Prayer and the Evolution of Consciousness

1. Prayer and the Evolution of Consciousness Carmelite Federation Meeting June 3, 2009

2. Middle Ages platonic concept of order whereby cosmos seen as: • - perfect - immutable - hierarchical • - geocentric • - anthropocentric

4. Gothic Architecture New transcendent relation to nature Lifting up from earth to heaven. Lex orandi, Lex credendi Lex vivendi

5. Newton’s World • Law • Order • World as machine • God of Gaps

6. God the Clockmaker • world-machine was designed by an intelligent Creator and expressed God’s purposes. • a clockwork universe constructed by Creator out of basic components created out of nothing. • Creator kept this world mechanism in good repair by preventing it from a too early unwinding through repeated interventions.

7. The New Scientific World View “A mistake about creation is a mistake about God.” T. Aquinas EVOLUTION: COSMOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL

8. The word evolution, to unfold or open out, derives from the Latin evolvere, which applied to the “unrolling of a book. • The idea that life unfolds from simple to complex structures or that nature is marked by a twofold movement of convergence and divergence now holds true not only on the level of biology but on just about every level of life in the universe.

9. Cosmos: • Old • Large • Dynamic • Interconnected

10. 13.7 billion years “It does not matter what country you Look at. We are all Earth’s children, And we should treat her as our Mother.” Aleksandr Aleksandrov

11. Large • We are one of 100 billion galaxies • Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a mid-size galaxy consisting of 100 billion stars, and stretching about 100,000 light years in diameter. • The galaxies are often grouped into clusters—some having as many as 2,000 galaxies together.

12. Dynamic Universe • E. Hubble telescope (1924) – saw that ours was not the only galaxy- many others with large empty spaces between them; red shift • G. Lemaitre (d. 1966) - Big Bang - dense, red hot universe – exploded • A. Penzias and R. Wilson (1965) – cosmic background radiation • Universe is dynamic and expanding

13. THE BIG BANG According to the Big Bang model, the universe developed from an extremely dense and hot state. Space itself has been subsequently expanding, carrying galaxies (and all other matter) with it.

15. 72% of the universe, is composed of "dark energy", that acts as a sort of an anti-gravity. This energy, distinct from dark matter, is responsible for the present-day acceleration of the universal expansion.

16. The Expanding Universe Cosmological redshift If the universe were contracting instead of expanding, we would see distant galaxies blue shifted by an amount proportional to their distance instead of red-shifted. A graphical representation of the gravitational redshift due to a neutron star. .

17. Anthropic Principle The initial energy balance of universe and many other details were so right that it seemed that universe had been expressly designed to produce intelligent, sentient beings. weak principle - In a universe that is large or infinite in space/time, conditions necessary for life will be met only in certain regions that are limited in space and time. strong principle - reason we are here is that it is only universe (out of infinite number) in which conditions are just right for emergence of humans.

18. A Finely-Tuned Universe • Three hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars and galaxies emerged, forming clusters as the universe continued to expand. • A trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of one percent faster, the cosmic material would have been flung too far apart for anything significant to happen

19. The embodied person that you are at this very moment—all the constituents that would eventually come together into the person that is you—was present in the Big Bang. Radically amazing!

20. Relativity • Einstein - 1905 -- No absolute space or time • time does not flow at a fixed rate • Gravity = curvature of space-time by matter, not only stretches or shrinks distances (depending on their direction with respect to the gravitational field) but also will appear to slow down or "dilate" the flow of time.

21. The StRange Quantum World! If you are not confused or shocked by Quantum Physics, then you have not really understood it. Niels Bohr

22. Quantum Physics: Five main ideas • Energy is not continuous, but comes in small discrete units. • The elementary particles behave both like particles and like waves. • The movement of these particles is inherently random. • It is physically impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more precisely one is known, the less precise the measurement of the other is. • The atomic world is nothing like the world we live in.

23. Particle/Wave Duality Light has a dual nature; in some cases it behaves as a wave, and in other cases it behaves as a photon. So which is it? When it looks like a particle, it is a particle. When it looks like a wave, it is a wave. It is meaningless to ascribe any properties or even existence to anything that has not been measured. Nothing is real unless it is observed.

24. Uncertainty PrincipleWerner Heisenberg (1901-1976) "The more precisely the POSITION is determinedthe less precisely the MOMENTUM is known“ (Uncertainty paper, 1927)

25. Implications of Uncertainty Principle • No deterministic universe. Cannot predict future events. • What cannot be measured cannot take place exactly. Only what can be observed can be known. • No distinction between process of observed and what is observed. No line between subject and object • The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it. T he act of observation produces physical reality. • We are actors rather than spectators • Anything that cannot be observed does not exist.

26. Matter is not composed of basic building blocks but complicated web of relations • no objective reality outside observer. • observer constitutes final link in chain of observational processes and properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of objects interaction with observer.

27. THE Universe Is INTERCONNECTED

28. Open Systems Ludwig von Bertalanffy credited with theory of “open systems.” Open systems – feed on a continual flux of matter and energy from their environment. Remain far from equilibrium. Self-regulation became key property of open systems.

29. Self-Organization Second law of thermodynamics (Sadi Carnot) -trend from order to disorder. Any closed system will proceed spontaneously in direction of increasing disorder. - Open systems proceed spontaneously to new order. To understand phenomenon of self-organization, must first understand importance of pattern -- i.e., relationships

30. Chaos Theory E. Lorenz (1961) discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome. chaos theory is about finding the underlying order in apparently random data. complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial condition  non-linear systems

31. Turbulence in the tip vortex from an airplane wing.

32. Chaos Theory markers: • Sensitivity to initial conditions- an arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behaviour  “Butterfly Effect” • Strange attractors – basins of attraction within system that can lure the system into a new pattern of order over time. • Fractals– geometric shape that is similar to itself at different scales

33. Systems Thinking • Arise from interactions and relationships among parts. • Properties of parts can be understood only from organization of whole. • Concentrates not on building blocks but on principles of organization. • Thinking is "contextual" not analytic.

34. B. Swimme - everything in universe is ''genetically'' related. The universe is bound together in communion, each thing w/all the rest. • We live in interwoven layers of bondedness. • Interconnectedness lies at core of all that exists. • Participatory universe

35. HOLISTIC WORLD VIEW • From mechanistic worldview  holistic /ecological view. • World is an integrated whole rather than parts. • Network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. • Recognizes intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as one particular strand in the web of life.

36. THE UNIVERSE IS IN EVOLUTION

37. The Encyclopedia of Life:30 Volumes Each volume has 450 pages. Each page = 1 million years Vol. 1 = Big Bang Vol. 21 = Earth Vol. 22 = Life Vol. 29 = Cambrian period Vol. 30 = Dinosaurs which go extinct on p. 385 Vol. 30 = Mammals on p. 390 Vol. 30 = p. 450 last line, human beings

38. Evolution In 1859 C. Darwin (1809-1882) wrote "On the Origin of Species" -- saw process of creation strictly from point of evolution an ascending process of development from simple to complex forms aided by natural selection.

39. The modern theory of evolution (= the “neo-Darwinian Synthesis”) says that the great diversity of life can be naturally explained by the combination of chance, law, and deep time: 1. Chance: accidental, chance events or contingencies: • a genetic mutation that lead to new characteristics in an organism • a natural disaster that changes the environment that an organism must adapt to 2. Law: the deterministic laws of natural selection (nature “selects” as survivors organism who best adapt to the environment; all others perish),chemistry, and physics 3. Deep Time: enormous depths of time

40. Evolution tells us human beings are the result of billions of years of a meandering process of “natural selection,” a journey marked by untold pain and suffering, loss, waste, and in the end, extinction for most species. More than 99% of all species born in the crucible of evolution have died out under the relentless jackboot of natural selection.

42. "Humans like mammals have existed on earth for a relatively short time -- only about 0.04% of the earth's existence." (0.04% of 4.5 billion) "Most anthropologist believe that between about 400,000 & 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus evolved into a new species called Homo sapiens." The modern human physique first appeared in Africa about 150,000 years ago, and then spread into the rest of the Old World, replacing existing populations of archaic human forms."

43. EMERGENCE “Emergent properties are those that arise out of some subsystem but are not reducible to that system. Emergence is about more than but not altogether other than. . . .Emergence means that the world exhibits a recurrent pattern of novelty and irreducibility.” P. Clayton, Mind and Emergence, 39.

44. LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE • OLD • DYNAMIC • INTERCONNECTED • EVOLUTIONARY • EMERGENT • PARTICIPATORY • HOLISTIC • OPEN • FUTURE ORIENTED

45. MedievalNewtonian21st Century Fixed Order Change =rearranged evolutionary historical Teleological deterministic Future oriented Substantive atomistic relational Hierarchical reductionistic systems/wholes Dualistic dualistic multi-leveled (spirit/matter) (mind/body) non-dualistic Kingdom machine community

46. Questions Raised: • Who is the God of this universe? • How is your image of God expanding? • How are you expanding your heart to include all creation? • How committed are you to the process of emergence?

47. The Evolution of Consciousness Cosmic Consciousness

48. What is consciousness? • “The Governor of Mental Life” which functions as the meaning-maker and manager in Science, Culture, and Religion. • constructing meaning, and asserting autonomous intermediate-term control over one’s thought process. • "consciousness" is derived from Latin conscientiawhich primarily means moral conscience. In the literal sense, "conscientia" (or "con scientia") means knowledge-with.

49. Consciousness seems to be an emergent process, since the mind is an emergent process. How it emerges, however, is unknown. • Consciousness as a result of emergence depends not just on the size of the region involved but also on the degree of complexity of the system.

50. Every level of interior consciousness is accompanied by a level of exterior physical complexity. K. Wilbur • The greater the consciousness, the more complex the system housing it. • For example, the reptilian brain stem is accompanied by a rudimentary interior consciousness of basic drives such as food and hunger; the more complex mammalian limbic system includes complex feelings, desires, emotional-sexual impulses and needs.