consists of twenty-seven chapters, each treating a unique aspect or 'bezel' of the Divine Wisdom as exemplified in a particular prophet in the line from Adam to Muhammed.

Volume 2, just published, includes chapters on Noah, Idris (Enoch), Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael.

Volume 1, consisting of Ismail Hakki Bursevi's Introduction and chapters on Adam and Seth, is still available.

"This book is beyond ordinary measure. It is beyond the general run of mystical writings and it is more than just a book of meanings. It is to do with the very meaning of meanings, with the meanings, the realities and the knowledges of God... " from Rosemary Brass's Foreword to Volume 2

Hardback £40.00 (including postage worldwide)

A vailable from all good bookshops and from the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, 23 Oakthorpe Road, Oxford OX2 7BD, England BESHARA BESHARA

THE MAGAZINE OF THE BESHARA TRUST Issue 6 Summer 1988

NEWS FEATURES Islamic Art and Spirituality J by S. H. Nasr 2 9 Reviewed by Layla Shamash Global Survival The Puer Eternis Temenos The Global Conference of Religious Kathleen Raine discusses the meaning 9 and Parliamentary Leaders was held in of this archetypal figure and the contri­ Christine Hill Oxford in April. bution of lung to modern thought. 35 4 13 The Visit of the Dalai Lama EXHIBITIONS The New Visual Islamic Arts A report on the nine day visit to the UK Peter Young Richard Twinch reviews this year's during April. degree show at the Royal College of 14 Art. For a New Society, a New Economics

Or Willis W. Harman. President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. California. considers the great changes taking place in the global economy.

19 TII" \-\'orhrs moSI admll('('d Ie/(,S(,OI)(', IIIl' AlIglo· The New Cosmology Americall (AA T) al Sit/lie\' S"rillg, Nc\-\' SOlllll Or lohn Barrow reveals the latest sci­ I �cs. AlIslrolia, PllOlogrol'" hr .Iamic SII""IIerd. The Opening of the Samye­ entific ideas on the expanding Universe, whether the universe is infinite or finite, Ling Temple BESHARA and Crealio ex Nihifo. 24 Sidney Street, Oxford OX4 3AG. A traditional Tibetan temple will open Telephone: Oxford (0865) 243406 in the Scottish border country in Fax: Oxford (0865) 722103 August. ISSN 0954-0067 REVIEWS 6 EDITOR: lane Clark. 26 ASSISTANT EDITORS: Alison Yian­ Swedenborg's Tricentenary BOOKS gou, Cecilia Twinch. I I ART EDITOR: Lesley Abadi 7 The Cosmic Blueprint ILLUSTRATIONS: lulia Dry, Ruth Kenner, Evelyn Morrison Terra Sancta by Paul Oavies ADMINISTRATION: ludy Keams Stephen Hirtenstein considers Reviewed by Richard Twinch the COVER DESIGN: Lesley Abadi after a Abrahamic Tradition painting by Mondrian New Books on Meister Eckhart dom Sylvester Houedard BESHARA is published by the Beshara Trust. a registered educational Books on Zen Regular Features charity, No.296769. Letters 2S Martin Notcutt Beshara Trust News 37 Copyri/iht on all articles is held hy The New Books on Science Beshara Trust, Permission Jor multiple Notes on Contributors 38 lane Clark photo-copyin/i and reprintin/i is required.

SPRING 1988 BESHARA Global Survival

NEWS

GLOBAL SURVIVAL Religious and political leaders acknowledge dependence and stewardship. by Martin Notcutt

ometimes I call our planet 'mother"'. said the Dalai Lama. "BSecause of the planet we human beings came into existence. Now it seems as though our mother is telling us .. My chil­ dren. my dear children. behave in a more harmonious way. My children. please take care of me.' "We arc approaching the next century. the 21 st century. I feel it is extremely im­ portant to seriously consider long-term The Earth as seen from abolle the Pacific Ocean. Taken by returlling Apollo 2 astronauts. benef it rather than short-term interest. I think our time has come to think very plenary sessions. addressed by speakers purpose') carefully about this matter. on various themes. These were fo llowed "What we must do now is well within "When wc talk about global crisis. or a by work ing sessions during which dele­ our power. but it cannot be done merely by crisis of human i ty. we cannot blame Cl few gates divided into groups to discuss the hoping. It re4uires serious changes. not politicians. a few fanatics or a few troub­ issues. During the fourth and fi fth plenary just in our ways of thinking but in our way lemakers. The whole o I'humanity has a re­ sessions. a final statement of aims and 0" doing. It re4uires political action." sponsibility because this is our business. intent was jointly drawn up. human business. I call this a sense of universal responsibility." IN THE SAME SHIP The Dalai Lama was speaking at the CHAN(;E WA Y OF DOING Among the political delegates present Global Conference of Spiritual and Par­ Carl Sagan' s contribution was to spell out wcre scicntists from the Soviet Union. liamentary Leaders on Human Survival. some biological aspects of the crisis. Ac­ who stressed the importance of nuclear which was held in Oxford from I I-15th cording to him. the threat to human sur­ disarmament. They saw progress in that Apri l. 19XX. The culmination of more vival has three main sources: the growth direction being achieved through the cur­ than 0 years work by the Global Forum of of man' s powers in the physical world. the rent negotiations between governments. Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on pressure of expanding human popula­ However this had to be extended by the Human Survival. it brought together 200 tions. and above all the ignorance or indif­ mobilisation of a worldwide intellectual religious and political representatives ference of people. Sagan detailed some of potential. from 50 countries. Delegates included the threats to life that come just from our Valentino Tereshkova, the Soviet cos­ well known figures such as The Arch­ ordinary collective activities of seeking to monaut said. "Human beings had to break bishop of Canterbury. Mother Teresa of keep warm. eat. travel. etc. These now out into space to realise how beautiful is Calcutta. the astrophysicist Carl Sagan. make a much greater impact on the envi­ their cradle. planet Earth. But it is small, Dr Evguenij Velikhov of the Soviet Acad­ ronment than they did before. Of the fragile and defenceless as well. While in emy of Sciences and the Secretary-Gen­ nuclear arms race he said, "The United space one tends to think about the Earth. It eral of the United Nations. Perez de States and the Soviet Union have booby­ comes in the images of people who are Cue liar. They also included Sheikh trapped the world with 60,000 nuclear near and dear. our k in and kith. who incar­ Ahmed of Kuftaro, the Grand Mufti of weapons ... nate for each and every one of us the Damascus. Dr Karen Singh (the founder "The visions we present to our children nucleus of People. Motherland. Human­ of the Virat Hindu Samaj in New Delhi) s/lIJpe the future. Our children (and we ity. and a party from the Hoppi Nation in ourselves) long for realistic maps of a " These moral values are recognised by Arizona. future that they and we can be proud of. all people regardless of their race. politi­ The conference consisted of a series of Where are the cartographers of human cal conviction and religious beliefs. We

2 ISSUE 6 Global Survival BESHARA can preserve those values only by pooling spiritual nature of humanity and recog­ "I believe that people of all faiths share our efforts. by seeing ourselves as a crew nise the 'divine spark' in all human sufficient common ground to recover for of one spaceship - planet Earth." beings ... human kind two necessary qualities for "We must learn to affirm together the our survival. The first is reverence ...The centrality of the spiritual in our various second and related quality necessary for

SHARED CONCERNS traditions, and that the unity of all human survival is cooperation." Several delegates pointed out that this beings is grounded in an ultimate unity conference was not an isolated event. which is greater than the recognition of it NO STOPPING PLACE Mention was made of the gatherings in in each of our traditions ... There were certain recurrent themes in the Assisi in 1986, where the spiritual heads "We need. as never before, to share our conference. One was the image of the of all the world's faiths met. and of the diffe rent spiritualities with each other. Earth seen from space, which has done so first meeting of the World Congress of Our world is in danger of being pervaded much to precipitate the sentiment for the Faiths. convened by Sir Francis by a widespread pessimism about the world as one world. Another was the need Younghusband in Oxford in 1937. future of humankind. There is a dimin­ to begin from what people love. and to One contribution came from a group ished sense that our problems can be re­ draw upon the capacity to extend that called The InterAction Council. This has solved by technology alone or political love. Another was for the need to listen ­ been created with some 30 members from utopias alone. We are confronted by a to be actively receptive. and respond in East. West. North and South. all of whom search for meaning in the human enter­ service. Because ofthe particular compo­ have at one time been national leaders; it prise, the need for reconciliations. for sition of this conference, this response is currently Icd by Helmut Schmidt of greater compassion. for justice and for a was most often expressed as social action. West Germany. They recognise that al­ celebration of life in all its wholeness. Nonetheless with his final words Or though many pol itical leaders are trying These are deeply religious themes ... Runcie indicated what is really meant by their best for world peace. they are limited "We need to maintain the value, the pre­ listening (and by social action ): i by their own positions. being preoccupied ciousness of tl e human by affirming the "Our commitment to reverence and with daily tasks and solving short-term preciousness of the non-human also - of cooperation would provide the sure foun­ problems. Thus the Counci I seeks to draw all that is. For our concept of God fo rbids dation for our future responsibility to­ on the accumulated experience of former the idea of a cheap creation. of a throw­ gether in both spiritual and political lead­ prcsidents and prime ministers who are away universe in which everything is ex­ ership. I pray that you approach this time frce to take a wider view. pendable save human existence. The together with expectation and a readiness Takeo Fukuda, a fo rmer prime ministcr whole universe is a work of love. And to listen as well as to say your piece. of Japan, reported that in March 1987 the nothing which is made in love is cheap. Meister Eckhardt. the mystic, said centu­ Council had organised in Rome a meeting The value, the worth of natural things is ries ago: of political leaders with leaders from the not fo und in Man's view ofhimself . but in 'There is no s/(l/Jping place ill 'his Ii/c,. world's five major re ligions. "In that the goodness of God who made all things No. 1101' was ,here el'er one for aIlWil/C - meeting. it was confirmed that there are an good and precious in his sight. Common 110 marter how/ar alollg the war ,her' I'C astonishing number of areas that are of action on moral and ethical matters begins cOl1le. This ,hell. ahore all ,hillgs Bc mutual concernto the political and relig­ in what we believe the world to be, in who ready for the gi/is o/God alld alwar.l/or ious circles. We are. of course. committed made it and why ... 11(,11' ones. to expand and further develop this coop­ erative relationship." For Global Survival

THE CENTRALITY OF SPIRIT The participants in 'he Conference tudes and institutiolls within all our The Archbishop of Canterbury . Or Robert drew up a jinal statement called 'For traditions to deal with our present Runcie, spoke on the first day of the con­ Global Survival', which included the glohal crisis. fe rence. What he said went beyond the ac­ followinf!,. " We there/ore now affirm our shared knowledged need for common social ac­ "We recof!,llise that it is not only vision o{survival, and we commit our­ tion to that which is more essential, and human surl'il'al but the su/"I'ival of the selves to work for a fundamentally which will therefore bring action about. whole planet. with all its interdepend­ changed and hetter world. We urge the "We live in a world society which desper­ ent jorms of life, which is threatened... leaders of the world to adopt new alti­ ately seeks some measure of world com­ Each of us must accept the responsibil­ tudes and .to implement new policies munity in order to survive. What spiritual ity to care jar and protect the earth, hased on sustainahility and justice." resources can be brought to bear upon this which is our home. situation') "We have derivedJrom our meeting a The Global Forum now has a perma­ "First. and most self-evidently, we can vivid awareness of the essential one­ nent officein New York and a council of bring our faith, that is, our awareness of ness of humanity, and also the realisa­ 35 members .It is anticipated thar there the transcendent. We must regard this, tion that each human person has both a will be another' conference, perhaps whatever its source, as an essential con­ spiritual and a political dimension. We ajier five yea;'s, to review the results stituent of being human, and recognise acknowledge the inadequacy of atti- achieved by this first collahoration. that all religious traditions affirm the

SUMMER 1988 3 BESHARA Dalai Lama

The Visit of the Dalai Lama

ritain was honoured to receive a visit frolll His Holiness the XIVth BDalai Lama of Tibet in April 19XX. De­ spite the obsession of the press with the pol itical illlplicationsofthe nine day visit. its main purpose was a pastoral one - to give Buddhist teachings and to address the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parlia­ mentary Leaders in Oxford. He also spent time with the Archbishop of Canterbury as part of their continuing inter-faith dia­ logue. This pastoral intention. which he up­ held at press conferences and in television interviews. is in line with the role of the Dal,li Lallla as a spiritual leader and head of the Tibetan Buddhists. He is also ,l pol itical leader in exile. and his concen­ tration on spiritual matters was taken by The f)alai tall/a presellts a Tibetall prayer scarf to the ;\rchbishop of Canterbury at some parties as ,l diplomatic ploy to avoid I_all/betl! Palace. I'hotol:rapl! by Sill/ulI '/'oll'lI.I'ley. courtesy o/The f)aily Telegraph. upsetting the British government. who are anxious not to jeopardise their policy of people from the fi elds of physics. psy­ cont inent ". He gave the example of a hand appeasement towards China. Yet. whilst chology. biology and the new cosmology. where the different fingers represent sci­ his position as temporal leader carries ,l he had cOl1le to see that "scicntific find­ ence. technology. money. politics. even weighty responsibility towards the plight ings and Buddhist explanations are com­ re ligion. Whilst the palm of the hand can of his people. who look to him specifically plementary". He fecls that an awareness function in a limited way without the for the re lief of oppression in their COllll­ of the importance of consciousness and finger�. the fingers are entirely dependent try. it seems that the spiritual importance the inner world is incre,lsing along with on the palm which is likened to humanity is alw,lys put fi rst. In this role his aim is to the deepening knowledge of external and the respect of human values. The promote compassion for all sent ient matters. fingers only have meaning in so far as they be ings. to increase understanding. peace The re lationship of scientific and spiri­ benef it humanity as a whole. and harmony in the world. to serve all tual development was r,l ised again in a humanity and not to set onc [London towards stand our own position. wc have to con­ "whether one believes in religion or not. the end of his stay. the Dalai Lama reiter­ sider the entire global economic condi­ there is no one who does not appreciate ated the spiritual purpose of his visit and tion. Similarly. "when we think about the love and compassion," spont,lneously spoke about the conver­ benefit of humanity. we have to think The precedence he gives to the feeling gence of spiritual and scientific develop­ about entire humanity. We cannot stop at of humanity and respect of human values menl. Hc said that from his meetings with one particular nation or one particular could lead one to assume that he is a

ISSUE 6 Dalai Lama/Samye-Ling Temple BESHARA

humanitarian and no more, and to wonder where God comes in. 'God' is not easily The Opening of the translated into Buddhist terms since any concept of God is regarded as a hindrance Samye-Ling Temple to truth. However. the teachings he gave at the Westminster Central Hall on April 6th - 8th bore witness to his deep spiritu­ ality. He spoke, through an interpreter. of the emptiness of mental phenomena, say­ ing that "the only thing that exists is ulti­ mate truth". He emphasised the impor­ tance of properly understanding what emptiness is and explained that in order to be protected from falling into nihilism, emptiness is to be understood in terms of 'derendent origination '. From the roint of view of ultimate truth, all phenomena are uniform in terms of non-existence and the multitude is spoken of from the point The Salllye Temple, still under construction in June /988, Courtesy of Samye-Ung, of unity, or 'single taste'. Wisdom is to be achicved through emptiness since that non-conccptual state his summer sees a remarkable event Samye-Ling was founded in 1967 by eliminates delusion. so that only uncon­ T - the opening of a traditional Ti­ Dharma Akong R inpoche and Vajracarya taminated wisdom or clear light remains. betan Temple in the Borders of Scotland. Trungpa Rinpoche. who had settled in Through vigilancc and 'mindfulness' our The Temple, which has been bui It at the England after they were forced to flee minds can be brought to such a subtle Samye-Ling Buddhist Centre at Eskdale­ Tibet in 1959. It was the first Tibetan level that therc is no possibility ofdistrac­ muir. will be officially opened on 8th centre to be founded in the West and they tion arising: "in a systcm where emptiness August by the RI. Hon. David Steel. MP, named it after 'Samye' , which was the is possible, anything is possible". and is the culmination of more than ten first Buddhist monastery and study centre As far as the various rei igions are con­ years' work. It is intended as a spiritual to be firmly established in Tibet in the 8th cerned. the Dalai Lama recommends that resource for both Buddhists and non­ century. it is better not to concentrate on the differ­ Buddhists and the opening celebrations, The Centre presented. for the first time. enccs of dogma which may be ascribed to which began on July 15th and continue the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism diffc rences of time and circumstance as until mid-August. reflect this wide inten­ to a wide range of people in the West and well as cultural influences, for "although tion: as wcll a.-;off icial ceremonies, they has seen a great surge of interest in Bud­ we can find causes for preferring certain include an Arts Festival with contribu­ dhism in general: there arc now over 200 interpretations of religious truth, there is tions from both Eastern and Western Buddhist centres in the UK alone, includ­ much greater cause for unity, stemming sources and a three-day Inter-Faith Sym­ ing Zen and Therevada. The main teach­ from the human heart". Whilst acknowl­ posium which will draw together repre­ ing fo llowed at Samye-Ling is the Kagyu edging the need for the variety of relig­ sentatives from all the major religions ­ tradition. one ofTi bet's four main schools ions, the Dalai Lama does not appear to the first such event to be held by the Ti­ whose head is His Holiness the Gyalwa confine spirituality to religion since he betan Buddhists. Kannapa. (The Dalai Lama is head of one emphasises the importance of love and The Temple is only the first phase of the of the other main schools, the Geluk compassion which is irresrective of belief larger Samye-Ling Project. which will school.) Akong Rinpoche is the head of and beyond all mental concepts of God. It take twenty years to complete and eventu­ studies - Trungpa Rinpoche having left indicates sheer Being which is known of ally provide Europe with its largest Bud­ within a few years to complete his life's itsel f direct I y and cx perienced as compas­ dhist temple and study centre, including work in America - and many wise and sionate love. lecture, therapy and translation rooms and eminent teachers from all over the world 'The most important thing." he says. two libraries - one for English works and have visited to take courses. " whether for the bel iever or the non-be­ one for Tibetan. The Centre now houses a small monas­ liever, is love and compassion - this is the The joint founder and present head of tic community and offers retreat to both ' universal religion." This approach is not Samye-Ling, the Venerable Akong Buddhists and non-Buddhists. with over towards the unification of religions but Rinpoche, says of the project. "The whole 10,000 people visiting each year. There is from the essential unity where all relig­ purpose ... is to blend Tibetan and West­ a programme of study. meditation and ions and beliefs originate and on which erntrad it ions of st udy and practice, so that practical work in the vegetable gardens, they depend, The nature of this depend­ they are no longer contradictory but the farm and the dairy. ency can only be understood by realising rather. complement each other and pro­ Samye-Ling has also become a centre fully what it is to be human. vide a basis for the growth of spiritual of artistic excellence. One of Tibet's understanding between nations and cul­ greatest art masters. Sherab Palden Beru Cccilia Twillch tures". joined the centre near the beginning of its

SUMMER 1988 5 BESHARA Samye-Ling Temple/Swedenborg Tricentenary life, and he continues to work and train tion. Nearly all the work. including the dhist commemorations and initiations. others in the art of Thangka Painting major construction and services. has been with the consecration of the Temple tak­ (religious paintings done on canvas or carried out by volunteers and the project ing place on July 24th. The weekends of silk). There are workshops for wood­ has been sponsored entirely by donation. 30-3 1st July and 6-7th August are de­ carving. sculpting. gilding, carpet-mak­ The temple itself consists of a Shrine voted to an Arts Festival. The opening ing, printing and pottery. room, accommodation for visiting La­ ceremony itselfon August 8th is expected The practice of these traditional arts is mas, including an audience room. ami a to be attended by around 2.000 people. not only to preserve and pass on the rich room to house re lics. Inside. it is beauti­ The three day inter-denominational heritage of Tibet: it is also to the bencl"it of fu lly and richly decorated in vibrant col­ symposium, beginning on August 15th. all humanity through the development of ours. There are elaborately carved pillars will be entitled "Compassion Through compassion. The Venerable Akong has encrusted with gold. 400 silk-screen Understanding" in line with the overall said ... Even the animals are able to pro­ prints of dragons and mythological birds aim of Samyc-Ling. Representatives vide shelter and food for their young. adorning the vast ceiling. whilst 1000 from Christianity. Judaism. Islam and You. as human beings, must do more than golden Buddha statues look down over Hinduism will meet with teachers from this. You must find a way to work and all. Fourteen huge T!wlIg/.;a.1 depicting the Buddhist tradition for a conference express the fullest human potential of key fi gures in Buddhist history flank the which will be open to the public on Au­ which you arc capable. for the benefit of walls. gust 17th. Speakers include The Khentin others. You can do this -anybody can - if Tai Situpa. Patriarch of the Karma Kagyu: you keep trying and don't give up. It Dom Sylvester Houedard. Benedictine doesll't matter what things you make or A II four of the current highest teachers of monk from Prinknash Abbey: Mr Mahuk do. as long a.';you use your human intelli­ the Kagyu tradition will be present simul­ Ally. first holder of the Prince of Wales gence". taneously for at least some part of the readership in Islamic Studies at Lampeter The Temple has provided a great chal­ opening ceremonies. which cnd on Au­ College: and Peter Young. Director of the lenge in the understanding of compassion gust 1 8th. The first two weeks of the cele­ Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric through creative h�lrd work and coopera- brations are taken up mainly with Bud- Education. .Iallc C/a}"/.;

Swedenborg 300th Anniversary taken over by Blake - which he saw as an inner spiritual event whose meaning will his year m,lrks the 300th anniver­ "Behold and see how small a speck thou gradually become apparent in the outer sary of the bi nh of onc of Sweden' s art in the system of heaven and earth: world (I). mostT remarkable sons. Born into the age and in thy contemplations remember The Swedenborg Society. whose pur­ of science (in the year fo llowing the pub­ this. th�lt if thou wouldst be great. thy pose is to make the works of Swedenborg I iC�ltion of Newton's . Principia') greatness must consist in this - in learn­ widely known in the present day. have Swedenborg ( 1688-1772) was himself an ing to adore Him who Himself is the arranged a programme of events through­ cminent scientist. He published over 70 Greatest and the Infinite." out the country to mark the tricentenary. . scient i fic treat i ses and his discoveries laid (PrillciIJio . 173 /) which will continue until the end of the the fo undations for the sciences of metal­ year. lurgy ami crystallography. Contradicting At the age of<;6 Swe denborg experienced /-fi/(/!"\" Wi//iafll.1 the theories of his leading contemporar­ a powerful opening of consciousness that ies. he anticipated Illany later findings revealed to him inner worlds, changing ( I ) The I//(II/erorll/(' .. VII/ I·cr.W/ Fhc% gl'" is such as the wave Illotion of light. the the direction of his life: 11"1'1111.'i!ill K(//ilIl.'('I1 Raillc' s I//(Islcrl\" csso\' Oil SI'·Ci!CII!JO/"g. 10 he ji!//lId ill "/J/a/.;e 1/1/(1 S'II"£'­ llloiL'cular basis of magnetism. the nebu­ "From that day I gave up the study ofall dell/Jorg. Oppo.l ilioll is TI"//c FriClli/.1 hiIJ·. Ed. lar origin of planetary systellls. and the worldly science. and laboured in spiri­ !fW"I"CI' F. Bcl/ill alld Dancl/ RllilI l/l/(l Jillh­ nature of the atom. tual things ...so that in the middle of the lished /Jr Ihe SII'cilell/Jorg FOllllilalioll. He wrote in 1746. day I could see into the other world. and "Divine Providencehas ruled the act of in a state of perfect wakefulness con­ my life since my youth ...so that by verse with angels and spirits." Mind and Nature means of the knowledge of natural In the remaining 27 years of his life Conference things (through science) I might be able Swedenborg wrote many volumes of vi­ World Conference fo r the to understand the things which lie sionary theology. signing most of his Future of Human Civilisation deeply concealed in the Word of God. books simply. "a servant of the Lord". and thus serve as an instrument of lay­ Swedenborg is best known in connec­ This week-long conference. which took ing them bare." tion with William Blake. who adopted place in Hanover. Germany. during May. Even in his early philosophical physics of Swedenborg's terms and adhered to his attracted two thousand participants from elementary particles and vibrations he doctrines throughout his Prophetic books. all over the world It was addressed by 60 postulated an infinitely energetic. all­ Blake said of Swedenborg that he was "a speakers from disciplines as diverse as pervasive Source, contrary to the devel­ divine teacher" , and his writings "the physics. music and philosophy. and by oping physics and medical science of his Universal Theology". Swedenborg was representatives of all the major religions. day and later. the first to speak of the New Age - a term A full report in Issue 7.

6 ISSUE 6 Terra Sancta BESHARA

Modern Jerusalem fr om the Mount of Olives. In the middle can be seen the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock and to the left the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Ph(){ograpil hI' Adal1l Creell£'. COllrleSI' o/Iile Brirailll/srae/ Pllh/ic Alii/iFs Celllre.

Recellt el'ellls ill Israel hUl'e highlighted once again the which inspired its inception have he en given renewed deep dil'isiolls Wllich e.rist in the Middle East; divisions expression - in particular the dream which is cherished hy which widell with the sense of anger, despair and /i'ustra­ people on all sides as the ultimate goal in the Middle East. tioll that all parties seem intent on nursillg. Coinciding This is a I,ision of the land, not as Israel nor as Palestine, with the 40th annil'ersar)' of the State ojlsrGel on 14th May nor even as a binational stare , hut as a country where this veal', its coming olage so to speak. amid the rumhlings respect and honour is given to the rights of all who live (il the Palestinian inrijada (uprising), mall\' oj the dreams there, a vision of Ten'a Sancta (the Holy Land).

Terra Sancta - The Abrahamic Tradition A Comment by Stephen Hirtenstein

'thin the context of the wider ecu­ it simply AI-Quds (the Holy), The roots of the modern divergence and men ism that is beginning to de­ All three great religions of the West apparent incompatibility can be found in Wvelop globally. as evidenced by the meet­ look back to the Patriarch Abraham as the Biblical and Quranic stories: Abra­ ing of world religious leaders at Assisi in their father. Through his son Isaac has de­ ham and his wife Sarah were childless and 1986 and recent dialogues reported in scended the line of Judaism and later without much hope of children as they BESHARA. it may seem increasingly Christianity; through the line of his elder were both old. One night, Abraham was inappropriate that there should continue son, Ishmael, has come Islam. Each of taken from his tent and shown by God that to be such antagonism in the Middle East these spiritual streams runs in its own his seed would be as numerous as the stars between great religious traditions which distinct course but they are linked by their in the heavens. So. at Sarah's insistence, flow from the same source and venerate origin and each has as its orientation a he took her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, the same shrines. The city of Jerusalem. sacred site established by Abraham. For as his second wife and she gave birth to his for instance, with the Dome of the Rock, the Jews and the Christians this is Jerusa­ first son, Ishmael. Thirteen years later, is sacred to the Jews as the synthesis of all lem. towards which all churches origi­ Sarah, despite being over 90 years old, their past glories and theirfuture hopes: to nally fa ced. For Islam, it is Mecca with the herself gave birth to and breastfed the the Christians as the place of the Last Black Stone of the Ka'ba which is the second son, Isaac, who thus became the Supper, the Crucifixion and the Ascen­ direction of the mihrah (niche ofori enta­ official heir. sion of Jesus: and to the Muslims who call tion) of all mosques. As there was great difficulty between

SUMMER 1988 7 BESHARA Terra Sancta thc two mothers over the rights of inheri­ the wells that Isaac later opened in Ca­ demonstrated than on the occasion when tance. Sarah made Abraham send both naan, became the site of the Ka·ba. the he was told that Sarah was to have a son: Hagar and Ishmael away. The Biblical sacred building which was built by Abra­ his natural reaction was to become afraid account. which basically tells the story of ham and Ishmael together when Abrahal1l for Ishmael because he knew of the law of the Jewish linc. reveals a jealousy and went to visit his son towards the end of his inheritance. He prayed: "0 that Ishmael rivalry on both sides: yet it is known that life, and whose eastern corner was built might live before Thee!" and God prom­ both chi Idren were blessed by God and upon the celestial Black Stone which ised him that Ishmael. too. would be that both together buried their father in Abraham received from an angel. blessed. Hebron. What better example could there The well at Zamzam was later covered The Abrahamie heritage is precisely be of reconciliation'? Now situatcd on over and forgotten until the time of Mu­ that unification that allows for diver­ what is called the West Bank, Hebron hal1ll1lad's grandfather. who was ordered gence. and through whom it is blessed - a (which originally means 'confederacy') to dig for it. Muhal1ll1lad himself always confederacy of equal partners which rec­ is considered the burial place of Abraham insisted that the re ligion of Islam. which ognises that the difference in the streams and Sarah. and also of Isaac. Jacob and cast the idols out of the Ka ·ba. was a has been determined by the lie of the land. Joseph. Yet as an Arab town in an essen­ return to the purity of the religion of not by the w�lter in them. tially Arab area, many Israelis confess to Abraham. just as Jesus insisted that he i ng ex t remel y wary of ever setti ng foot ..your father Abraham rejoiced to think there and their presence is mainly mili­ that he would sec my day: he saw it and If we are to be heirs to this tradition. our tary. I lehron today expresses the deep and was gbd." (John X.5fJ) task must be to rc-educate ourselves from seelllingly insoluhle problem of the the standpoint of the centre - the Unity Middle East - to whom does the land in which integrates and respects the differ­ fact helong" who has the right of inheri­ So what is this tradition of Abraham to ent ways without being identified with tance" which both sides profess to helong and merely one of them. Then perhaps wc When Ahr�lh�lm sent Ishmael and which provides the link hetween all our shall have made the quantum leap that Hag�lr �lw�ly. his natur�tI distress at having Westerncultur e" In many ways. the Ahra­ physicists now tell us the world is making to ' sacri fice' his ch i Id (an act which was to hamic line is the most profound source of �t11 the time. be repeated in the redemption of Isaac by Westerncivil isation. far more so than the And only then will the dream of Terra the r�lm) was mitigated hy Cod's assur­ Greek which many modern scholars pro­ SIII/C/(f be real ised: for the real Terro ance of his safety. So mother and son mote as our distinctive origin. There arc SIII/etll is not one specific place in this travelled south inlll the desert �Ind were two fundamental principles which consti­ world hut lies dormant in every place. soon in dire need of water. I !agar c�tlled tute the well-spring of humanity: first and waiting to be recognised in the temple of out to God ancl "God opened her eyes �Ind foremost the tradition of monotheism. humility that houses the heart of man. For she saw a well of water" (Genesis 21.:20). which lies at the heart of every culture in it is essentially a matter of ' cognition' or This well. i'.anllam. the eounterpoint of the world. In the West. since the time of 're-cognition ' that the world is itself Ahraham. tlte Singularity of God has been sacred. a manii"cstion of the Divine. a Illore or less openly proclaimed. but it has veritable garden of Eden. often been understood as the doctrine of Muhyiddin Ibn ·Arabi. brought up in the One Transcendental Being. the 'jeal­ the medieval Spanish culture where the ous' God. who transcends �III and will not great streams of Judaisl1l. Islam and tolerate the worship of any other being Christianity coexisted in harmony, than Himself. Those who claim sole ac­ wrote: cess to the truth have often appealed to this notion. and countless wars have been "0 marvel! A garden amidst thefl ames! waged to prove their point. My heart has become capable of every But Un i ty does not necessari I y i mpl y �\Il fo rm: exclusivity of any kind. Just as the nUIll­ It is a pastllre fo r gazelles bel' one does not exclude all other nUIll­ And a conventfor Christian l1lollks bel'S. but is the very principle of number A nd a temple fo r idols alld the pilgrim 's itself (thus without I there could be no Ka'ba number :2 and so on). and so is to be found And the tables 4the Torah and the book in every number. in the same way God of the Quran. The MOllnt of the Rock on MOllnt Moriah in does not exclude the reality of this world. I fo llow the religion 0./ Love: Jerusalem fr om the Hebrew traditiun since He is the only reality it has and He is Whatever way Love 's camels take, (cl5./5). The Dume uf the Rock is a sacred site to be found in all things. That is my religion and my fa ith." tu all three Western religions: the traditional A true understanding of the Unity of site of Abraham '.I' sacrifi ce of the ram instead God implies an all-inclusiveness, where ji-Olll Ill(' {O,-jlllllilll o/-Aslllmq. l!lIsaac, it wasfor many years thefoclls of all love predisposes to compassion. And this Poelll XI. Fmlll llie Imlls/illioll hI' R.A . Jewish spiritllality in the fo rm of the Temple Nicllli/.lolI . fJllhli.llied h\' Ill(' T/wlIso/,liim/ bllilt by Soloman. It has been the place uf is the second great Abrahamic principle. Sociell'. /<)//.1<)78. prayer fo r many prophets, inclllding both It was said of Abraham that he loved his Jeslls and Mllhammad. people and nowhere is this more clearly

ISSUE 6 Kathleen Raine BESHARA

he one archetypal presence that has T accompanied me throughout my life as a poet - the puer etemus if such beings may be named - seems to me to have been misconceived by analytical psychology. Jungian practitioners, and J ung himself, read this numinous figure as representing an un-grown-up man, a state in fact of immaturity and imperfection. Yet pantheons - archetypes - are not concerned with the imperfect and the partial, but with eternalaspects of reality. True, any god, be it Apollo or Hermes or Aphrodite or Artemis or Athene or Hera, can present beneficent or destructive aspects according to the votary's attitude towards the particular archetypal reality. Ecstatic Dionysus ripped rational Pen­ theus to bits after all. This double aspect is understood likewise in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. as it was by Blake, whose mythological narratives (if narratives they may be called) are concerned with the harmonizing of the archetypal world which fa lls into confusion when the ener­ gies seek to usurp supremacy, which be­ longs only to 'Jesus the Imagination', the divine Presence in 'the eternal man': in Easternterms, the Self. Jung, who with Kerenyi wrote so beau­ tifully of the child-archetype as entering or leaving this world, as a figure of the threshold between being and not-being, does not in that essay describe the child as an un-grown-up man! But the pl./erel('l'­ nus is not the Babe of the Incarnation.The Infant Jesus - or any other Nativity-child - is another archetype, one of great beauty Frontispiece from Blake's 'Songs of Innocence ', 1789 indeed: the infant who enters the world mu/rum in pan'lile. through 'the innumer­ able centres of the birth of life', the mystic The Puer Eternus punctum of Boehme and Blake, through which the eternal enters time. So small, by Kathleen Raine vulnerable and helpless, yet the Christ­ child is being absolute. Profound and beautiful though that symbol is, it pres­ These pages are part of a chapter on the 'trickster' , the senex and others, I ents a different archetype from the figure lung taken jiDl?l thefourlh part oj'my recognise that it is only in the context ofthepuer. That youth lies in no mother's Autohiography . ro he published un­ ()j'lung 's contribution to thought on arms, nor is he born ofany woman, but has der the title ' Found at the Close' . The the world of the psyche that these a self-fulfilled perfection. Every arche­ type represents a total perfection; there chapter is an acknowledgement oj'my things can be discussed at al/. I am not could be no 'god' representing incom­ indebtedness to lung, hut concludes a professional psychologist, nor in pletion or imperfection, as of a man who with a passage on the puer eternus in any way qualified to discuss lung's has failed to grow up, an immature adult. which my own experience of the thought in professional terms; but Youth is itself an archetype, which I archetype is described. Although belong to a generation experiencing venture to suggest represents (in contrast critical ()j'what seems to me lung's fo r the ji'rst time the opening of the with the archetype of the senex, or 'wise fa ilure to understand this figure with long-closed door into the inner uni­ old man' to which Jung seems himself to the same fu llness with which he has I'erse oj ' Imagination, which lung have had an especial devotion or affinity) understood the animo, the 'shadow' . made possible. innate knowledge that owes nothing to

SUMMER 19RR 9 BESHARA The Puer Etemis

experience and yet is perfect; as Adam on Blake and Jung are at opposite poles in understanding". He brings his words, he the day of his creation. If the scnex is re lation to this archetype: Jung's says. "from afar" - from far regions of the knowledge of experience. the pl/el" is the 'Philemon ' , the senex-figure who was his inner worlds. from the still uncreated and innate knowledge which inspires such guide, is Blake's Urizen, blind and anx­ unknown, not from the accumulated wis­ poets as Shelley. the music of Mozart or of ious personification of the rational mind. dom and experience of the past and the Schubert, taught by none. To me the liv­ who in an emblem is shown clipping the known: for the innate wisdom of the ing presence of the pI/er has been my wings of Youth. This youthful genius - an Imagination owes nothing to experience. life long companion-daimon. my invis­ archetype any poet can recognise and The wisdom of youth is inspiration: the ible instructor perfect in eternal youthand understand - is again depicted in the won­ poets have at all times spoken from that wisdom of a pre-sexual or trans-sexual derful twel ft h plate of B lake's Job engrav­ unlearned knowledge which owes noth­ kind. The Biblical figure of Elihu in the ings. Job's friends - senexes all- have ex­ ing to experience. Shelley. Mozart, Book of Job, the Islamic figure of 'el hausted their store of wisdom; Job himself Schubert - whence came their wonderful Khidr·. the young man who appears as has exhausted his long protest. The beau­ works') My personal refusal of what has guide and instructor (as the 'teacher' of tiful figure of Elihu. his left hand pointing been written by J ung and his fo llowers on Rumi was the beautiful youth Shams al­ upwards to the stars. his right extended in this archetype may perhaps stand as a Oin. a human mediator of that archetype ) a gesture that commands attention to the protest on behalf of all poets. musicians, is something altogether different from the instruction he is about to give. Elihu artists of every kind who are given their . nativity-child or Eros the lover. the Lord comes as a prophet. to speak for God'. "I poetry, their music. by the Spirit that Krishna with his fl ute-music that draws am young and ye are very old". he says. "knoweth all things": while in our limited Radha from home and hushand to meet "But there is a spirit in man. and the human personal ities we know almost the god in the forest of Brindavan. inspiration of the Almighty giveth them not h i ng of those regions from which come truth and beauty recognised by all who hear that music or read that inspired word. 'The inspired man' pal" excel/encc was. for Blake. the poet Milton, who comes 'in the grandeur of inspiration' to triumph

fo ." h.s �y es are "pon over the rational mentality which had the w�"'> of Man &:h�observ ed, come to seem supreme in England all h;s goiu3s through the still prestigious figures of Bacon. Newton and Locke. culture-heros of the materialist culture Blake laboured to dispel. Welsh mythology knows the same figure of the inspired youth in the Bard Taliesin. who like Elihu brings his knowledge "from afar". In Vernon Wat­ kins' beautiful paraphrase of Welsh bardic poetry Taliesin tells:

Befo re men walked 1 was in these places. 1 was here W hen the mountains were laid.

1 am as light to eyes long blind, I, the stone Upon every grave.

1 saw black night Flung wide like a curtain. 1 looked up At the making of stars.

"Ask my age. / You shall have no answer" Taliesin proclaims. But it is not those inspired ones who are likely to seek help from analytical or other psychologists; " .\ ':', t.� high as may be the human cost to the poet who was there at the making of stars, his Blake's ellgral';lIg fo r The Book of Job, 1825 knowledge is beyond doubt.

10 ISSUE 6 Kathleen Raine BESHARA

Indian mythology, profound in its insight writings re-opened those very worlds of Bradbrook, and my son who once was into the fo ntal nature of Imagination. the collective unconscious, pool of hu­ interested in the Chinese books of wis­ ever-new, represents the first-created in­ man knowledge from time immemorial. dom. Halfway up that mountain was the dividuation from the Vast (Virat) who Even as I write my marginal comments on shrine we had come to visit; an outer "expresses himself with matter for his the pller clerl/lls it is in the margins of cave, and beyond, an inner cave-temple. speech and sea and land as the pages ofhis Jung's own great works on those inner (The dream came many years before I tale". as Hiranyagarbha, the golden child. regions that I write them. But as to Jung had set foot in the cave-temples of "He is the author of thought and dream, 'Philemon' was a reality present to him, Ajanta and Ellora. or knew their struc­ leader of the inner roads, builder of secret. so to me my lifelong companon-daimon ture). All remained in the outer shrine uncreated worlds. He is the carrier of the untouched by age. with our guide except Muriel Bradbrook hidden fire, the invisible hunter of the In two of my dreams - memorable and myself. who passed through into the light, the conqueror of the kingdoms of dreams that have guided my imaginative inner sanctuary. There she kneeled. and the soul. He is the intuition that lives in a life when I have not turned away to lesser [ prostrated myself. There I was shown glance of love or in the poet" s eye that concerns - the figure of that youthful in­ the four holy things: first. a rock, and glances from heaven to earth. It is the spirer has appeared. In the first of these running through the rock a great vein of lightning leap of his glance that makes the dreams (I have recounted it elsewhere and opal: a rainbow of opal light within the unknowable knowable. He is the individ­ it was the inspiration of a group of poems, rock, within the very primal substance of . ual divine. The irreducible essence to Northumberland Sequence' written the earth. Then, a bull- whether living or which you may reduce each atom or star, many years ago) the youth was asleep at of sculpture I do not know - caparisoned the integer that survives when all that with ornaments: Nandi. ancient animal makes an object shrinks to its zerohood. power. Then. a great statue of the Lord When the instrumental self lifts its hood " Buddha. in all the splendour of high art, like a Kalia Naga, the serpent king. it is the unwritten is more a supreme work of Easterncivil isation. Hiranyagarbha. the golden child. that ancient, more perfe ct than unsurpassable. dances on it and crushes it". (I) And last of all the pllcr: who gave me Adam too came from the hands of God all human knowledge; the ceremoniously a simple white cloth or in eternal perfection, made in the divine uncreated source and spirit scarf, with no writing on it; and said to image and carrying within himself the of life itself." me. 'This is the scripture I wrote before spirit of all knowledge. "Man is bornli ke I was ..." and although the sentence was a garden ready planted and sown" B lake unfinished - or perhaps it was finishecl ­ wrote; for we bring with us each our own he made me understand "before I was paradise. This, the greater knowledge. the foot of the World-Tree, which grew vein in the rock, or power of the animal, must in its nature be symbolised by man from his dream. I call it a dream, yet in fact or the great image of the Buddha en­ on the verge of life, who possesses divine it was rather a waking reverie that un­ throned in gold and adorned with all that knowledge in pelfection without dilution folded itself before me. The second - civilisation has attained". I was made to or contam ination from experience. much later - dream (a true dream this understand that the unwritten is more Adam's experience is the cosmos itself. It time, remembered from sleep) was no less ancient, more perfect than all human may be that the archetypal sene.r so dear to significant and unforgettable after many knowledge; the uncreated source and J ung, and experienced by him in the figure years. These dreams have been to me spirit of life itself. of Philemon, signifies the immeasurable epiphanies of such sacred knowledge as These, and a few other ' great dreams', age of the universe of wisdom on which has been given to me by that spirit of have brought with them an innerenl ight­ we draw; the Biblical 'ancient of days': Imagination itself, which gives to each enment and sense of the holy-the numi­ the figure the Indian myth-makers called such symbols as are appropriate to us. To nous; a depth of meaning the symbols of 'grandfather'. Philemon would not in this others, other revelations, other symbolic the Christian re ligion have never respect correspond to Blake's Urizen. emblems, no two alike. It is indeed toJung brought me, however much I may have who is the purblind wisdom of reason and that we owe the re-opening of that sacred wished or tried to relate to these. I have experience. Yet the eternal youth of universe in which such symbols are never dreamed of any figure of the Adam newly-created - Taliesin, el Khidr. shown, as in the ancient Mysteries, to Christian Mysteries, nor experienced Elihu. Milton type of 'the inspired poet", each according to our situation and our towards the beautiful figure of the Hiranyagarbha - signifies a power to need, and not thrust upon us from without, Christ-child the recognition and awe in which Jung (who seems to have had no weighed down with Church doctrine and which I experienced the presence of the particular interest in the arts) was curi­ boredom. inner avatar of the Pllcr ClernllS in the ously blind. Doubtless many patients who [n this second dream [ was given the guise of the Lord Buddha; doubtless seek the help of psychologists suffer from unwritten scriptures themselves, and by because Christian symbols have long immaturity and must be very tiresome to the puer elernus. A mountain, in China or been too familiar and spoiled for me - as wives or family, but a pantheon lacking maybe on its borders. I with a small surely for many others - by being thrust some figure of the inspired bard - the true company of pilgrims, led by a young upon us in a purely externalmanner. As puer elernus - is defective. Chinese; in modern dress, not at all ar­ Jung himself saw, the great shortcoming Yet how impossible it would have been chaic. Among the company my oid friend of the Christian religion is that its sym­ to conceive of this figure before Jung's the Shakespeare scholar Muriel bols are "all outside". The inner worlds

SUMMER 1988 11 BESHARA The Puer Eternis

are subject to no rules or laws but those of and it is that sword, in my critical writings reality itself. These things simply are, like and in my work on 'Temenos' that I have sun and moon and stars. wielded in the Great Battle after all. With KATHLEEN RAINE That my dream of the puer took Bud­ great delight, I am bound to say. What the dhist rather than Christian form I must sacred world gives us is never given in The Presence accept. Doubtless the symbol could be vain. transposed into Christian terms, but for How trivial the obvious interpretation POEMS 1984-87 myself I see no reason to do so or to refuse in terms of sexual symbolism had I been a any part of what was given me from the Freudian' The banal and superficial inter­ The Presence is Kathleen Raine's tenth volume of poetry imaginal world itself. Neither. on the pretation of sword and scabbard in no way and the first since her Collected other hand, do I see the dream as an corresponds to the realities of the nllll/Jus Poems of 1981. Here the poet's indication that I should 'become' a Bud­ inlOginali.1 as understood by J ung. As I vision comes full circle; the dhist. How indeed does one . become' write of those dreams I do so in the light of interpenetration of the world of anything other than life in all its complex­ Jung and the revolution he wrought - nature and the human world is ity has made of one') Many of my friends although doubtless a professional analyti­ seen with the naked wonder of have told me of Christian dreams no less cal psychologist might discern other the child but bearing the weight numinous for them than were my non­ meanings. However, none knows what a of human experience. Christian symbolic fornls for me. It is to dream 'means' better than the dreamer. Jung we owe the realisation that all sym­ that meaning being the experience itself. cloth bound £7.50 bolic forms are relative. only reality itself But Jung it was who has sent us in search is absolute. Only oncc did I receive a of sacred meaning in such experiences. 'great dream ' which, if not Christian. yet He has changed the context, the cl imate. seems to derive from and fit with my the light in which we are now able to Christian culture. Years ago it was. and receive and to use such epiphanies of the Published in June on the concerned a sword of light. brilliant and 'eternalwor lds'. Or to receive them at all occasion of the author's pure. In the dream I found this sword in and not, as my parents' generation would 80th birthday my hand; I was holding it upright. rather have done, either dismiss them altogether

I ike the I ittle nickel- si I ver figure of Jean ne or been (like my mother, who was a great d'Arc I loved in my childhood that stood dreamer) unable to make use of them in Selected on my grandfather's mantelpiece in l ong the better understanding of the I iving of a ago and far away Northumberland. I was life. I see in Jung the term - the f1ower ­ Poems amazed and awed at the sword's brilliant of the Protestant tradition of the Inner light and knew in my dream that it was a Light, the opening of what my oid friend This is the first time a selection sacred gift. Not. indeed. the gift I would the mystic Gay Taylor was shown as 'a from the whole range of have expected to receive. and it seems that church in thc hearts of men'. (Her vision­ Kathleen Raine's poetic (Ji'III'/'(' at the time I did not know what to do with ary dreams, unlike mine but like some has been published. The author it. fo r in my dream I slowly and thought­ Rosamond Lehmann has described in her has chosen work from among fu lly sheathed the sword in a shabby old . Swan in the Evening', often took Chris­ her earliest poems up to and scabbard. A mistake perhaps') Yet it was tian form ). I find it most wonderful, and including poems written in the St. Paul's 'sword of truth ' from 'the whole infinitely liberating to those of us irked by last year. She has written a Foreword especially for this annourofGod ' described in words I knew the prescri bed iconography of Church and collection which should not well long ago. It seems to me now that the creed to have been shown by J ung that the only bring pleasure to those invisible Instructors knew better than I forms assumed by the Holy Spirit are for who are already committed to what gift it was fitting I should receive. each of us that which is for us, individu­ her poetry. but should serve as a all y, most appropriate; whether in some timely and welcome familiar traditional guise or mysteriously introduction to her work for as a figure nameless yet recognisable those who have yet to discover always. its unique, paradisical vision.

(I) Narahari. Prophet of'New India (a paperback £7.95 nO\'e/) h\' Vinara/.; Kri.l'hna Co/.;a/.;.p14.

F or details of a special, signed edition of one hundred copies, write fo r a prospectus to:

GOLGONOOZA PRESS, 3 CAMBRIDGE DRIVE, IPSWICH, SUFFOLK IP2 9EP, UK

12 ISSUE 6 The New - Peter Young BESHARA

t would be in no way an innovation to the truly new has its attractive, compel­ Isuggest that the 'new' should be ling quality, as Muhyiddin Ibn ' Arabi coupled with the 'old'. This is an old idea. explains in his Fusus al-Hikam: "Dost Novelty is, after all, as old as the world. thou not see how the little child influences What then is the justification for a new the adult by the attractive power which is discussion of 'the new'? innate in him, so that the adult puts aside This is an age which is self-consciously his dignity to amuse the child, to make a new age, an aquarian age, which has by Peter Young him laugh, and he puts himself at the same given rise to great innovat ions styled 'the level as the childish intelligence. It is that New Physics', 'the New Biology', 'the he obeys unconsciously the power of the New Economics' and so on. Yet if this fascination of the child ... for the young "In my beginning is my end" newness were not rooted in tradition, or one is more directly attached to his Lord, T.S.Eliot oldness, a hiatus would have developed, a because of his primordiality, whereas the hiccup of incomprehensibility allowing adult is more remote." (I). This is not the no connection with previous forms of worldly-wise child who has already thought. That which is new cannot appear pearance different, and therefore new, learned how to play the adult like a independently of that which is prior to it, from that which he had yesterday. An­ hooked salmon, but the beauty and inno­ or old. It takes but little imagination to see cientness cannot itself appear in a tempo­ cence of that which is free from all notions that continuity, memory, experience, ral dimension as itself because of the very of selfhood. Its effect is to bring about order, knowledge, recognition and beauty relativity of temporality, and if it does so humility for the sake of appreciation. It is would be banished by the metaphysical it is always coupled with newness. Conse­ a mercy to us. severance of the old from the new. quently we must look to a diffe rent di­ For Arjuna in the Baghavad Gita, news Following Einstein's axiom that "eve­ mension to find these pure qualities by of the real state of affairs was brought by rything is relative, one to another, ad infi­ which we recognise phenomena and Krishna himself in the form of his chari­ nitum" and applying this to the two quali­ name them old and new. oteer. For Ibn ' Arabi, news of his own ties of old and new, we would find. were reality came in the form of the eternal we able to observe it, that in infinity the youth as he circumambulated the Ka'aba, old and new are not relative to one an­ What then if we consider another, 'verti­ his position mediatory, informing from other, but have literally disappeared in the cal '. dimension; that which links non­ the Ancient and eternal in the person of non-appearance of their distinctive quali­ appearance to appearance? For this, con­ the new. (2) The quality of reception of ties. Yet, infinity is Being Itself. and we siderations of relative time must be re­ the new is all-important. Christ advised know of it without knowing it; and, know­ moved, for only at this point is the pure "Suffer little children to come unto me, ing of it in some measure, we are able to quality of Ancientness to be found. Here for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven", and pursue our lives without total chaos, be­ the quality of the Ancient is that of non­ Mohammed bared his head to the rain cause we are nourished by the knowledge temporal primordiality, an ageless an­ "because it comes fresh from my Lord". of it with those qualities without some cientry belonging to the very being of the Perhaps this, then, is the hope for the measure of which we could not subsist; to Ancient, which does not appear to any­ new age; that what is given as news in wit trust, certainty, patience, resolution thing other than itself. Yet from this total, whatever province of knowledge is re­ and veracity. We recognise and affirm unique appearance to Itself is derived all ceived with humility as direct indications that infinite state of being when we recog­ that is ·new'. In short, from the Ancient from the Reality of Itself. of one's own nise a new-bornbaby as the same reality appears the new. In this newness there is reality and meaning. and as invitation to who in later years receives a birthday no invention, but the continual overflow­ the know ledge of onesel f as no other than greeting from the Queen. Where is the ing into form of the development of new the Ancient and Giver of news. I f it be not resemblance? expressions of that which is Ancient in thus, either in these pages of BESHARA The baby is clearly not the same as the Itself. In this appearance there is youth, (Good News) or the New Sciences, then old man, and yet we affirm that it is the vigour and verdant knowledge. That that novelty would be simply that of a same person. Consequently, if we are which is truly new is also complete, and, tawdry glass trinket bought in the market veracious, we also affirm that that person albeit a new form, its newness resides not place today and crushed underfoot tomor­ is in the infinite state of being in which old in form but in its own essential quality of row. and new are the same as each other. being the immediate appearance of the However, old and new are not devoid of Ancient. (I) The Wisdom of the Prophets. trans/. Angela their respective meanings, but are quali­ For the one to whom the new appears, Culme-Seymour fr om a translation by Titus ties which point to that same infinite real­ complete humility is essential, for other­ Burckhardr. Chapter on Moses p97. Beshara ity. The new-bornbaby is not in itself the wise the pride and selfhood of, "I already Publications. 1975. essence of newness since it is certainly knew that" dominates that which should older than it was at the moment of birth; dominate, and that which should domi­ (2) See 'Sufis of Andalusia ' trallsl. by RW. 1. correlatively the octogenarian has an ap- nate is the truly new. Fortunately for us, Austin . p37. Beshara Publications. 1988.

SUMMER 1988 13 BESHARA For a New Society

For a New Society

Dr Willis W. Harman President, Institute of Noetic Sciences, California.

Edited extracts fr om all article fi rst published ill 'World Development Forum '

THE (,HAN( ;IN(; CONTEXT OF What is h�lppt:ning in tht:st: thret: �Ircas menta l concepts of husiness and labour. HUMAN AND ECONOMIC DEVEL­ constitutt:s such a major shift that each of employment and welfare theory. of OPMENT �t1one would rt:sult in profound ch�lnge in liberal and Marx ist analysis. are all hased Tht: prt:st:nt world t:C(lnolllic systt:m did tht: world's t:conomic and political insti­ in IJI"()dllC!i(}Il�/i}( ,lIscd .wcicIY. It may not rt:sult from somt:ont: 's tht:ory about tutions. Tht: three together help to define have seemed to make sense in the past to how it should ht:. Rather. its hasit: pattern a system change of consummate propor­ think of economic production as the de evolved at �I time of dramatic s(lcietal tions. FIClO goal of society - to think of an ever­ change in Westt:rn Europe. and the theo­ increasing fraction 0" overall human ac­ rit:s camt: later. Expanding commerce. tivity as being treated as commodities in changing mt:taphysical assumptions and THE INFORMATION SOCIETY the mainstream economy: to assume that a new industrial ethos were creating a Over half the labour force in the United the indiviclual"s primary relationship to new society: the evolution of the eco­ States. and an increasing fraction of eco­ society is related to a mainstream-econ­ nomic system was part of that overall nomic activity. are now involved primar­ omy job (ie. having one, being married to systcm change. Some such sea change is ily with information handling activities. someone who has, or training for one) : to taking place again. This time it is Less than a quarter of the work force is have social thinking dominated by con­ worldwidt:. equally profound and hap­ now occupied with the sorts of activities cepts of scarcity. commercial secrecy and pening fa ster. The changing face of eco­ that shaped the economic system in its money exchange. nomics is part of that. and if we are to present form - mainly the growing. ex­ However. that is not necessarily the ulllkrstand the part. we must understand traction and production of commodities. case for the future. The primary resource tht: whole. materials and things. Statements similar of future society is information. knowl­ Let us foc us on thret: aspects of this to these would hold true for other highly edge. learning. wisdom. But knowledge is hroader context: industrialised societies. Further trends in not a commodity like tomatoes or auto­ these direct ions are bringi ng changes mobiles - it cannot be priced and distrib­ (I) the emerging 'information society' whose impl icat ions are both controversial uted in the same ways: it does not behave (2) the spread ofa global perspectivc and and not well understood. according to the same "laws'. Thus the (3) changes in value perspectives and We tend to overlook how basic is this present signs of the inadequacy of past underlying beliefs. shift to . information society". The funda- thinking should not be surprising. There is

14 ISSUE 6 Dr Willis Hannan BESHARA no reason to expect old concepts to fit the problems to be real. 'wars of redistribution' with terrorism as new situation. Another threat taken far more seriousl y one of the main weapons. The fundamental problem is not how to in recent years is that of the nuclear 'bal­ A third conceivable path in which high­ stimulate more demand fo r information ance of terror'. The unsolvability of the consumption societies voluntarily cut services, nor how to create more jobs in nuclear dilemma is perhaps the major consumption to ameliorate some of the the mainstream economy. It is, rather, a factor making the public tolerant toward problems is equally difficult to make basic problem of meaning. Whar is (he the possibility of a major restructuring of plausible, partly because of the severe ce//frolmeaning o(admnced human soci­ the global system. unemployment problems those societies etv when economic produCfion no longer At least equally significant with these would face. A path to global social he­ makes sense as (har cen(ral meaning two aspects of the new global perspective gemony is apparently attractive to some hecause i( is no longer a challenge (and is the change in thinking which is taking developing nations, but totally unaccept­ hecause in (he long run fo cusing on eco­ place within the 'sleeping giant' known as able to the major capitalist nations. nomic produCfion does no( lead {() a \'i­ the developing world. The giant is awak­ What all this comes to is a basic chal­ ahle glohal fu (ure F ening. Those who had, for so long, ac­ lenge of past assumptions about the future cepted the role of privation, inferiority of the globe. No consensus exists today on and servi lity are less and less willing to do what constitutes a viable patternof global GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE so. For the two decades following World development. It is increasingly clear that It may have been feasible in the past to War 11, political liberation and economic present trends do not. The Westernin dus­ ignore the global-system aspects of much development were the two chief themes. trial paradigm appears in the end to be social and economic activity. That is no Development was taken to be more or less incompatible with wise relationship to the longer the case. Most medium-sized and synonymous with economic develop­ earth and its resources; to produce sys­ large businesses are now transnational, at ment - ie. with 'modernisation' and in­ tematically marginal people who have no least in some sense. So are the problems­ dustrialisation. Increasingly, however, meaningful roles in the society: to result ranging from acid rain, toxic chemical cultural leaders in the developing COUll­ in a society that habitually confuses goals concentrations and deteriorating water tries have come to see that the best devel­ with means (economic and technological supplies: through widespread maldevel­ opment for them is not necessarily aban­ advancement); and to persistently endan­ opment and long-tenn soil degradation by donment of their own cultural roots and ger the future of the human race with arms industrialised methods: to an assortment adoption of the alien culture of Western races which are an intrinsic part of the of economic ailments including spread­ industrial society. Thus there has been not system. ing and possibly chronic unemployment, only growing insistence on a diffe rent Thus present economic, corporate and and the precariousness of the world finan­ international economic order, but also on social policies are, by and large, inconsis­ cial system. Another new factor is the exploring alternative development paths. tent with viable long-term global devel­ presence of an international labour mar­ opment. and are being made without a ket, with implications yet to be revealed. picture of a viable global fu ture in mind. And enveloping all of this, made possible The global dilemma can be simply stated. by a global communication system, is a Of the easily imaginable paths of global global climate of public opinion. development. those that appear to be VALUES CHANGE It is now clear that the complex of economically feasible do not look to be The third aspect of world change we want global environmental, resource and spe­ ecologically and socially plausible, and to explore is a shifting value emphasis cies-extinction problems, contributed to those that appear ecologically feasible visible throughout the industrialised by increasing industrialisation through­ and humanistically desirable do not seem world (particularly the English-speaking out the world, must be taken seriously. economically and politically fe asible. portion), and a far more profound, long­ Problems become progressively more To illustrate this, imagine that all the lasting and consequential shift in underly­ severe: they are highly interconnected developing countries were somehow to be ing beliefs. Essentially, this is a change in with one another and with industrialisa­ successful in fo llowing the examples of attitude toward our inner, subjective ex­ tion and population concentration: and the industrialised and newly industrialis­ perience - affinning its importance and without major changes in the present ing countries: the planet would be hard­ validity. Indications of a recent strength­ trends the problems would become intol­ pressed to accommodate six to eight bil­ ening of ' inner-directed' values (ecologi­ erably grievous by around the end of the lion people living high-consumption cal, humane, spiritual) and corresponding century. The message between the lines is lifestyles, and it is easy to imagine intense weakening of economic and status values, that the problems will not be resolved by political battles over environmental and are fairly well documented by now. Un­ 'technological fix' or improved manage­ quality-or-life issues. derlying this value shift is a more subtle ment - a much more fundamental system We may try to picture another path but more fundamental shift in beliej:I' - change will be required, including a where the present high-consumption so­ away from the confident scientific mate­ change in the overall network of eco­ cieties remain so, but the poorer countries rialism of the earlier part of the century nomic incentives. While individual con­ stay low-consumption (ie. poor) with low and toward some fornl of universal tran­ clusions and recommendations in the per-capita demand on resources and envi­ scendentalism. various analyses can no doubt be chal­ ronment; it is hard to see how a global Paralleling this is a value-and-belief lenged, the swing of informed public system with such a persisting disparity of shift in the developing world which is opinion is clearly towards considering the income and wealth could avoid vicious again partial and indistinct; its direction is

SUMMER 1988 IS BESHARA For a New Society

away from Western materialism and sumptions of modern science. towards a reassertion of the validity and The remarkable achievements of the truth in native cultural roots. In both de­ scientific method of inquiry, as well as the veloped and developing countries this " ...the world appears to be perplexities it has encountered in some shift represents a reversal of centuries­ areas such as the study of consciousness. long trends. However, it is perhaps better experiencing a 'second are re lated to a set of underlying assump­ viewed as an evolutionary advance. Copernican revolution' tions at a metaphysical level. These in­ Throughout history. individuals and clude in particular: J70Silil'ism - the as­ communities seem repeatedly to have wherein the reassertion of sumption that what is (scientifically) real come upon the creative factors and fo rces the importance of inner, is what is physically measurable: and rc­ of the human psyche. Great philosophies dllCli()lIism - the assumption that (scien­ and great re ligions have time and again subjective experience is tific) understanding is to be fo und in the come into being as an outcome of such challenging the adequacy reducing of phenomena to more elemen­ discoveries. and for a while profoundly tal ones (eg. explaining heat in terms of influenced the course of human events. of positivistically biased molecular motion. or behaviour in terms But as often as the discoveries have been science. " of response to physical stimuli). made. they have been lost or become All the same there remained a fee ling inaccessible - at best preserved within on the part of many scientists (as well as sOllle esoteric group. non-scientists) that something important For the past several centuries the power was being left out. After all. the only and pn.:stige of the Western influence has experience of real ity that we have directly heen such �IS to cause a weakening of this is our own conscious awareness. There clement of traditional cultures. With the who we are. what kind of universe we are seemed something unnatural about a sci­ vogue ofpositivistic science in the earlier in. and what is ultimately important to us. ence that appeared to deny consciousness part of this century. the religious mean­ The scientific materialism which so as a causal reality when one' s everyday ings associated with deep inner experi­ confidently held forth its answers to these experience affi rmed it as a most important ences were rather thoroughly debunked, questions a couple of generations ago is a causal reality. In such areas as psychoso­ and serious exploration of the creative dying orthodoxy. Its basic premises are matic illncss. the effects of mind on heal­ unconscious processes was discouraged. being replaced with some sort 0" tran­ ing or on the functioning of the body's Recently. however. there has been a scendentalist beliefs that include in­ immune systems. neither the positivistic resurgence of interest. both in the hroader creased fa ith in reason guided by deep prem ise nor t he red uct ioni st one seemed . ,ociety in various meditative disciplines intuition. In other words. a re -spiritualisa­ to fi t. (The concept of health. for example . �lI1d re ligious philosophies. and in the tion of society is taking place. but one is not rcductionistic but holistic.) It was scientific community in research on con­ more experienced and non-institutional­ clear that besides the science of measur­ sciousness. This latter development is ised. Icss fun(Jalllentalist and sacerdotal, able information. LJ uantified descriptions, well summarised in the fo llowing quota­ than most of the historically familiar deterministic models and reductionist tion lrolll Nobel laureate Roger Sperry: fo rms of re I igion. With th is change comes explanations. these other aspects of hu­ a long-term shift in value emphases and man experience seemed tocall fo ranother "Social values depend ...on whether priorities which wc shall look at in the kind of knowledge. That knowledge is the consciousness is helieved to be mortal. next part. kind found useful in guiding human de­ imlllortal. reincarnate or cosmic ...10- velopment. in making value choices and calised and hrain-bound or essentially in humankind' s search for meaning. It is universal ... The new interpretation I in A SHIFT IN ASSUMPTIONS concerned with purpose and volition: it sciencel gives lu ll recognition to the Few of us would doubt that the scientific places emphasis on value issues and tele­ primacy of inner conscious awareness revolution of the 17th century was one of ological explanations; it uses models and as a causal reality ... Recent conceptual the important watersheds in Westernhis­ metaphors involving holistic concepts developments in the mind-hrain sci­ tory - for that matter. in the history of the like health, purpose. love, trust: it places ences rejecting reduction ism and mate­ planet. The world perceived by the edu­ value on explorations of alternate states or rialistic determination on the one side. cated person of the year 1600 was sti 11 the 'Ievels' of consciousness. particularly the and dualis ms on the other. clear the way world of the Middle Ages: by 1700 the 'deep intuition'. for a rational approach to the theory and informed person literally perceived a dif­ One possible way of resolving the felt prescription of values and to a natural ferent real ity. It was not just that men now incolT�pleteness of science in its present fusion of science and rei igion." ( I ) beI ieved that the earth goes round the sun. form is to think in terms of a complemen­ The change was far more fundamental. It tary body of knowledge. Ultimately. in consisted of a shi fling of allegiance from this approach. there are two basic kinds of The practical significance of this shift in the Scholastic authority system of the late ' stuff' in the universe. One is matter­ hasic premises Illay not be immediately Middle Ages to the authority system of energy stuff. explored so competently by apparent. Modern industrial society. like modern science. The tacit metaphysical science in its present form. The other is every other in history. rests on some set of assumptions of medieval thought were mind-spirit stuff-not physically measur­ largely tacit. basic assumptions about being replaced by the metaphysical as- able. but 'real' in human experience.

16 ISSUE 6 Or Willis Harrnan BESHARA

Besides this dualistic alternative there is yet a third possible kind of metaphysical assumption. When scholars looked care­ fully into thc world' s many di fferent spiri­ tual traditions. an important common thread appeared. The various re ligious traditions tend to have both exoteric or public versions. and also esoteric 'inner­ circle' understandings. The latter typi­ cally involve some sort of spiritual or meditative discipline; they place primary emphasis on the individual's own inner access to the sources of wisdom and en­ lightenment. The exoteric versions of the world' s religions are obviously very dif­ ferent one from the other. However. the esoteric versions appear to be essentially the same, and to represent a valuable body of experience it would not be prudent to ignore.Wher eas the exoteric versions are often dualistic. the esoteric forms assert a monistic point of view: the ultimate stuff of the universe is consciousness. Mind or Collating Ja rm surlley results in a Salie the Children Fund oJJi ce in the Sudan. Photograph consciousness is primary. and matter­ by Jenny Matthews. energy arises in some sense out of mind. Individual minds are not separate (al­ fl ict appeared as a series 01' battles over quacy ofpositivistically biased science. I I' though individual brains may appear to such issues as the age of the earth. the this picture of a shifting metaphysical be): they connect at some unconscious meaning of fossil records. evolutionary base proved to fit - that is, if this ' third level. The physical world is to the greater theory. the Freudian reinterpretation of metaphysic' continues to capture the alle­ mind as a dream image is to the individual the human psyche. etc. Religion always giance ofa widening group of people until mind. Ultimately reality is contacted not seemed to lose. Then as the world has it ultimately prevails. then the world ofthe through the physical senses, but through moved well into the 20th century the 21st century may be as di fferent from the deep intuition. Consciousness is not the conflict subsided. and people tended to present as modern times have been from end-product of bi 11 ions of years of mate­ live their religious lives apart from what­ the Middle Ages. rial evolution: rather, consciousness was ever they thought science was telling there all along, and its existence was not them about the nature of real ity. The price contingent on the development of neu­ paid for this schizophrenia was that nei­ THE LEARNING SOCIETY ronal cells within the human cranium. ther science nor religion seemed to be What comes after production-focused At first thought the idea that science satisfying the person's deep desire for society? What is the central purpose of might be reconstituted on the basis of this some kind of understanding that would be advanced societies when it no longer third kind of metaphysic may seem as secure enough to base one 's life on. It now makes sense for that central purpose to be outrageous a proposition as the heliocen­ appears that what is happening is a resolu­ economic production? The answer be­ tric universe did to many in early-17th­ tion of this confl ict in a somewhat unex­ comes apparent from the emerging value century Europe. The idea of matter pected way. There may indeed be a con­ emphases and beliefs about the nature of emerging out of consciousness is foreign flict between dogmatic exoteric religion human beings. It is to advance humall to the Westernmi nd; at any rate it would and positivistic science. However. there is growrh and development to the .lidlesr have seemed so a quarter of a century ago. not an inevitable confl ict between the exrent. The Athenian model of Paideia Any such idea as the phenomenal world esoteric 'perennial wisdom ' of the applies. The primary function of society being a thought in the Universal Mind world's spiritual traditions and a science is to promote learning in the broadest seemed to belong with the philosophies of based on the third kind of metaphysical possible definition. The motivations the East. However, a growing fraction of assumptions identified above. implicit in the emerging belief-and-val­ the professional, business and scientific It has been necessary to dwell on this ues structure fit with this; they do not fit world (as well as just plain people) have point because it is potentially so impor­ with mindless consumption. material been quietly reporting that when they take tant, and an initial inclination may not acq u i sit ion and endless econom ic growth. their total experience into account, it is take it seriously. Improbable as it may In the 'learning society' the occupational this latter metaphysic that feels most sat­ seem sti 11 to many persons, the world focus of most people is learning and de­ isfactory. appears to be experiencing a 'second veloping in the broadest sense. This focus The modern world long assumed that Copernican revolution' wherein the reas­ includes a wider diversity of activities there was a fundamental conflict between sertion of the importance of inner, subjec­ such as fonnal education, research, explo­ science and religion. For a time this con- tive experience is challenging the ade- ration, self-discovery and participating in

SUMMER 1988 17 BESHARA For a New Society the community of concerned citizens to possible the long-term resolution of de­ pretations of why the transformation is choose a better future, These activities velopment-related problems. it is equally necessary or appears to be happening. contri bute to human betterment and fu l­ important to understand the constraints There is no conversation more critical fi llment. They <.Irehu mane. non-polluting that will be operating during the transition today than that around the question: what and non-stultifying. They can absorb period. It is not improbable that this pe­ is viable global development') What is a unlimited numbers of persons not re­ riod will see some sort of partial break­ . world that works for everyone") As this quired for other work. down of the world economic system. This dialogue leads to deeper understanding of . Learning society' impl ies re versal of a could be triggered by any of a number of this major evolutionary change of direc­ number of aspects of the long-ternlin dus­ factors. but the oppressive debt structure tion. there can result an easing of anxiety trialisation trend: it almost certainly in­ is a likely candidate. Such signs of fu nda­ and a lessening of the I ikelihood of large­ volves something like the 'intermediate mental change tend to be threatening to scale human misery attendant to the tran­ technology' concepts of E. F.Schumacher many people. particularly if they lack sition. Men of action have often given the and others. These terms refer to technol­ understanding of its cause. Response to advice. "Don' t just talk: get out there and ogy which is resource conserving. envi­ perceived threat is likely to lead to non­ do something." Perhaps the best advice ronmentally benign, frugal in the use of constructive actions. There are two com­ for the short term is: "Don't Just do some­ energy. re latively labour intensive. and mon forms of such response. One is an thing: get out there and talk", . understandable and usable at the individ­ attempt to turnback the clock' and return ual or community level. Such technology to an imagined time when family and (/) /

BESHARA Magazine BESHARA --- -­ welcomes letters to the editor, comments and contri­ l.. ·t· . .1 f"... .·.1 butions from its readers. For Issue 7, please write +-+ PUBLICATIONS l.···r ••t·••··,J1 before September 15th 19RX to: ...... - The Editor, The Stables. Shcrhornc. NI' Cheltenham. Glos CL.'i-l :mz, England 24 Sidney Street, Oxfo rd OX4 JAG.

Sufis of Andalusia

MOTILAL BOOKS by Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Translated by RWJ Austin

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18 ISSUE 6 John D. Barrow BESHARA

The New Cosmology by John D. Barrow

EXTRACTS FROM A SEMINAR GIVEN AT B ESHARA S HERBORNE, 1988

COSMOLO( ;Y come to grips with either very micro­ explain why the Earth exists. or why we scopic things. or things which are very. are sitting here now or why Halley's very large - or better still. both. comet ex i sts: 4 uestions that arc sosp eci fic Until a few years ago it was believed cannot be answered by the subject. Wc are that the world 01' elementary particles had interested in the 'coarse-grained' struc­ little or nothing to say about the structure ture of the universe: why it is roughly the of galaxies. and vice versa. but in the last size it is. the density it is. the age it is and five or six years there has been something so on. The Oxford English Dictionary of a small revolution within cosmology. defines cosmology as 'the science or the­

/ / People have come to appreciate that the ory of the universe as an ordered whole structure and the reasons for the existence and of the general laws which governit ' . of galaxies and clusters of galaxies are This definition can encompass different bound up with aspects of the very smallest levels: you might be interested in all the particles of nature. And vice versa. the possible sorts of laws and descriptions only way. perhaps. that wc can test our ideas about the very tiniest elements of

nature - t he smallest elementary part ic les. superstrings. or whatever one thinks they ... we mllst cOllie 10 grips with either rery might be - is by using astronomy and microscopic things ... cosmology. It is too expensive to build We human beings sit almost mid-way accelerators that can attain the very. very between the scale of the sub-atomic world high energies at which the most interest­ of elementary particles. where the subtle­ ing aspects of particle physics emerge. ties of quantum theory make things rather However. the ' Big Bang' provides us with counter-intuitive, and the extreme of the a sort of theoretical laboratory where arbi­ astronomical world where curved space trarily high energies were attained, and so and General Relativity dictate what hap­ we can explore the consequences of our pens. Our view of the universe is coloured theories in the past history of the Universe by the fact that our experience is of rather and see whether they have observable small and everyday lengths. masses. sizes consequences for the present. and times. If we are really to unravel the Cosmologists talk about the Universe deeper structure of the universe. we must in a very general way. Their goal is not to ...or things which are very, very large

SUMMER 19RR 19 BESHARA The New Cosmology

you could have of the universe: or j u st in collaboration with Frank Tipler. 'The pred ict s that all the bri gh t galaxies ought a very particular account. which you A nth ropic Cosmol ogica l Principle' (I). to be the big ones, then one j u st looks at m igh t view a, the 'best buy" model - the lots and lots of bright galaxies to see i f big-bang cosmological model: or you th ey are also the biggest. might have a wider interest in a branch of As a science, cosmology has some unique However. the problem with correlating metaph ysic s deal ;ng with lj uestions about fe atures which are not often mentioned. as a method is that. as in all fo rms of the world as a whole - the laws of nature but have a dramatic effect on thc way one science. we cannot base what we know of and ,truclUre of n�lture. inc lud ing the a,­ pursues the s ubject. the world on observation alone because of tronomical world. First of all. unlike most 'ic iences. cos­ wh�lt scientists call 'selection effects': mology and astronomy in general suffer that i,. the fact that every observation onc Co,mology is unusual �l' a ,C1ence In a from the problem of not having enough makes is i nevitably subject to some sort of numher of W�lyS. not le�lst in ih connec­ d�lt�1. In most sciences there is so much hi�l', For instance. if onc were to draw up tion with other suhjech. Let me remind data that any theory has to be extrclllely ;1 cens u s of al l the galaxies and stars in the you of four tr�ldition�t1 topic, where cos­ good ,iust to get oil the ground hecause universe. noting their hrightness. to get �l mology. unliJ.-e m�lny other sciences. has there arc so many facts it h�IS to incorpo­ pic! ure of whether there tended to hc Illore wider i lll p l iGl t ions for philo.soph y. or rate and expl�l i n frolll the word go. In hright galaXie s than fa int ones. it is allllost evcn thcology. astronolllY there �lrc not so many fac t.s. ccrt�lin th�lt you would find re lat ive l y hrst of �t1l therc is the trad ition�t1 argu­ People thinJ.- they ha vc a good theory in Illore bright galaxics than fa int ones in ml'nt for thc c\istence ofC;od \\ hich goes your census, And the main reason for thi, hy the name of the ' Cos nlOlogiGtI Argu­ is that bright galaxies arc so Illuch easier Illent·. over I-v hich there have heen argu­ to 'cc, A stro nomy above all sciences is ments for many. many centuries. totally beset hy this sort o f 'selection Secondly there is thc tradition of the crfect' . heat-de�lth of the Uni\'erse. This is the !\ third factor is that the Universe. the idea that if onc is silling in an expanding object of study. is u nilj ue, Th is is clearly universe governed by the secoll(l law of a rather peculiar aspect for the sc ie ntifi c thermodynamic,s. then divmlcr is con­ Illethod. which is hased upon the whole t ill ll�t1 ly gmll ing at �l m i no,copic levcl. idca of repeatable experiments and stud y­ This IllC�lns th�lt �t 11 ordcrcd fO rl1h of cn­ ing Ill�lny different systems which are ergy - liJ.-L' �ltoms or pcople - arc bc ing supposed to he the same in some ways, dcgr�ldcd down into ratl1\'r un i ntcrcst i ng Becausc of its uni que ne,o;s , wc Clnnot nec­ fOrJ lls or L' nergy I i J.-c a ,s moot h SC�1 or c "�lrily cxpcct th�lt laws of nature which r:ldi:ltl!lI1. In thc Il)2()'s �lIld 3()·s. physi­ �lpply to s uh-sy,tellls within the Universe ci,,, liJ.-L' hldingtoll �lnd k:lns pl�lycd a �t1,0 apply to the Universc �IS �l whole, Nor ••• 11'1' are IIO! ohserrillg !lIe IIl1irerse as i! is role In popltl�lri,ing thc Idca or thc hL',lt­ i, there i, �lIly reason why onc should !III/ay - we are ohserrillg i! as i! \\ as dcath and this h,ld ,I dr,l111,ltic ,llld pc \\i­ expect �ln e x p b nat ion ofsolllcthing �lbout m i stlL' c fkct u pOll t hc ph i I Osoplll'rs llf that J-:instein's Thcory of C;cner�t 1 Rel�ltivity. thc structure of the Universe as a whole to era. P,lrt icul:trly Bertrand Ru\Sc II who and th�lt it is �l good description. as near a, ha\'e any �lppl iGltion in any other �lrea, tOOJ.- it ,IS cllnfirmatlon of :1 pe \ \ i m istic. makcs no dillerencc. ofhm," the univcr,e And so there i, no reason to douht that hunl�lni" tiL' \'icII th�lt c\'crything was heh,lves tod�lY: hut wh�lt wc re�t1ly \\ ant i s very special types of explanation might going to come to an incI' iwble :lnd rather more data to test its prcdictions in morc have to he hrought into pl ay to explain �lIl1i-climactll' cnd, More rcccntly Tc il­ detail. such things as why the Unive rse came into hard dc Chardin dCI'eloped :1 sOlllewhat Second l y. unlike most sciences. lI e be ing IS billion years ago, llly,tiGtI picture of the future of the Uni­ cannot carry out e x pe ri ments on the uni­ Another aspect of this uniqueness is vcrse spurred on by thc idea of the heat­ verse - wc j u st have to take what is on that often one will want to say things like death. and his desire Il as to turn it into a offer. In experimental science. one tries to "the universe has a special feature - it is more optimistic \' i cII . isolate the inessential factors by holding a expanding at the same rate in every direc­ Th i rd I y. the ast ronomer Carl S,lgan has particular factor constant and changing tion" and go on to consider whether this is heen a \'er) \'ocikrous propagandist for the others. In cosmology we GlnnOI do probable or improbable, whethe r. had one thc SETI (Sc�trl'h for Extra-Tc ITcstri a lln­ that. so we do not really know which are started the universe in some random way, tcl l igcnce ) project. which to date has done the fundamental things about the uni verse one would have expec ted this property t o a lot of sC�lrching. but h�IS not yet fo und �l th�lt need to be explained and which arc �trlse, What does it mean to use words lot of intclligcncc. C le�lrl y. if this project accidental aspccts, There arc two ways like 'probable' or to say 'if the universe wcrc succcssful it \\'oul d h�IVC enormous cos lllologisis and astronolllers gct round had been different' if it is by definition r�l111ifiGltions for our picture of who wc this restriction: onc is to build computer unique ') arc and what our mic i s in the universc simulations of the universe in a very A furt h er problem is one that is usually rc lative to othcr hcing s. 'coarse-grained' manner. and cOlllpare glossed over in popular accounts. lt is that And lastly there arc the anthropic prin­ those predictions with observation, The one ought to be very careful to discrimi­ ciples in their various forms. somc of other is to look for ('(m e/ill/IIIlS, This nate between the Universe as a whole. which arc co\'ered in the book I wrote in means that if one has a theory which which may be infinite, and the \'/s/h/e

:w ISSUE 6 John D. Barrow BESHARA

1111il '('l"se. ie. the part of it which we have everything in the universe is in a slate of had time to see in 1'1bill ion years. All our dynamic change. and this state of dy­ deductions and observations are con­ namic change is onc of overall expansion cerned with a sphere of radius 1'1billi on of the universe. light years about us which wc call the Hubble made this discovery by noting 105 visible universe. and it is only by intro­ that there is a 'red-shift' in thc frcquency ducing an ax iOIll of fa ith that the U ni verse of the light transmitted by distant objects. 1 E is the same outside the boundary as inside which indicates that they �Ire moving � � > that wc can say anything about the Uni­ away from us. By measuring the amount 10" verse as a whole. This is a fu ndamental of' the shift. one can calculate their veloc­ 0 � , c difficulty and clearly. the question of ity relative to us and their distance from us 0 � whether the Universe is finite or infinite can be gauged from their apparent bright­ � a: has a big psychological effect. If wc think ness. Hubble discovered a remarkable 103 the Universe is infinite. then we can ob­ correlation. which is shown in Diagram I. U50�---2 L-00 ----�1 0�3---2�.I���--5.�' �30 � serve as much as we like but we will never This has come to be known as Hubble' s Distance (millions of light years) see more than an infinitesimal part and Law. The vertical axis shows the speed at will never. by our observations. be able to which things are receding and the hori­ learn anything about the Universe as a zontal axis shows how far away from us DIA(;RA\I I whole. If it is finite. it can still be bigger they are. One can sce that this is a pretty H ubbles tall'- Obserl'atiollal Data than the horizons of our visible universe good straight line by scientific standards: but our observations will nonetheless tell the si ight dev iations an: due to the fact that not to worry about it. us something about a finite part of it. the universe is not expanding perfectly Well. the answer is simply that objects Another very interesting f�lctor which smoothly: locally. galaxies will have their like ourselves do not participate in the distinguishes cosmology is th�lt in most own small local motions. onc around the universal expansion becluse wc arc held �Ireas of science wc arc used to types of other just like the Earth and the moon. together by fo rces of nature th�lt arc much explanation where things at onc point in Operationally. Huhhle's LIW is quite stronger than the force of the explosion. �\S sp�lce �\Ild time arc a result of other things simple. and it means that if you were to it were. In fact. galaxies. even small that �Ire �t1so loc�t1 and ne�lrby. In cosmol­ measure the distance separating two very groups of galaxies do not exp�lnd: you ogy this is probably not true. There �Ire bright clusters of galaxies today and then ha vc to go up to clusters 01 gabx ies hefore 1�lrge-scale. global features of the StrLIC­ again tomorrow. you would fi nd the dis­ you fi nd objects which are actually par­ ture of the universe which affect things tance to have increased. But in fact the ticipating in the expansion. Rather like that wc observe here and now. idea of the expansion is very subtle in raisins in a raisin cake. the raisins all move And lastly. when we look at distant General Relativity. It is worth asking. away from each other as the dough ex­ galaxies and stars wc are not observing what is it that is expanding'l If you ever pands. but they themselves do not expand the universe as it is today - wc arc observ­ saw the film "Annie Hall" you will re­ as they are held together rather more ing it as it v\"(/S, because light takes a fi nite member that it begins with Woody Alien strongly than the dough. time to reach us. All the observations we on the psychiatrist's couch having just The main lesson is that one should not have of the universe. of things at different discoverecl. by reading a cosmology really think of it as an e x pansion illlo distances. are really a sort of montage of book. that the universe is expanding. He space. but as an expansion ot" space. This pictures of the universe at different times tells the analyst that therefore Brooklyn is not like an explosion to which there is a in the past. must be expanding. he must be expand­ boundary. so that the ex p losion is going ing. The analyst did not really know the on into space and there is a region which answer to this problem but just told him the expansion has not yet reached which is THE EXPANDIN(; UNIVERSE outside the universe. The best onc can do Until 196'1. there was only onc fact In to get an accurate picture of what the cosmology -onc real observat ion - wh ich mathematics is telling us is to pretend that occurred in 1929. when Edwin lIubble wc arc in a universe oltwo spatial dimen­ made what I believe to be the most impor­ sions rather than three. and to represent it tant discovery of twentieth century sci­ by the surface of a sphere. I f we were to ence. He discovered that the prejudice mark two points on the surface of the that people had held for many thousands sphere. then the e x pansion of the universe of years - that when you look out of the is like the innation of a balloon - as it window. all the changes in the heavens. expands the two points would get further the planets. stars and comets moving apart. I f we were to run over the surface of around and changing in time. are taking the balloon. we could keep running for place against a completely static back­ ever but nonetheless the surface area of ground stage - were wrong. Hubble ob­ the balloon is finite. Also, the fact that we served (and Alexander Friedman had see Hubble's Law obeyed from our van­ predicted this in the early 1920's) that tage point does not mean that we are at the there is no such static background stage: ...just told him lIot to worry about it centre of the universe. On whatever point

SUMMER 1988 21 BESHARA The New Cosmology

back in. This is rather like launching a rocket from Earth: if you want to escape

15)(lOw the Earth's gravitational field and go into light-years I orbit then you have to launch it with a speed greater than the 'escape velocity'. Sun All swells slars into 8 cooli A universe that 'runs away' - a so-called red giant and Macro- and dte NON engulfs o/Jel1 l1nil'eI'se - is one that starts offwith scopic theEarth Ilte­ a speed bigger than the escape velocity. fOtms I evolv8 (,'Heat l()'1hght­ 1,1 Death'" One that starts off with speed less than the years Solar mICroscopiC system IIle-torms clos('d 1 torms escape velocity - the so-called Cool enough Thellrsl I tor atoms IlIli\'(,),s(' - is rather like throwing a stone loe)l,Isl in the air: it comes back to a 'big crunch' in the future. In between there is the 'British' compromise universe which has 10 12 15 20 100 Age (blthons 01 years) the escape velocity and can just escape all the way to infinity doing the least possihle Schelllatic pictllre IIfkey erellt.\' ill the expallsillll II/" Ihe 1I11i1ler.\'e Ill' tll the presellt (Tillle amount of work. It cont inucs to get bigger dilllellsillll IIl1t tll scale) for ever but its speed goes down, so that it reaches infinity with 7.ero speed. This is on the surface we sat. we would alw;\ys rather pessimistic: in about 20 billion sometimes called the.flalllllil '(' /'.\ (,. 1 shall see all the other points going away from us years the long-range forecast is that the call it lhe ('I"ili('(l/ Ji\·id(' . as though we were the centre - wc would sun is going to swell up to an en011110US Diagram 3 shows these three situations sce the same law. size and engulf the inner planets and graphically. The little shaded portion is You will notice from this example that vaporize the Earth. Mars. etc .. whilst in the period when life can evolve, if it is the centre of expansion does not I ie on the about 100 billion years. all the stars will going to. We would not expect to be surface of the balloon. And this is the have cooled and will probably not be able around observing the universe until all the point: this is why expansion is not illfo to support atomic life-forms such as our­ stars have formed, because stars produce space. The centre of the expansion of the selves and our computers. the building blocks of life. And we could universe does not lie in our three-dimen­ not expect to evolve when all the stars sional universe. just as the centre of ex­ have died out. so this is a little niche in p;1I1sion of the balloon does not lie on the IS THE UNIVERSE INFINITE'? cosmic history where life can exist. surface of the ba lloon. The long-range forecast for the whole Now one of the peculiar things about universe is uncertain. If wc think of an our universe is that wc live very. very ordin;\ry explosion with a particular close to the critical divide (2) - wc might Di;\gr;lI11 :2 gives ;\ picture of the overall amount of l:nl:rgy. thl:n there arc two eVl:n live right Oil it - and as a conse­ vicw which this model gives. The inter­ generic situations that could occur. Either LJuence of this. wc still do not know which esting thing about this is that unlike the the explosion could have sufficiently of the two options i� the long-range fore­ past prejudice for a universe which is large kinl:ticener gy to enable it to expand cast for us. In one way, it is not surprising static and always the same. this picture is forever. or the kinetic energy in the explo­ that we live close to the critical divide. as continuously unfolding. The universe sion would be too low and event ually the we couldn't have expected to exist if we gets bigger and bigger as it gets older and material would fold and start to come did not. Universes which started to ex- older. and becomes sparser and cooler. so that in a particular epoch dramatic things "Open" infinite universe can happen. It has to wait until it is about Life can evolve I million years old before it is cool enough / here for atoms to ex ist. then longer for the first Critical divide Size ("flat" universe) galaxies and stars to form. All our obser­ vations of the oldest fossils on earth. the age of the solar system. the age of the "Closed" finite galaxy. give independent evidence that universe points towards us living somewhere be­ tween 13 and 18 billion years from the start - the uncertainty is again a conse­ quence of the selection effects on some of the observations. so that we have to allow "Big an uncertainty to compensate for some of Crunch" the biases which may be occurring. 15 About About 1{)()() 2{)()() Time (billions ofyears) Our observations show that the fi rst I i re forms appeared on earth about two billion DIA(;I{AM 3 years ago. The future prospects look The three possible types of expanding universe.

22 ISSUE 6 John D. Barrow BESHARA

pand very. very slowly would have col­ cosmologists have a very strong philo­ end. This is what we call a different topol­ lapsed before any stars formed. And uni­ sophical prejudice for one of these mod­ ogy. rather than a different geometry. If verses which expanded very. very fast els: Einstein. for example. regarded it as you were to glue the other ends together would never have allowed galaxies and axiomatic that the Universe was closed. you would have a sort of ring doughnut stars to condense out. So it is only a There are various reasons for this prej u­ and this is quite possible. Some mathema­ universe lj uite close to the critical divide dice: one is the fact that mathematicians ticians and physicists think it is actually which allows life to evolve. really like finite universes because you quite likely that the universe has a topol­ So what determ ines whether the uni­ can prove theorems about them and there ogy like this. So just because we observe verse has an infi nite or a finite future') The is lots of work to do: another is one we the density to be less than the critical critical divide here is determ ined by how mentioned earl ier on - that if the Un i verse value. it does not mean that space is infi­ much matter there is in the universe. and is infi nite. then we are al ways just looking nite: it could still be fi nite if the topology so we can. in principle. by measuring the at an infinitesimal part and wc will never. is one of these complicated shapes. total mass or density. determ ine by obser­ by observation. be able to learnanyt hing The fact Ihal Ihe expansion is proceed­ vation on which side wc arc sitting. If wc about the Universe as a whole. ing at a rate so close to the critical divide count all that shines in the dark or emits But thc situation is not ljuite so simple is onc of the key problems which cosmol­ measurable radiation then it looks as if we as this. If wc were to observe that the ogy has been trying to solve. The reason are well and truly in the open universe. density excecds the critical level in an that this is such �I 1l1ystery IS because as However. there is very good reason to attempt to prove that we are looking at a time goes by. onc would expect it to di­ be lieve that the amount of material that fi nite universe. we have to remember that verge from such a very critical state. The does not shine in the dark - dead stars. this is only true if the bit of the universe fact that we are st i 11 so very c lose after th is elementary particles. black holes - is at that we have not seen is the same as the bit enormous period of expansion - l.'ihi Ilion least ten times higger than the amount of we have seen. It could he that the bit we years - means that the inilial starting visible material (hecause the way visible have seen is like a little dense bubble conditions back there near the heginning material moves indicates that it is sitting sitting in a much bigger Universe that has must have been picked with fa ntastic in a gravitational field twenty times very low density and wi II keep on ex pand­ accuracy - one part in 10 followed by 7.'i stronger than could he created by just the ing for ever. noughts - for us not to have collapsed by matcrial that can be seen ). and this is Alternatively. if the observed density is flOW. or run away from the critical divide enough to put us in a closed universe. So less than the critical density. it does not completely. Our universe is like a rocket the ljuestion of whether the universe is necessarily mean that space goes on for which has been launched with a speed open or closed. is o(1en' ever in every direction. We could be a which equals the speed necessary for sparse region within a very large Universe escape to within an accuracy of 10 fol­ of greater t hen cri tical densi ty. But there is lowed by l.'i I.eros. and this is quite ex­ One of the interesting general points for a a fu rther complication to consider. If wc traordinary. What was it that arranged the person with philosophical inclin�ltions is think of the universe of space as being a starting condition like that') the big difference between the closect and shect of paper. it is ljuite permissible for a open universe. The open universe is infi­ univcrse where the density is less than the CREATIO EX NIHILO nitely large. apparently. in space and is critical level to have the ends of its sheet going to live for an infinite time. whereas glued together to form a cylinder (Dia­ the closed model is finite in size and finite gram 4). In this case. the size of the uni­ in age. Ifyou read cosmology books from verse is actually finite. but if you kept Einstein onwards. you will find that most moving on it you would never come to an

" There is nothing in this box" Plane Universe Topology I have indicated that one of the predictions of big-bang cosmology under particular Cylindrical Universe Topology conditions is that there must be a begin­ ning totime. But we don't have any expla­ nation as to how the universe came into being at that moment. although most cosmologists assume that it must have been associated with some point of infi-

SUMMER 19RR 2l BESHARA The New Cosmology

nite density. Now in the last two or three to be greater than some small number, vacuum to make two particles, so long as years there has been something of a revo­ known as Planck's Constant (h) divided you pay it back again within a time which lution in what sort of questions cosmolo­ by 2IT. This can be expressed like this: satisfies Equation A. You can see that the gists are willing to approach. The reason more energy you borrow, the shorter the forthis is that we have tried to bui Id a more I1Ex I1t> h/2T( (Eqllal/oll A) time you have in which to pay it back; and and more detai led picture of what happens vice versa, the less energy you borrow the farther and farther back into the past. Now this is always the case, whether the more time you have in which to pay it closer and closer to this apparent begin­ systems are big or small. But in everyday back. ning where things were hotter and denser. life it does not matter, because Planck's Now, this sounds somewhat mystical, To do this we need perhaps to start using Constant is very small indeed, ofthe order and you might think that if you cannot the latest ideas in elementary particle of 10-27 cgs units. But at the level of ele­ observe these particles, why bother about physics. At the same time, particle physi­ mentary particles it becomes important, them at all? Well. although you cannot cists ha'le joined the enterprise because, observe them individually. you can dis­ as I indicated before, they see that they cern their collective effect. This has been might be able to test their ideas by work­ done experimentally - first of all by ing them out in the early universe. Willis Lamb. who won a Nobel Prize for As a consequence, papers have begun his work - with the result that this picture to appear in the major scientific journals of the vacuum has been verified by the dealing with questions which tradition­ most accurate observations in physics, ally one is told fall outside the province of with something like 14 places of accuracy science. I have brought two with me to of agreement between observation and show you: one is called "Creation of theory. Universes from Nothing" in which there This leads to a very interesting specula­ is an attempt to produce a mathematical tion - that if there exists some primordial description of how the universe appears; vacuum and all possible vacuum fluctua­ " ...this model does not require any big­ tions occur at some time, then eventually bang singularity and does not require any there may be one which amounts to hav­ starting conditions to be speci fied ..."; the ...even tllally there may be one which ing a very large universe, even though other is the same type of idea. trying to amollnts to having a very large IIn;'lerse such a thing is extraordinarily improb­ explain the universe as a sort of quantum and it has consequences for the picture we able. cvent, appearing out of literally nothing. have of the vacuum. The quantum vac­ Clearly, in this type of picture, the Well, what is this about? What does uum is imagined to be a sea of particles 'nothing' that the universe is created out creation out of nothing mean and how and their oppositc anti-particles, which of is actually something rather compli­ does it work in the scientific description? are their sort of mirror-images. When a cated. It requires the existence already of In a sense there is a cheat here, because particle hits its anti-particle, the two anni­ ideas like space and time. quantum me­ 'nothing' means something a little differ­ hilate one another and go back into energy chanics, fields, particles and so on. So ent to quantum physicists than it does to according to Einstein's famous equation people are really just using the term 'crea­ the ordinary man in the street. Classical, E=Mc2• Diagram 5 shows you a sche­ tion out of nothing' to attract your atten­ traditional physics of the sort one learnt at matic picture of this process: the vertical tion. school has an extremely simple picture of axis is space and the horizontal axis is There is also a phenomenon in quantum the vacuum - it is nothing, pure and time, and I1tis the time that the particles mechanics called tunnelling. According simple. Quantum theory does not allow live before they are re-annihilated. Now to Newtonian mechanics, however many you to have such a definite picture of if, during this process, the energy and the times you drive your car up Mount Snow­ things. One could never countenance a time interval, I1t,are such that their prod­ don, you will never go through it. But statement such as 'There is nothing in this uct is less than Planck's Constant, as according to quantum mechanics, if you box" because there is radiation every­ explained above, then the event may drive your car up Mount Snowdon 1010 where. In order to determine that there is happen but it cannot be observed indi­ times, once you should actually go all the nothing in the box you would have to vidually, and physicists call this a ,,/r(lIol way through it. This is a rather outlandish make an observation, and this necessarily process. An event which exceeds the example, but it appears - and maybe this introduces uncertainty into the picture. equality and which can therefore be ob­ is just a curiosity - that one can arrive at a This uncertainty of measurement is served is called a real process. mathematical description of the universe embodied, as I am sure you know, by So our picture of the vacuum is of a which looks like one which has tunnelled Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. One whole sea of these particles continually into its present state through some effec­ form of this says that when you are trying appearing and disappearing in such a way tive barrier, but it has tunnelled from to measure an interval of time, I1t, using that they cannot each be observed. What is nothing. Some people take this rather light or some other type of process that implied is that in Nature, energy is not seriously to indicate that it may be evi­ involves a certain amount of energy, I1E, actually completely conserved, but it is dence that you could have a description of then in order to be able to observe the conserved in such a way that you cannot the universe which came into being from event, the product of the uncertainty in the see it being violated. Nature does not literally nothing except the notion of time and the uncertainty in the energy has mind you borrowing energy from the space and time plus the laws of nature.

24 ISSUE 6 John D. Barrow BESHARA

One's first reaction to the idea of having a end of the day, we cannot alter the number ing theories. scientific description of creating the uni­ at the bottom of the bill. The remarkable These ideas are in a very hypothetical verse out of (almost ) 'nothing' is the gut thing about the universe. judging by our state. and there are few definite results. feeling that it must be violating some sort present observations. is that all the con­ merely these speculative avenues I am of conservation law: that ifat one moment served quantities may be 7.eroover all. It fo llowing here. What I want to emphas ize there is nothing anci at the next something. does not appear to carry any net electric is that. for the first time, cosmologists are there must bl: some pri nciple that stops charge; it does not have any discernible starting to take seriously the idea of pro­ this happening. In ordinary physics we are spin which would have to be conserved: ducing a description of how the universe familiar with things like the conservation the total energy seems suspiciously close came into being. Whether it will succeed of energy. conservation of momentum. to zero. The more one looks at it. the more or not is another story. but it is a new conservation of electric charge. Thl:se are it appears that there would not be any development. Contrary to what has al­ quantities which in everyday procl:sses inconsistency with the laws of nature if ways been said - that science deals with wc can re-arrange and re-distribute. but the universe were brought into being at how things change. not how they origi­ when we come to do our account ing at the onc moment oftime. In a very curious way nate - there is now a growing tendency thl: appearance of the universe seems to amongst cosmologists to talk seriously si ide past all restrictions. about the creation of the universe as a To get a little more definite; it does scientific topic. appear that if onc wants to have a descrip­ (I) Olfiml Uni\'('r.lin· Prcss, II.J/')(),Scc rl'I'icl\' tion of the Universe coming into be ing Oil p3], FllrlII('/" disCllssioll (WI hi' ./ii//I/(I ill from literally nothing. then the Universe 'Tile vllmid WillulI 1111' World' hr ./(11111 f) itself has to be fi nite - so it has to be one Bllrmll'. 10 he Imhlisllcd ill illlgllsl . 8/'). lIlso hr of those models that are closed. or even Orfiml Ullil'('rsilr Press.

Creation of a one with the doughnut topology for in­ Part icle·Anl ipart icle Pair stance. Th is is in a sense a prediction. for (]) 0111' of' IIIc I1IOSI promisillg coslllologiclIl if observations eventually ind icated that IIIcories CIIITClll/r - IIIat (1( 1111' III/iilliollllrl' Ullil'('!'se -predicts llial ll'c([clllallr !i1 C lI'illiill J)L\(;I{,\" 5 the universe had a density lower than the ' � The creation and annihilation (�r .\'lIb-atomic critical divide. then this would be signifi­ OIlC pari ill I() o(lIIe crilical dil'ide, particles in a qllantllll/ 1"(1("111111/ cant evidence against creation out of noth- Drawillgs In ./1I!ia Or\'.

Letter to the Editor rob traditional science of its value as a impossible. and we should re alise that the guide to what is sometimes called 'self­ fu ndamental error in this approach is the Dear Sirs. rcalisation·. assumption that ancient teachings can be Reading through Michael Shall is's article The great achievement of modern sci­ understood with modernman 's uniquely in Issue 5 of BESHARA. I feel prompted ence has been to harmonise within our­ developed intellectual apparatus. This to bring up the fo llowing considerations. selves thought and sensory experience. merely reflects our pride and our egoism. There is. in the current intellectual cli­ Where it has fa iled us. however. is in its That parallels exist between traditional mate. a definite movement towards a outright denial that the universe can offe r and modernthinking is hardly surprising conceptual 'unity of nature ' which will deeper experiences than those derived bearing in mind the inescapable unity supposedly reconcile. or bring into har­ from sensory perception. Traditional behind all diversity. but to think that we mon y. the theories of modern science and teachings, on the other hand. derive from can come to terms with this unity without the sacred sciencl:s (esoteric doctrines). a deep 'inner' experienl:e of the one-ness the discipline and rigorous self-interroga­ However. such a conceptual unity is not of all existence. As such, it speaks from tion of the traditional path is somewhat unity at all in real ity - it is but ' food fo rthe the standpoint of true Unity. and we must fool-hardy. intellect' - and it could pose a great dan­ always be mindful that its teachings are Taken as a guide towards harmonising ger. that of becoming trapped in an alter­ rooted in the sacred idea of 'microcosmic his own fragmented being, traditional native conceptual picture which has no man', and that traditional methods were teachings could be the saving grace that direct bearing on our being. aimed at inducing within the student a modern man so desperately needs, but Whilst the increasing reaction against state of consciousness which would make should he take them out of context-ie. in sc ient ific ' progressism' presents us with a him or her a suitable vessel for the inner isolation from a path - there is a terrible golden opportunity for fru itful self-ex­ experience of its teachings. And surely, danger that in his search he will simply amination. and so for a real step fo rward this inward assimilation of esoteric ideas suck the life from them as he denies the in our quest for higher awareness. it could is the only way in which they can be Life in himself. and the consequent deni­ be that we may yet wrap ourselves up in understood') gration of sacred ideas might just be the theory and speculation. It is of crucial Therefore. when we study, with a view final seal of his fate. importance, therefore, that the differ­ to unity. the parallels between modern ences between the two disciplines in scienti fic theory and traditional meta­ R.G. Ball question be given due attention. lest we physical doctrine, we are attempt ing the (Chelmsford )

SUMMER 1988 25 BESHARA The Cosmic Blueprint

BOOKS

The Cosmic Blueprint by Paul Davies

Heinemann. London 19X7. Hardback, pp 223. f 12.95

Reviewed by Richard Twinch

T he Cosmic Blueprint' by Professor Paul Dav ies sets out to answer fun­ damental metaphysical questions such as "Arc the seemingly endless varieties of natural forms and structures ... simply the accidental products of random forces') Or are they somehow the inevitable outcome of the creative activity of nat ure') ... does this imply that the present state of the universe is in some sense predestined') Is there. to use a metaphor. a 'cosmic blue­ . pri nt ')" The book is written from an adm ittedly 'scientific' (his quotes) viewpoint and presents what Davies (who is Professor of Theoret ictl Physics at Newcastle Univer­ sity ) calls the 'new paradigm' in which the process of creation is seen as continual and ever-present rather than confined to some arbitrary point in the historical past. Penrose 's Tiling Pattern. Using only two shapes, the entire plane can be covered without Th is paradigm is 'optim istic' , since it gaps to produce a remarkable pattern that has fi ve-fo ld symmetry and long-range order, but allllw� for an ever-increasing complexity /lIJ periodicity. p80 and self-organi sation based on free-will ­ in contradistinction to the 'pessimistic' of organisation arise spontaneously. He simple chaotic system investigated by paradigms of the Newtonian mechanistic gives as an example a pan of water heated Davies' team of researchers is that of a universe. where everything is fi xed ac­ evenly: here the water molecules are quite pendulum damped by friction and driven cording to eternal laws in the context of a free to move independently. but at a cer­ at intervals by an externalfo rce. Its move­ . heat-death' scenario impl ied by the Sec­ tain point in the process the random con­ ment changes from simple to complex . ond Law of Thermodynamics. The argu­ vection of the water molecules sudden ly ordered behaviour, then suddenly ments put fo rward by Professor Davies 'switch' into a co-ordinated hexagonal switches to random behaviour when cer­ arc clear and concise. embrac ing the fu ll pattern. Similarly. in a laser beam, bil­ tain conditions are met. galll ut ofcur rent sc ient i fic understand i ng. I ions of! ight photons conspi re i nstantane­ It is illuminating to be shown that including cosmology. biology and neuro­ ously to form a beam of co-ordinated chaot ic systems exhibit regularity. This physics. The overall effect must be to intensity where the wavelengths. rather regularity is not in terms of what they will le�lve even the most diehard pure reduc­ than cancelling each other out. re inforce do next, which remains uncertain, but in tionist wilting somewhat in the profusion the whole with such force as to carry the terms of when such a system switches of expert views and detailed evidences. beam thousands of miles. A prime ex­ from well-ordered to apparently random Much of the book is taken up with a ample in cosmology is the rings of Saturn motion. For a number of quite diverse rev iew of Davies' own research. which which are highly soph isticated, ' shep­ systems this has been found to be con­ shows how increasing complexity leads herded'. rings of dust and small particles. trolled by the 'magic' numbers 4.669 20 I to patterns of self-organisation. A crystal One part icular species of self-organisa­ ... and 2.5029 ... which have been named such as salt is a simple 'ordered ' system tion described by Davies is that of chaos. as Feigenbaum numbers after their dis­ exhibiting regular symmetry but no free­ A good example of a chaotic system is coverer. dom of movement. Davies demonstrates when a waterfal l suddenly breaks from Another example of such behaviour is that with an increase in complexity, order smooth flow to become a white mass of fo und in weather patterns. which are well­ breaks down and freedom to move in­ foaming water droplets hurled hither and known to be highly unpredictable. The creases. whilst at the same time new levels thither in the desperate plunge to earth. A weather is so delicately susceptible to

26 ISSUE 6 The Cosmic Blueprint BESHARA

initial conditions that what is known as tion - a global wave function contain­ (as pointed out by Davies) it is an irrevers­ the 'butterfly effect' comes into play, ing a stupendous number of correla­ ible process which is ·time-assymetric'. because (to quote Davies) "the future tions. One could even consider (and Here then is an alternative time 'arrow' pattern of weather might be determined some physicists do) a wave function for for the optimistic paradigm. to counter by the mere flap of a butterfly's wings". the entire universe. In such a scheme the the pessimistic 'thermodynamic' time Unpredictability arises due to the ina­ fate of any given particle is inseparably arrow which is dominated by decay and bi I ity to determine the ('.rae! starting con­ I inked to the fate of the cosmos as a disintegration (3). As Davies further ditions. So even when simple equations whole. not in the trivial sense that it may points out: "The wave function represents (such as in fluid flow applied to water or experience forces from its environ­ not how the system is. but what we kllow convection currents in the atmosphere ) ment, but because its reality is inter­ about the system" are applied to a given situation, the results woven with that of the rest of the uni­ This implies that the witnessing of the can deviate radically from those predicted verse. world is dependent on knowledge. ie. to the degree by which the initial condi­ what we perceive is what we know. There tions were undetermined. The sad news Earlier Professor Davies describes how are no fixed boundaries to reality, the only for weather forecasters is that however J ung picked up on this fundamental idea limitation is that imposed by ourselves. It much computing power they have, they to explain unusual coincidences and is important to note that this is a view long will not improve much on current per­ acausal relations. J ung termed this phe­ held by what have been described as formance! nomenon ·synchronicity'. Davies is quite mystics who do not in any way hold "anti­ happy to go along with examining what scientific' views, but are concernedsolely the idea of a universal wave function has with seeing the reality as it is in itself. The Paul Davies goes on to describe how such in relation to physics, but dismisses Jung traditional wisdom is that 'Knowledge is apparently irregular events have their in the following words: "However, identical with the thing known '; ifscienc e own logic when examined in terms of whereas acausal associations in. say. bio­ arrives at similar conclusions it is to its fractal (I) geometry, an abstract, and systems might be reasonable. it is quite benefit and those of its adherents, and a (until recently) heretical branch of mathe­ another matter to extend the idea to events sign that what was known previously by matics that had originally arisen out of the in the daily lives of people, which was the few has become the birthright of the need to measure the wiggliness of the J ung' s chief interest". This seems to fly in many. British coast line (by the uncle of Sir the face of another important feature of Professor Davies, in bringing forth Ralph Richardson). This mathematics quantum mechanics which Davies men­ these proofs and evidences. is aware of the regards the complex and irregular as natu­ tions: that of the nature of the observer as import of such meanings Lllld quotes the ral and the linear and regular as excep­ an integral factor in defining exactly how physicist John Wheeler. who said that tionaL and has only been able to be util­ the quantum wave function 'collapses' at "Physics is the child of meaning even as ised since the advent of powerful comput­ any time and place. thereby affecting the meaning is the child of physics". How­ ers. Prior to this scientists had to concen­ entire universe. Why should not the same ever at other times he hangs back as if trate on linear systems (such as a piece of principle carry over into the daily lives of clinging to outmoded forms in a nostalgic elastic stretching uniformly with applied the observer? Might not the flap of a but­ attempt to return to pre-quantum materi­ weight) since they lacked the tools to cope terfly's wings change the world's alism. For instance, in the earlier parts of with multi-faceted situations. weather? the book, he examines in detail how 'The Cosmic Blueprint' is packed with This line of thought is too interesting to simple 'ordered' systems evolve into such thought provoking material. One of leave, despite other pressing matters. In higher level organisms, which, despite the best and most exciting chapters in the quantum mechanics. the idea of separate losing symmetry. are capable of generat­ book is The Quantum Factor, which particles is replaced by the concept of ing new dynamic patterns of organisation. brings to the fore Paul Davies' thorough wave functions. which can appear either Where do these patterns arise from'? His grasp of ideas and clear exposition. Onc as particles or as waves depending on how answer favours a 'dialectical materialist' engaging property he tackles is that of they are viewed. Davies outlines the approach which sees pattern mysteriously non-locality. Recent experiments views of Niels Bohr who regarded these welling up from the depths of matter. And (founded on a thought experiment pro­ as complementary aspects of a single towards the end of 'The Cosmic Blue­ posed by Einstein and colleagues, known reality, saying, " Bohr's principle of com­ print' he says: as the EPR Experiment) have shown that plementarity demands a fundamental a 'particle' once 'split' into two, shows reappraisal of the nature of reality, in "If life were discovered elsewhere In remarkable correlations beyond the scope particular the relationships between the the universe, or created in a test tube, it of relativity theory (which forbids infor­ part and the whole, the observer and the would provide powerful evidence that mation interchange at faster than the observed." Quantum theory postulates there are creative forces at work in speed of light). Paul Davies goes on to that an infinite number of possibilities are matter that encourage it to develop life; say: present in a given wave function. What not vital forces or metaphysical prin­ appears in time is the 'collapse' of the ciples, butqual ities ofself -organisation 'The lesson ofEPR is that quantum sys­ wave function into one possibility, and that are not contained in - or at least do tems are fundamentally non-local. In this depends in part on the nature of the not obviously follow from - our exist­ principle, all particles that have ever observation; ie. on the observer (2) ing laws of physics" interacted belong to a single wave func- Once a wave function has 'collapsed'

SUMMER 1988 27 BESHARA The Cosmic BlueprintlBooks on Zen

With all that quantum mechanics has danger of reducing an infinite, singular Books on Zen shown us, it no longer seems necessary to and unlimited reality to a series of propo­ hang on to the belief in a universe of sitions - whether they be self-organised Reveiwed by Martin Notcutt matter which can have properties, albeit networks, as Davies proposes. or reduc­ of self-organisation. The mystical. and tion to purely mechanistie sub-atomic perhaps more rigorously 'scientific ', processes. Whereas the awe-inspiring view is that matter perSI.' does not exist, vision of 'the subtlety and beauty of na­ The Method of Zen except as an illusory image of its reality. ture', mentioned by Davies as the inspira­ by Eugen Herrigel Such an understanding, applied to the tion for many scientists. is an intuition Arkana, London, 1988 appearance of new forms or patterns, which is fundamental to the profundity Paperback, pp 102. n.95 would indicate that their appearance is and dignity of man's position. time-dependent and that time exists by The possibi lity for man is not only to be Hara - The Vital Centre of Man virtue of observation impl icit in quantum an 'an observer' but to be the 'eye-pupil' by Karlfried Graf Diirckheim theory. Observation is witnessing. and - the self-awareness - through which Mandala. London 1988 what is witnessed - to quote Davies - is Reality sees itself, and through which the Paperback. pp208. £4.95 " the subtlety and beauty of nature" . If universes are created and maintained. Nature is understood to be the image of a Science is imbued with meaning to the singular reality. rather than having any extent to which it participates in such The Way of Transformation reality in itself. then what evolves is the vision - from which fol lows the respon­ by Karlfried Graf Diirckheim outward expression of the beauty of the sibi I ity to expound and expand that mean­ Mandala. London 1988 reality. This reveals itself in forms of ing in the most universal context. There Paperback. pp I 06. £4.95 knowledge according to how we know can be no end to meaning. and so physics ourselves - knowledge being dependent (science), as the 'child of meaning', Zen Culture on the known. as mentioned above. (4) equally has no end. 'The Cosmic Blue­ by Thomas Hoover print' itself bears witness to this expan­ Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1988 sion and, despite the few reservations Paperback, pp262. £5.95 Thus the traditional wisdom tells us that mentioned above. is highly reeommended t he sole purpose of the ' world of witness­ to those wishing for a clear summary of ing' is to bring man to the truth. Davies. how this possibility is unfolding III our despite his protestations to the contrary, times. E ligen He:,rigel is well know,: as the has a feeling for the enormity of this author 01 'Zen and the Art 01 Arch­ I. Fhl' ICI"III ji'lIclu/" 1\ '0.1' coill cd hI" /JClloil situation. for at the end of 'The Cosmic ery'. whose title alone stimulated many MIII/(II'//Jml ill his hook 'rl/(' FW("/ill (jI'I!IIIC­ Blueprint' he refers to the dignity of man, other books. 'The Method of Zen' was liT oIN(fIIlI"('.· WHo FrI'CII/illI. 1')82 . saying. "Yet the knowledge that our pres­ compiled from the many unpublished ence in the universe represents a fu nda­ papers fou nd after his death in 1955. 2 Fhis lli/s ils /){ff"{fl/('/s ill Imdilioll(f/ 11I1'1(f­ mental rather than incidental feature of Ilhl".l il".\ \I'/Iich dcs/ ·rihc.I Ihl' 11 (fl 111"(' ol lhl' The book seems aptly named. for in existence oilers. I believe. a deep and Iw.lsihll' illld illlllo.lsi/J/c. \I-I/('rchr ill/ l}flssi­ Herrigel's view that which distinguishes satisfying basis for human dignity" hililil'.1 ilrc 111"('.1'1'111 ill cilch III1JIIICIII. W/WI Buddhist mysticism from all others is the But he leaves questions of meaning ill'l'Cllrs liS IIcccssorr dCl'cllds 1111 \I-I/(1/ is emphasis it lays on a methodical prepara­ open. To quote the fi nal paragraph: kllowlI. ollicr\l'isc Ihc pos.lihililics llrc i"'jJos­ tion for the mystical life. The selections sihlc. have been arranged to describe the " The very fact that the universe is crea­ schooling and transformation of those 3 'Flie Vireclioll ot" f"il1l(,' hv SlcjJh('ll Hml"k­ tive, and that the laws have allowed who enter the Zen monasteries of Japan. illg (Ncw Sciclllisl 91h .11111' 1987) complex structures to develop to the Here a series of stern traditional disci­ point of consciousness - in other words plines are applied under the guiding vi­ -I. Thc sudd('ll apparenl 'lUI1IPS ' IIO/I'd hI"

that the universe has organised its own Do ri('.\", wliclI poinls oj" 'hi/ioH/lioll' ill {"(}111- sion of a master. self-awareness - is for me powerful p/C.I SI'sICI1lS ilppcllr arc p('I"liaps /() do \\'ilh Ihc When Zen Buddhism enjoyed cult evidence that there is 'something going proccss o( inlilgillg oj" llic rcolitl· v ..hicli IlIkes status in the West in the 1960's as the on' behind it all. The impression of ils/in'lII accore/illg10 llic \'ie\1' olilll' Oh.l·cITer. doctrine of immediacy and spontaneity, design is overwhelming. Science may illld ilppC(frs liS mlle/o", {[ml IIl1prediuohlc few people appreciated how formal and explain all the processes whereby the hccllusc cllch pcrsoll ulld ell("h illSIIll/1 is rigorous that training was, or that al­ universe evolves its own destiny. but 11 11 i(11I I' IIl1d iI .\·cI)(/mle /i/cc 0l"hc(//!ll' is ilppro­ though it put little reliance on words and that still leaves room for there to be a Ilrillle /in' Ihlll 11101111'111. Tlic II/JlJi/U'1I1 cOlllm­ doctrines, this way made the student de­ diclil/'v o ljiosilCS, \1'hich in j{/("/ liS Bohr \\wild meaning behind existence." l pendent on the master to an extreme de­ IIl1dou/J/cdlr Sill' are ("Olllp/cII/clI/{[rv poillls o( " gree. "What keeps them going is not direct \·in\·. lIrc II1lIs Ihe /){)Ies ol orc/cr (/11(/ orgalli.w­ It may be that Professor Davies underes­ lioll. Flic /{[/If!" ill/m\'s llie illli('l"clII d\"lllllllic faith in ultimately reaching the goal, for timates the role of science here. which (Ilwlilies of /iji' /() he hC/I('I" f.rprcssed. wlii/c that is far off and as yet without effect. But could be far greater than that of merely IIie ./il/·III{'/" i'.IIiihilS cOlllp/CIC cOllcordulI("(, ol it becomes effective through the Master: explaining processes. which is in any case 'Ihillgs' willi llieir IWlllrc, willwlIl possihilin' and thus faith in the Master is, indirectly, a rather bland affair and carries with it the ol dn'ialioll. faith in the goal." (p 15)

28 ISSUE 6 Books on Zen BESHARA

fertilising action of safari, DUrckheim lays stress on the need for integration. There are three things necessary, he says. in order to realise the possibility of a living faith: Experience, Insight and Prac­ tice. 'The Way of Transformation' takes the theme of practice and develops the idea that man's most important task is none other than himself, the making of himself into a true man. It has as its subtitle. 'Daily Life as a Spiritual Exer­ cise. Underlining the kind of attitude re­ quired. DUrckheim says, "Daily life seems to be an obstacle to spiritual life. but this is only true if one does not know how to use it". In fact. daily life is the opportunity man has for this transforma­ tion. Correct practice has two essential conditions: constancy of repetition and service. "When all that we know and do becomes a means for the revelation of Greater Life in the world. then the Way may be attained and the ordinary day itself may become one single field ofpra ctice".

Noli Theatre Masks. PIIO{()grapli COI/r/e,l' \' of' flie Japanese Emlw,l's\' In this work, DUrckheim outlines a simple metaphysics, but the focus of at­ Nonetheless. this book encompasses Like Herrigel, DUrckheim was a German tention is still on the action of the individ­ the point where method becomes no­ who worked in Japan between the two ual. rather than on the Reality which is method. where the student cannot ques­ world wars. and gained his knowledge of individuated. tion the teacher "for he has dropped the Zen through study with traditional teach­ What elevates the books by Herrigel reins .. , Any further advance must be ers. But while he also clearly admired the and DUrckheim is not just the love which made without help or advice ... If the Japanese way of life, the two books re­ has ripened in them for the expressions of pupil fi nds the way ahead the pinnacle viewed here. re-issued in paperback, are Zen Buddhism - for Herrigel "Zen is per­ will be reached. If not. he will remain a addressed to the needs of a western read­ haps the most beautiful and mysterious mere technician. Over and above all tech­ ership without access to traditional teach­ blossom of the uncanny creativity of the nique, genius must break through." ers . Chinese genius" - but their direcedtness. Beyond the particularities of Zen. .. Hara' is the earlier work. Haw there are gems in this book. Distinguish­ means literally belly. but in this case it 'Zen Culture' covers the origins of Zen ing man from other beings by his consti­ implies "the whole man in full contact Buddhism in 6th century China, the pin­ tution, Herrigel says, (p80): with the nourishing, begetting. conceiv­ nacles ofex pression which were achieved ing, carrying and re-generating root­ in the 13th and 14th centuries and its "On man. however. a new and un­ forces of life. Hara is the region where the enduring legacy in modernJapan. There precedented law is enjoined: to fu lfill Primal Oneness of life is to be found. are chapters on archery and swordman­ what was promised in his nature by When a man can preserve his union with ship, the landscape garden, painting. inclining himself to all things. and en­ it under all circumstances he will remain architecture, Noh theatre, the tea cere­ veloping them in love where and completely at one with the Great Life mony, haiku and flower arranging. whenever he meets them: in love within him." The book succeeds in conveying the which does not reckon OI'calculate, but The first sections of the book explain permeation of the spare and vigorous squanders itself and only grows richer the meaning of Haw in the life of the aesthetic throughout Japanese society, and deeper in the squandering. Only in Japanese and its general significance. and its subsequent impact on art and de­ this way can he succeed in freeing him­ They introduce the description ofHaw as sign in the West in the 19th and 20th cen­ self, step by step, from the narrow practice, beginning with attention to pos­ turies. First published in 1977, this is an prison of individuality in which he, ture, breath and tension. An appendix interesting overview, though the material like the animals and plants, is con­ contains translations of three short Japa­ is not original and many comments are on fined. In the end he is restored to him­ nese texts. the verge of platitude. self as he really is: as the heart of exis­ It is an introductory work, reflecting tence, in which Being is made mani­ DUrckheim's experience as a psycho­ fest. " therapist. Where Herrigel emphasises the

SUMMER 1988 29 BESHARA Meister Eckhart

Recent Books on Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart: Teacher & Preacher Editor Bernard McGinn with collaboration of Frank To bin & Elvira Borgstadt. Preface by Kenneth Northcott. Paulist Press NY, 1986. Classics of Western Spirituality. SPCK. Paperback pp xviii, 420. [13,95

The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as Taught by Meister Eckhart by dom Cyprian Smith. Darton Longman & Todd, 1987. Paperback, pp x, 134. 0.95

Meister Eckhart: The Man from whom God hid Nothing Edited by Ursula Fleming. Coli ins Fount Paperbacks, 1988. pp. 1 60. £2,95.

Reviewed by dom Sylvester Houedard DOIII Syll'ester HOlddard

he fi rst volume of Eckhart pub­ What readers of BESHARA may fi nd e1oxical. tautological. and (,Olll'cllliollaf T lished in the C1assic� of Western of special value in this volume is the truth (that things are as they appear to be ) Spirituality Series, in 1l)82, with Ser­ section (only 24 pages: it could have been is not the paradoxical. non-tautological mons, Commentaries �lnd Treatises, to­ 66 if the Catherine had been left out. in and IIflinwlf truth (that things are empty gether with the Defence and the Bull III which case loose ends could have been of 'inherent existence'), Things, includ­ ;\gl'1I Oll/lIillil D, included introductory tidied up and a sharper focus obtained ) by ing mind. arc not beings but becomings. sections on the Life of Eckhart by Ed­ Bernard McGinn, entitled ' Meister Eck­ Aristotle's static logic does not apply Illund College (21 pages) and on his hart: On Speaking About GmI'. The since nothing is ever merely itself. but a thought hy Bernard McGinn (38 pages), middle way that treats the names common process of self-transcendence, of self­ This second volullle has the whole COIll­ to things and to God as neither univocal modification, and God is not 'a being' Illentary on Exodus, selections from three nor equivocal is analogical. even though (least of all an Ultimate or The Absolute) other commentaries (Wisdom, Ecclesias­ (the 1215 definition of Lateran IV) 'every but being. tiUIS, John), translations of 24 Gcrman similarity hetween creature and creator Each of the two truths enables us to talk and 6 Lat in sermons and includcs an implies a far greater dissimilarity'. about God, hut in different ways, with Appendix giving the entire Sister Cather­ McGinn balances the contrast between di ffercnt types of analogy, even when re­ ine Treatise hecause the 'text is so dceply Eckhart and Aquinas that results from the membering that language itself is in­ marked hy Eckhart 's thought', And con­ type of analogy each preferred, with a vented for conventional truths. Being is fused by it" When the spiritual daughter. warning that the contrast must not be what we nowhere encounter and yet is speaking 'so much about Goer, is told by ' oversimpl i fied '. given in the fact of every encounter be­ her confessor to 'speak on', she tells him At the risk of just that. my impression is cause, as Maximus says (I), God creates so much ' he loscs h is senses',and when he that we can profitably view the contrast as by giving substance to that which he eter­ regains them 'after a long time' she says psychological: sOllle people tend, like nally knows as able to receive it. and (as 'you are not prCJxlred for it', and adds he Eckhart. to get a little intoxicated with Aquinas says) he knows this by knowing won't be till he is (a) �lccustomed to delight in Gregory of yssa's world of the truth (himself) of every possibility, Illoving 'up �lnd down ... in and out ' and paradox. where (paradox of paradoxes) namely the truth that it is possible, Hence (b) prepared for recognising the differ­ bride or mind is simultaneously both lake the 'double nature of nothingness': slricl ence hetween God and the Godhead 'hy and river (the solid and the liquid in 1/IIIliil/g (which. as Melhuish says, never learning the difference hetween Spirit and pseudo-Denis) while others like Aquinas has been and never can be the case) and

Spirituality (geistlicchait)', The need not (at least till he called his writings 'straw' flriol' l/olliing (which has the possibility of to get stuck in ecstasy: the god/godhead compared with what he was granted then being 'exchanged' for something), The difference and being both Mary and to contemplate, and stopped work on the one. single, unique and solitary Absolute Martha (in and out) at once are Eckhar­ Summa) tend to remain sober since para­ Nothing alone would be OIlier than God. tian, hut spirit/spirituality is not. and dox just happens to be the fo undational and were it able (fleril1l possihife) to know though Eckhart may sometimes skate nature of reality. its nothingness. it would have negative over the ' it', some confusion seems evi­ knowledge of the essence of Goel (' god dent when Catherine does so here. As beyond god') dwelling in inaccessible well as the usual double index there is an Both in theology (knowing God) and light as llif 'negation of negation'. Noth­ 18 page Glossary of Eekhartian Terms theological diseourse (knowing about ingnesses being many (the emptiness of (Latin and German) with page references God) we start with things. with creation. one thing is not the emptiness of another to hoth volumes: a model for future books but (to use the convenient buddhist ternli­ thing. to use the Tibetan phrase) each of on Eckhart to develop, nology of the Two Truths) the non-para- these that is able to know its own nothing-

30 ISSUE 6 Dom Sylvester Houedard BESHARA ne ss (the only thing, [bn 'Arabi says, that point where we can distinguish authentic Cyprian is perfectly right to prefer para­ is its own) has negative knowledge of God from spurious works. One result is that dox (the antinomies) to dialectic. No as (again in [bn 'Arabi's phrase) its Lord. scholars can now discuss his thought with becoming can become the unbecome, our 'God beyond god', or (as Aquinas says) confidence and a second result is that his deification is epectasy. As Aquinas pre­ the formal object of our worship, is neces­ thought can now be presented to the wider ferred to name the unnameable with a sarily inaccessible but, from even the audiences addressed by these two other verb (to be) rather than a noun (isness), so material object (even when supremely books. Eckhart urges us to be aware that we are known as that which we know we cannot Readers will note that it was Marco adl'erhs. know) we need detachment ('god rid me Pall is, the doyen of English tibetologists, Existing as possibles in the mind of God of god') or we drift from theology (Mary) who suggested to Ursula Fleming the ini­ from timeless eternity. it is actus pums, or into theological discourse (Martha): from tiative that led to Simon Tugwell ap­ God, to-be or isness, that imparts himself' hatin (hiddeness) into :ahir (appear­ proaching the Master General of the as self-gift in the act of actualising us in ance) instead of maintaining (like a cup) Dominicans to consider the rehabilitation time, and it is in the no'v\' of mind that the inside (Mary) inside the outside of Meister Eckhart (3), and the founding future and past (the not-yet and the no­ (Martha). Dhikr (remembrance of God; of the Eckhart Society after a Spode Sym­ longer) meet without a gap for 'is' and ie. of our own nothingness/emptiness) has posium (organised by Conrad Pepler) on 'am'. Here at the apex mentis (intellectus, to be maintained in market and pub: ris­ 'The Man from whom God Nothing Hid' now or ground) at the conscious point of ing -leaving-return ing-sle eping (Moses (Coliins ruin the whole rhythm of this by contact between becoming and being, the and Buddha have identical phrases); we inverting the two last words ). This in­ perpetual influx of isness and its unceas­ must carry the dhikr (or rigpa in Tibetan) cluded a paper. of critical importance to ing extinction are simultaneolls. The per­ of our humilitas ( as Benedict says at the the wider ecumenism, presented by the petually enduring now of mind is a geo­ top step of the gold ladder) in ' hatin-plus­ Chime Tulku as the first serious step ever metric point of zero duration. :ahir' out to garden-road-field-every­ taken by Tibetan Buddhism to understand This paradox of instantaneous intlux where, sitting-walking-standing; carry it the spiritual tradition of Abraham. and extinction, the mystery of efficacious back (as Augustine says of the fo urth Having spent many years in the study of causality, of 'boiling over', continuous journey of mind) into the world where Eckhart, dom Cyprian can offer us the creation or mercification (5) is treated by words again have beginnings. Buddha first (ifnot final) really successful attempt Eckhart in the commentary on, not Exo­ and Bernard talk of this under compas­ at a clear and complete presentation of dus, but Ecclesiasticus (6): They shall eat sion or mercy. Eckhart's teaching on the spiritual life, a me and hunger. [n his jewelled saying so Such, it seems to me, is the sort of rough more practical guide than the recent book reminiscent of Tsong-Khapa on the Two sketch that, based on Eckhart, and itself by Richard Woods (4) who devoted equal Truths, he says 'The truth of the analogy oversimplified, would indicate the sort of attention to Eckhart as Friar, Master and of all things to God is fittingly expressed ground or vantage-point from which we Preacher. Where Ursula Fleming differs in this saying from Wisdom since they eat can speak about speaking about God with­ is that, though she has achieved the same because they are; they hunger because out oversimplification of all the contrasts results, she has done so not in her own they are from another". Every path to God between all the types of analogy; between words but by assembling, with luminous goes through creation but the direct path is analogy and dialectic; between the levels skill, brief extracts from the authentic through that bit ofcreat ion which our own of knowledge in predication, in negation, works into a logical and helpful sequence. mind itself is. Hence Antony says "unless in the excessus and in epectasy; between As a consequence these two books com­ you know yourself, you cannot know even the sorts of talk appropriate to each plement each other perfectl y. God" - not in the static Greek sense of the of the four journeys of mind. Of all the The publishers insult their authors, Delphic saying, but the older Hebrew wide-reading scholars, McGinn is the one however, (and their paying readers) by sense of Ezechiel, Jeremiah and Jesus, ie. who could best organise such a panopti­ refusing an index, though Coli ins does reading Torah on heart-of-mind we need con on a firm Eckhartian basis. But not in give a glossary of Eckhart's definitions no teachers. "Your own mind" the Dalai twenty four pages. Perhaps sixty six in the which, with a minimal effort in their of­ Lama said to monks preparing for exile, third volume? fice, could have included page references. "will have to be your lama". With so many new translations coming [f we need a key to enter Eckhart's out it is good to see the extracts taken from world of paradox it is in this hunger The writings of Eckhart, like those of [bn an older one. through eating God (the insatiable nature 'Arabi, are not easy reading and both McGinn calls Eckhart a 'good neopla­ of mind in Gregory of Nyssa and (7) authors have been misunderstood and tonist' and his non-analogical way a neo­ Maximus) since this is epectasy at the condemned on the basis of that misunder­ platonic 'dialectic': but there is energetic point or apex where mind, in perpetual standing, accused of ditheism and panthe­ (semitic) neoplatonism whose father is self-transcendence of now, is particle and ism; both are only now being properly Philo (with Saccas, Origen, the Cappado­ wave, lake and river, where its liquefac­ understood by western scholars and spiri ­ cians, Maximus as descendants) and there tion (,melting') in detachment from even tual directors, and each has impelled our is static (anticreationist) neoplatonism detachment means the material object of generation to establish a Society (2) for fathered by Plotinus. Dialectic seeks the worship perpetually recedes, since the the study and dissemination of his static coincidentia oppositorum in some­ formal ceaselessly approaches; where our thought. In the case of Eckhart, it is only thing higher, but there is nothing higher in immediate contact with God lasts zero now that academic work is reaching the which creator and creation coincide. Dom time yet does so perpetually. It is at this

SUMMER 1988 31 BESHARA Science zero point. with no gap for I am, that we 'breakthrough' to I AM, to the birth in us Books on Science of Christ. whose human nature was perfect hecauseof its lack of human ego. The Rape of Man and Nature Divine Logos Himself who is the true Hence the need for it to be lacking in us; by Philip Sherrard ground, the true and ultimate subject of the need, that is, for his mind to be in us, Golgonooza Press, London 1987. Hard­ human nature; and it is only through so that all can say I live but now not I: back, 124pp, £ 12.50 man's realisation of this ... that he Christ lives in me. achieves his true humanity and does jus­ This paradox of how time and the time­ tice to the cosmic implications of A Sense of the Cosmos less touch at the point (the spark ) where Christ's work of reconciliation". we can perpetually observe our own crea­ by Jacob Needleman Arkana, 1988. Paperback. pp 78. £4.95 tion (our poverty and dependent origina­ I He argues that this vision of the God/man tion), where privative and negative infini­ began to be eclipsed early in the Western The Anthropic Cosmological ties meet (as human now and divine now) tradition - he identifies St Augustine as without meeting (because approaching Principle one of the first influences whose theol­ eternally). is a pass key equally to the By John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler ogy. emphasising man's helplessness and thought of Ibn ' Arabi (especially when he Ox ford University Press. 1986/1988 sinfulness. undermined the notion of per­ speaks of New Creation and Resurrec­ Paperback. pp 706. £9.95 fectibility through union. But it was the tion ) since precisely here is where they reformulation 01' Christian doctrine ac­ both (,Il/or be ing at their most abstruse Reviewed by Jane Clark cording to Aristotelian logic - and in par­ and obscure. This allows a final compari­ ticular. the adoption of the Aristotelian son between the two more recent books. theory of substance which replaced the Ursula Fleming has collected some of the Platonic vision of a'great golden chain of �ilip Sherrard summarises the pur­ most helpful passages on Time and the being' - which did the greatest damage r ose of his short book in the first Now (8) and put them at the centre of her � and opened the door for the radical dual­ paragraph: book: dom Cyprian. wisely preferring the ism between spirit and matter, soul and '"It is to show, first. how modern science task of dissipating the fog these passages body, man and God, which was estab­ has its roots in certain prior develop­ cause when misunderstood. appropriately lished by men like Descartes and Galileo ments in Christian theology which par­ creates a subsidiary paradox: where Eck­ in the 17th century. tially eclipsed the full Christian under­ hart opts for the direct ascent. he guides Examining the nature of the science standing of man and his destiny: and the grateful reader to that same summit. which they engendered. Sherrarcl argues second. how the acceptance and imple­ the (1I/IIICIl of Benedict. along a winding that. based as it is on a fundamentally du­ mentation of this scientific worldview path. an easier but more scenic route. alistic vision, it distorts the true nature of has resulted in an ever-accelerating de­ man. and is therefore intrinsically corrupt. humanisation of man and of the forms of ( I ) CI/(iI>lers 1111 1_Ii\'(' -1,-1 lie dismisses the 'new science' along his society. with the repercussions this (.7) F/wFcklulI/ S(lCII'/I' I\'(/,Ijillllldl'd III with the old, saying "Nothing can stop this has hacI, and is still having. in the realm 1<)87, al/(l Ils pr,ll ('oll(i'/"I'IICI'. iIIl 1;'1' 111I'1I/(' process except a complete reversal of di­ ';:'cf,: /UIII I/lld !l/(' CI/l i.I/II/II LI(i" II'Ill w/.:1' of nature". rection. And nothing can initiate a rever­ >11/1'(' III I.(,CI!.I. UK, III S('I>ll'llIh('l 1<)88, SI'I' 1 sal ol' direction except a recovery by man Pagl' 3<), Philip Sherrard is a scholar and translator of an awareness of who he is; the cure (3) Scc B£SHARA 3 of repute and this book draws together must go back to where the sickness (-I ) ·/:."c/.:l/(/r( 1 WI/\,' /J\' RIcI/(/rd Woods , (JP, four essays which were originally written started." (p89) /)Ol'/lIliIIl. [,Ollgll/(/II alld Todd, I YS7, between 1973 and 1975. with a newly (5) God 1/(l\'IlIg r('\'colcd ;'1.1' lI(lmc liS I AM The great virtue of this book is that in written epiJogue. In defining the true na­ 1;'1'11 /'('\'1'01.1' I;'m I AM Is 1I011lfd, as III putting union with God at the forefront. ture of man, he turnsto the Greek patristie hlsml/lo;'. 'mlserlcllrs 01111 mlscl'lllor· . HCII!'e Mr Sherrard goes straight to the heart of tradition from the 5th century onward, ex­ wc arc 10 "hI' 1>('/jl'CI 11/,:1' gllll" ;'11\'1111' the matter and his exposition of the Greek emplified by people like Dionysius the ClIlI/l'ossIlI1I Ill' IIlcrc\' 1111 a/l, os ;'e sClllls Patristic tradition is often beautiful and Areopagite and St Maximus the Confes­ will 1111 Ill(' good olld ,,'Iekell o/i/.:e. always at a very high level. But thought­ sor. and continuing within the Orthodox CIIIIIIIICllIllIg 1111 HIISCil -1,-1.F.c/.: I/(/I'/ ('lies 'a provoking as his analysis is. his evalu­ II/(/sler' ,,'i1O '10111/1' III1c1er,I'lolld 11/(/1 hlll/illg church with St Gregory of Palamas. He 1 ation of our culture and our future is (}I'cr ollil lllcr! '/fiuIlIolI ilrc 1111' SOli/£'. considers first of all their ideas on Chris­ ultimately pessimistic. He sees our only (())2-1 2<) CIIClI ilgalll III Scrll/lIlI -I3 tology. ie. on the nature of the God/man. hope in a renaissance led by the Christian (Ptl'Iftl'r' 1857. Wills;'c. 1<)87. 33) the man in union with the Divine. This. he church capable of overthrowing the scien­ (7) CI/(/I>I('I,I' IIII LOI'c 2,-18, "B\, cllllllrlllg asserts is the 'norm ' against which all >(/1'/11 '1 '0111111 III I;'Is 1111'1111' 1/111/111110111111 , tific paradigm and consequently fails to 1 1 other concepts of humanity must be meas­ 1II111d hCClIlIICS "';'01'" hrlglll olld 1I11'lIcd III consider the possibility of the sort of ured, saying (p40): ('cose/css dcslrc, IIl1ccaslllg 101'1'" . spirituality with which B�SHARA is (S) £ck//(/I'I, /i/.:c Mallllllls. sOll/clIIIICS 11.1'1'.1' ... .. man is more than the microcosm. the concerned,which is able to encompass all '110>1" If>r l;'c ,,'ilOle 1I( lIl11e, .!i>r a/l ;'I,I'wr\,. homologous reflection of the created human activity, including science and his 1;'1.1' wllrld Ill' age, universe in which he lives. He is also the other here noire, big business. One is left macrocosm. For ...in the end it is the with the impression is that events are

32 ISSUE 6 Jane Clark BESHARA overtaking many or Mr Sherrards conclu­ render the gross size and structure of "Throughout the history of civilisation. sions - although not. clearly. his profound virtually all its components quite in­ the great traditions have offered human insights into essential matters. which are evitable. The sizes of stars and planets. beings a door. on the other side of which perennial truths. and even people, are neither random there stretches the long and difficult path nor the result of any Darwinian selec­ to self-knowledge .... In the past this door tion process from a myriad of possi­ has been well guarded by the institutions Professor Needleman. whilst critical of its bilities. These ...are the consquenccs and forms of Tradition. What does it products. h�IS a little more sympathy for of necessity: they are man i festat ions of mean, then, that these guardians seem to our scientific world. At the end of 'A the possible equilibrium states be­ have vanished in the present age'''' Sense of the Cosmos'. he postulates that tween competing forces of attraction the initial impulse behind Westernscience and repulsion. The intrinsic strengths was humanistic in the best sense of the of these controlling forces of Nature One feels that neither Philip Sherrard nor word: that in a world in which wisdom had are detellllined by a mysterious collec­ Jacob NeedlemCln. writing in the ·70·s. become dogma - dominated by great tion of pure numbers that we call the could have conceived that within fifteen " metaphysical truths - science reasserted CIIIl.IICllII.1 1Ij 1l01Ilrc. The Holy Grail of years practicing physicists would be dis­ the validity of direct sensory experience. modernphysics is to explain why these cussing seriously such an important tradi­ and so led to a deeper understanding of numerical constants have the particu­ tional idea as the centrality of" man in the reality. Its impulse. in other words. was lar numerical values they do" (pS). Cosmos. But such is the theme of 'The the desire for greater human completion. But. he goes on. we have been distracted The Anthropic Principle. appropriately by the power of our sensory ulllil:rstallLiillg enough. is onc of the attempts to find this away from the greater task of " deepening Holy Grail. It has various forms. which the discovery of the meeting between sen­ are referred to as WAP. SAP. PAP and sation and thought"' and this book is. in FAP. WAP (the Weak Anthropic Prin­ essence. a cdl for us to return to such a ciple) postulates that the values of the 'whole' vision. Published by Arkana. a constants, if we observe them. must be new house under the auspices of" RKP such as to determ ine a universe in which which has set itself the task of reprinting we exist: it is basically an extension of classics of spirituality. it originally ap­ what John Barrow calls 'selection effects' reared in 197:'1.the same year as Capra's and is widely accepted. SAP (the Strong 'The Tan of Physics'. Anthropic Principle) is more controver­ It is an interesting and perhaps impor­ sial: arising from the large number of tant book. Professor Needleman's central strong coi ncidences bet ween val ues of the point is that in studying the world. we are constants of nature, it postulates that studying ourselves: that the cosmos is 'a "The Universe must have those proper­ teacher' which. if approached correctly. ties which allow life to develop within it can nurture our progress to finer levels of at some stage in its history". The Partici­ perception. This theme is elaborated in patory Anthropic Principle (PAP). a term chapters on cosmology. medicine. biol­ COI'er IlllIstration fr om 'The Anthropic first coined by John Wheeler. (who also ogy. physics. magic and psychology. and Cosmological Principle '. 'Raphaelesqlle wrote the foreword to this book ) takes is to some extent a defence of the trad i­ Head Exploding', 1951 by Salvador Dali. into account the findings of quantum me­ tional sciences. chanics vis-a-vis the role of the observer. Anthropic Cosmological Principle'. an In his new introduction to this issue. and says that, "Observers are necessary immense work - in terms of" both sil.e and Professor Needleman (who is Professor of to bring the universe into being". FAP scope - which draws together ideas from Philosophy at San Francisco State Univer­ (The Final Anthropic Principle) goes religion, phi losophy. classical . Newto­ sity) takes issue with the physicists like even further; "Intelligent information­ nian' science and modern physics and Capra. whom he sees as proposing an 'in­ processing must come into existence in biochemistry. tellectual unity" between science and mys­ the Universe, and, once it comes into In their introduction. Barrow and Tipler ticism. thus missing the whole point of the existence, it will never die out". describe how 'the anthropic principle'. latter. He says. "My aim in this book. The book examines the appearance of which was eclipsed in Western thought therefore, has been to speak not of the con­ the Anthropic Principle throughout his­ with the adoption of the heliocentric uni­ vergence of science and spirituality. but of tory. placing it in the context of the verse in the 17th century, has come to be the separation. As in nature itself. as in a 'Design Argument' and teleological ar­ re-considered by modernsc ientists (albeit rainbow made up of separate colours. or­ guments (ie. that the world, things, have a on a speculative basis, there is no 'proof'). ganic unity is a reeiprocal relationship purpose) as expounded from the Greeks among separate but interdependent enti­ "One of the most important results of onwards, including sections on Aristotle ties. In human life as well, there can. I twentieth century physics has been the and Aquinas, non-Western cultures, think. be no real unity except through the gradual realisation that there exist in­ Idealism, and the philosophies of awareness of real divisions." variant properties of the natural world Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin. And he concludes the whole book: and its elementary components which It goes on to cover modern cosmology,

SUMMER 1988 33 BESHARA Islamic Art and Spirituality physic�. quantum mechanic� and bio­ Islamic Art and Spirituality chemi"try. whilst chapter� (j and 10 con­ sider the question of extra-terrestrial in­ by Seyyed Hossein Nasr telligent life (they think there is probably Golgonooza Press. I (jX7. Hardback. 21.lpp with 16 colour plates. £25. none) and the future of the Universe. Barrow and Tipler basically take a Reviewed by Lay la Shamash materiali�t view and so they are incapaci­ The Ibll tated from translating the mt:aning of tht: Tulull phenomena they describe to other It:vt:ls. ,11osque ill Some of their conclusions - cspt:cially in Cairu. II"hich their interpretations ofFAP - could tht:rt:­ "re" eats ill a fort: "eem odd to those accustomed to particularly viewing the world as a symbolic. l11ulti­ strikillR fact:tt:d rt:�t1ity. But for those who are /lUlllller the contt:nt to let the meanings speak for trallquility tht:mst:lvt:s. it does seem that st:ience is alld peace that blt:s"t:d �IS a Illt:diulll of revt:lation in our characterise agt:. I:mlll thi� point of vit:w. 'The An­ Islalllic sacr£'d architecture ". thropic Coslllological Principlt:' i� an im­ p.IJ. portant hook and ih rt:-i,,�ut: in more acct:ssihlt: 11:lpn-hack form i" vcry wel­ cOllle. he West is bt:ing rt:minded of the ture. music. architecture and tht: grt:at Non-�cit:nti" h. hO\,·t:vn. ,hould be T value and richnt:�s of Isbmic �Irt contributions of Sufis like Attar and w�lrnt:dthat �t1though tht: author" indicate through an incrt:asing variety of books Rumi. With masterly insight he fo llows that they expect tht: book to bt: rt:�ld by lay and articles. Tht:se usually tackle tht: Rumi's tt:aching in trying to re late the ;lLIdiences. it i, vny tcchnical in parts. subject by describing its history. ch�lrac­ form - .Il1ml - to its essential mt:aning ­ (Tht:re arc a lot of t:lJu�ltionsl ). But it is tt:ristics and style. often utilising critt:ria /}/(/'IIII (2). resuiting in a profound contri­ fu ll of fascinating inform�lt ion �Ind carrit:s similar to those used for Westcrn art hution to tht: subjt:ct of Islamic art and its with it a rt:al �ense of tht: my"tny of what whetht:r they are appropriate or nol. univnsal nature As he says on page 196: John Wheelt:r calls " marvel nUlllher ont:. Stylc.s arc compared and thc evolution of ...works of Islamic art continue to thi" ,trange universe in which wt: livt: �1I1d ct:rtain forms art: traced through this or t:manatt: their /)(//"{//.;(/h as a result of their IllOVC and have our being '". that inriuencc. rn\ authors are able to innn nt:xu� to Islamic spirituality'". nplain how it is that Islamic art has been In tht: chaptns 'Tht: Principle of Unity ahlt: to prt:scrve its identity through so and Sacred Architt:cturc' and 'Tht: Void Illany ccnturics and ill clluntrit:s as varit:d in Islamic Art' NasI' .s hows how architec­ The Presence of the Past and far apart as Spain and India. Evt:n ture can combint: two sacrt:d aspt:cts of by Rupcrt Sheldrake fewt:r writcrs �lttClllpt to relate it to its God. Unity and Void as exprt:sst:d in ' LII Collill'. 19XX. t:ssentlal mc�lning. il/a/w i/-al/oh ' (Thnt: is no divinity but 11;1I"(1I1:lcJ... . pp 390. t: 1).00 Titus Burckhardt �Illd Kt:ith Critchlow the Divine ) through its harmony and se­ - with whose work most BESHARA renity. He describes how the call to

It h;" t�IJ...t:n sevt:1l yt:ar,�i nct: the publ ica­ rt:aders will bt: fami I i�lr - art: among,t thc pra) er. the word of God, is prociailllt:d tion of 'The ew Sciencc of Life' for its few exceptions to thi" trt:nd. and S.H. from the minaret (which means in Arabic st:lJut:l. 'The Pre,enct: of the Pa"t ' to Nasr must be includt:d in tht:ir company. 'the place of light'): how the profane is �lppt:�lr in print. Thi, ne\\' wmk has rcsur­ His t:entral theme in this book is how the m�lde sacred: how the real and the ideal. rected much of the 11:lssionatt:dt:batt: that levds of meaning are mirrort:d in the silence and speech. space and fo rm. mat­ the forlllt:r work inspired in tht: scientific beautiful forms of Islamic art. and in par­ ter and light. immanence and transcen­ community. Sincc 19X I. thc term 'mor­ ticular its culmination in the sacred Arts. denct:. arc united so that beauty can li ft the phic rcsonancc' has cntcrcd the common This mirroring is achieved through the soul of its contemplator to the other world. vocabubry to dcscrihc phenomt:n�1 �IS rt:velation orthe Quran - The Word- and This beautifully produced and illus­ divcrsc as creation. cattle-grids �1I1d vac­ tilt: Redity ofMuhammad- The Light. As trated book should be read not only by uum cleaners' Love it or hatt: it. Rupert ht: says "Without the two fountains and thost: intnt:stt:d in Islamic art. but also by Sheldrake' s work is indissolubly linkt:d to sourct:s of the Quran and the Prophetic those who Girt: about the spiritual content the 'new' paradigm of science. and is /)(/m/.;(/h ( I) there would be no Islamic of cultural forms in general. pnhap" �IS valuable for the qut:stions it art'". Wht:n its beauty is contemplated as raises �IS for the answers it presents. Unity manifested in diversity. art serves I) Bal"lda/i /icillg Ii/';l' gmc£' or "i" ill£' ill/Ill,\" as a rt:minlit:r(d h i/.;,.) of both the centre 1I·/iicli. /lolI·s ill lill' aJ"lerics orl/il' IIl1il·er.l!' /\ fu ll revit:w will be printed in Issue 7 and the origin. as in the Divine saying. "God is beautiful and He loves beauty". 2) Mo' //([ - COIllIIIOII!r IIsed as /I/('(//lIl/g ill AmiJic alld 'spirit" ill Persiall. Nasr guides his readers through the po­ etics of Arabic calligraphy. Islamic I itera-

34 ISSUE 6 Temenos 9/Visual Islamic Arts BESHARA

Bamford explains). On her death, at the pects of life. In her finely-drawn article Te menos 9 age of 15, he "dedicated his life to the art 'Nature, House of the Soul', Kathleen of being human", attaining a mystical Raine exhorts us "not to shut out the A Review devoted to the transformation , a higher kind of dying unceasing sacred discourse which is na­ Arts of the Imagination than the merely physical, and this suffuses ture" but rather, we should recognise that 19S8, paperback pp 308. £9.95 . his love poetry with a universal wisdom. our faculties " ...speak to us of realities of Distributed by Element Books. Other contributions, to select but a fe w, the soul which they serve to awaken. And include an article by geometer Keith of this discourse, poetry and the arts are Critchlow on the 'eternal cosmology' in the language." Reviewed by Christine Hill contemporary poetry; Sisir Kumar Ghose In 'Work and the Sacred', Brian (Professor of English at Santiniketan, Keeble urges us to refind the 'organic emenos 9 invites us to glimpse West Bengal ) on 'Poetry and Liberation ­ unity' between work and the sacred; true again the 'precincts of rhe temple' a point of view', in which liberation is work, he attests, "is for the sake of con­ T(temenos) - the essential sacred source seen as the true nature of man; and John templation (of Beauty)". A more detailed from which all art ultimately originates Tavener, an English composer, on 'Com­ articulation comes in Philip Sherrard's and which the finest illumines. posing Sacred Music'. There is poetry 'Presuppositions of the Sacred in Life and Kathleen Raine, renowned Blake from Olive Froiser. Jeremy Reader and Art', which rewards careful reading. "We scholar and poet, is the untiring editor of Anne Ridler. and colour illustrations of have forgotten", he writes, "'that there is this most extensive review. She herself is striking oil painting by Biren De from a sacred drama, and that unless we play among the 34 contributors, who come Bangladesh. with a commentary by Ke­ our part in it we disrupt the harmony not from many difl erent cont i nents and repre­ shara Malik. Book reviews include John only of our own lives but also the life of sent nearly as many different art-forms. Allitt on 'The Light of Early Italian Paint­ everything around us." He believes that A major part of this issue is concerned ing' by Paul Hills: Martin Lings on S.H. the active agent in art " ... must always be with Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772- Nasr's 'Islamic Art and Spirituality' and the Divine, so much so that in one sense 180 I ). known by his pen-name Novalis, Brian Keeble on 'Edwin Muir's selected man - the 'I' or 'ego' - does nothing" , and who was one of the brightest lights of prose'. l\uotesthe young Gogol as saying "If Art German Romanticism. Christopher In his review of 'The Glory of the Lord does not accomplish the miracle of trans­ Bamford, David Gascoyne and Salah - a Theological Aesthetics' by the late forming the soul of the spectator it is but

Stetie all give sensitive insight into the Hans Urs von Balthasar, Stratford Calde­ a transient passion ..." . profundities of his life and poetry. and cott says, " ... of the three Christian Pla­ Clearly, this transformation is the aspi­ there are translations of his work by Ver­ tonic transcendentals, the True, the Good ration and inspiration at the heart of non Watkins and Arthur Versluis. No­ and the Beautiful, it is God the Beautiful Temenos, which makes its contribution to val is was betrothed to Sophie von Kuhn. who has been most neglected in recent the art world, and to worlds beyond art, who was for him as Beatrice was to Dante centuries". uniquely valuable. Originally intended to "'a divine archetypal figure contemplated Thi�; sentiment is perhaps not only rele­ run for only ten issues, we are pleased to in concrete form", (as Christopher vant to the arts, but is applicable to all as- find that it will now continue to issue 12.

EXHIBITIONS

Visual Islamic Arts at The Fine Art Degree Show at the Royal College of Art. June 1st - 11th 19S8

Reviewed by Richard Twinch

wind of change is blowing A through the corridors of theRoyal College of Art as witnessed by this year's degree show presentation in Kensington. Entering past the technically brilliant portraits of John Kirby and Christopher Paramjit Takhar in fro nt of her large piece 'Rag Vasaut' Lambert's surrealist images, one arrives upon a garden of repose and beauty as i r eastern,and its art that of a pan-islamic such high quality (by any standards) transported to another country. At first formal revival. To stop at this level would which is based quite unambiguously upon glance this 'country' appears to be middle be a mistake for the appearance of work of the appearance of beauty, represents a

SUMMER 1988 35 BESHARA Visual Islamic Arts ll uantum lear in the visual arts. such architecture so as to imbue his own What was on show were among the fi rst work with greater depth and meaning. fruits of the Visual IsI,lmic Arh unit. The Haveli house is essentially a court­ initiated and inspired by the energy. per­ yard house, holding a special relationship sistence and wisdom of Keith Critchlow. to the street through its entrance, and to The work of this unit is (to ll uote):"based the city through its roofscape. while its on certain objective principles. which he

36 ISSUE 6 BESHARA

'creation' in many different ways. Keith BESHARA TRUST NEWS Critchlow brought many practical dem­ onstrations - and his gift of correlation - to remind us of this beautiful mystery Seminars at Beshara Sherborne during his seminar. He showed us how what we call 'the visible world' - a world This. the last seminar series in the present Arthur Peacocke gave a morningse minar of overwhelming change and endless Sherborne Centre. has already covered a on the theme 'God and the New Biology'. forms - in itself conforms perfectly to a range of diverse and fascinating topics. Still to come in August arc Professor Jaki set of ordered geometric relationships. John Barrow began the series with his on 'Cosmology and Religion ' and the From one point of view. these arc like an seminar on 'The New Cosmology' and embryologist. Dr Mac Wan Ho from the unchanging archetypal grid from which was fo llowed at the end of May by Keith Open University. all form emerges: from another they are Critchlow. who spent a weekend explor­ like a doorway through which we can ing 'The Sacred Order' (reported below). enter into the intelligible plane. The Sacred Order On June 23rd, 10nathon Porritt. Chair­ These archetypes. expressed as number man of Friends of the Earth, visited to gi vc A seminar by Keith Critchlow and pattern. arecl early observable in the an evening lecture on 'Dimensions of May 27th-29th 1988 natural world: for example in the move­ Deep Ecology', in which he stated his ment of planets. the growth of crystals. conviction that any future ecology must Unity of Being is hidden by its own image plants and animals and. of course. man. recognise the importance of the spiritual as the world of multiciplicity. How the Apparently superimposing his 'own' dimension. On June 25th, the distin­ One inherently contains the many is a order. man spontaneously responds to guished biologist and theologian Dr mystery which is hinted at throughout these innate archetypes. be it in creative or contemplative modes. I r wc are granted the ability of abstrac­ tion. this sacred order reveals its true meaning to us, deepening our apprecia­ tion and leading us back to the primal � unity. 1 1"2 One particularly striking example which Keith Critchlow brought was the 1 1 geometric growth rate on the left. /-Iml.\'\' 011 KO/I'll

ADDRESSES the full amount. Any help which can be New Beshara Centre Beshara Sherborne gi ven is most welcome. Please contact Stable Block in England Beshara Sherborne. Sherborne. Nr. Cheltenham Gloucestershire GL54 3DZ, UK On September 15th this year. the lease on Beshara Australia Tel: Windrush (045 14) 448 the Stable Block at Sherborne.wher e the Beshara Trust has had a centre for many Regular readers will be aware that a prop­ The Beshara School of Intensive years. expires and activities in the South erty at Canonach, Victoria. has recently Esoteric Education of England wiIl move to another location. been purchased in order to set up a Chisholme House The Trust is currently negotiating for Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Roberton. Nr Hawick new premises where the short introduc­ Education in Australia. Although long Roxburghshire, Scotland tory courses and seminars can take place. courses have not yet begun. Canonach is Tel: Borthwick Brae (045 088) 215 A property has been found about 8 miles now able to receive visitors and to run outside Oxford which has all the required short courses. There will be a weekend The Beshara Foundation facilities and it is hoped that the purchase seminar 'Truth and Illusion in Psychoa­ PO Box 42283, will be completed by September. nalysis' by Dr Brian Muir and Rev. San Francisco Activities will continue as normal over Trevor Moffat in July. California 94 101, USA the summer at Sherbome, and arrange­ Beshara Austral ia is now constituted ments have been made for the continu­ as a non-profit-making organisation, and Beshara Australia ation of the mailing address and telephone is offering life-membership for A$260 Canonach R.M.B. 2060 number there for as long as required. (£ I 10). For further information about this Bells Flat Road The Trust has some funds available for and events in Australia, please contact Yackandandah, Victoria 3749. the purchase of a new centre, but it will Beshara Austral ia. Tel: 61-60-27-1 573 have to rely upon loans and donations for

SUMMER 1988 37 BESHARA

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS EVENTS

Martin Notcutt grew up in South Africa Richard Twinch studied architecture at and came to England in 1972. He is a Cambridge and at the Architectural Asso­ Beshara School Trustee of the Beshara Trust and currently ciation. He currently runs a computer works as a company analyst. software business. is computer corre­ of spondent to Building Design, and acts as Cecilia Twinch (MA Cantab) gained a a consultant on building technology. Intensive certi ficate of Education from the Froebel Institute. She has three children and Dom Sylvester Houedardstudied at Je­ Esoteric works as a teacher in Ipswich. sus College. Ox ford. and St Anselmo Col­ lege. Rome. He has been a Benedictine Education Stephen Hirtenstein (MA Cantab) stud­ monk at Prinknash Abbey since 1949. He ied History at Kings College Cambridge. is a concrete poet who has had several He is a Director of the Chisholme Insti­ exhibitions of his work, and is also a Courses Autumn/ tute. editor of the Muhyiddin Ibn ' Arabi memberofthe Benedictinc committce for Winter 1988/89 Society Journal and currently teaches in dialogue with other traditions. Ox ford. Jane Clark studied engineering and lO-Day Introductory Kathleen Raine is well known as a poet physics at Birmingham and Warwick. 10th-20th September and a Blake scholar. Her most recent She currently works as a publicity con­ publications include 'Yeats the Initiate' sultant and is editor of' Beshara Magaine. (Dolmen Press. Dublin, George Allan and 6-Month Intensive October 1st ' 88 - Unwin). and a new edition of her critical Layla Shamash was born in Baghdad. essays (Golgonoo/.a Press): the third vol­ Iraq and studied architecture in London. March 31st '89 ume of her autobiography 'The Lion's She now teaches architecture at Oxford Mouth' (French translat ion by Pierre Polytechnic. 6-Month Further Leyris) (Mercure de France 19X7) and Intensive two volumes of poetry publ ished this year Christine Hill graduated from Sussex October 1st '88 - by Golgono07a Press - 'The Presence' University and has attended several March 31st '89 and ' Selected Poems'. courses at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education. She is a director of Peter Young (MA Cantab) studied ar­ Beshara Publications and now lives in Fusus al-Hikam chaeology and anthropology at Cam­ G loucestershire. Readings bridge. He is Principal of the Beshara August 27th-4th September School of Intensive Esoteric Education at BESHARA September 17th-25th Chisholme Ilouse. LONDON October 22nd -30th November 19th-27th Dr Willis W. Harman was for many years senior social scientist at Stanford Autumn January 21st-29th '89 Research Institute International at Menlo Lectures February 18th-26th Park and is now President of' the Institute March 18th-26th of Noetic Sciences in Cal i fornia. Publ ica­ A series of introductory talks tions include a nUlllberofpapers on trans­ about Beshara For further infonnation, and industrial society and one book. 'An In­ for a prospectus, please complete Guide to the Future'. 6th October 3rd November contact John Barrow is a lecturer at the Astron­ 1st December omy Centre at the University of Sussex. The Secretary Kensington Central He is co-author of ' Left-handed of Crea­ Beshara School of Intensive Library, Phillimore Walk, tion' (Barrow and Silk, Heinemann, Esoteric Education 1988) and 'The Anthropic Cosmological London W8 Chisholme House Principle ' (Barrow and Tipler. Oxford at 7.30 pm Roberton, Nr. Hawick University Press 1986). His new book, Roxburghshire, Scotland Forfurther information about these or entitled 'The World within The World' other events in London. please contact TD9 7PH will be published in September 1988, also Beshara Shcrbornc on Windrush Telephone: Borth wick Brae by Oxford University Press. (045 14) 448 (045 088) 215

38 ISSUE 6 BESHARA

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Inserts also accepted. Contributors include Kathleen Raine, Keith Critchlow, Prices include setting. the Dagar Brothers, David Gascoyne, Kapila Vatsyayan, Colour and photographs ad­ Brian Keeble, John Tavener, Joscelyn Godwin, ditional; quotation on reqllest. & Hideo Kanze with his Noh Troupe performing from the Noh repertory For full details of sizes and copy dates, plus bookings. please contact: For brochures and information, contact Beshara Magazine, 24 Sidney Marie Anderson, Elmhirst Centre, Dartington Hall, Totnes, Street, Oxford OX4 3AG South Devon. (Tel: 0803 865551) Tel: 0865 243406

BESHARA SHERBORNE The Eckhart Society Annual Conference Introductory Courses (weekend and 10 day) consisting of a balanced programme of work , ECKHART AND THE study and meditation. CHRISTIAN LIFE Seminars Speakers: 5th-7th August Rev. Professor Stanley Jaki Dr Oliver Davies "Cosmology and Religion" Dom Sylvester Houedard OSB Dr Lyndon Reynolds

Mid-August Dom Cyprian Smith OSB Or Mac Wan Ho Exploring the integration of science with TRINITY AND AL L SAINTS TRAINING human experience. COLLEGE, LEEDS 2ND-4TH SEPTEMBER 1988

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SUMMER 19XX 39 BESHARA

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