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• Wednesday, November 19, 2008 06:26 PM

  A Discussion of the "Sacred"

  First, I have read and enjoyed Stuart Kauffman's works in some detail and they are much more nuanced and useful than comes across in this interview.

  Second, I know the term “god” was in the original article but let me put aside the term "god" and its baggage because I don't think the term is necessary for the discussion I want to have, at least it is not necessary for my comprehension of life, the universe and everything. Does that make me an atheist? I'll let you decide; since I think the term “god” is not a necessary for me in this discussion then it is just as unnecessary (or even paradoxical) for me to talk of being an atheist since it would reduce to something like one who is not a user of a term s/he does not think is necessary.

  Third ,I DO find useful discussions of special moments in life that for lack of a better phrase I'll call sacred experiences. (Words can only point at things and never quite reach them.) I guess, duh, yeah we all have special moments and we all like to discuss them. But I mean a discussion in which we don't have to leave science, particularly biology and evolution. I think there are, or could be, discussions within science about “the sacred experience” that could productively be informed by emergence and self-organization, and, Kauffman's term, the adjacent possible. I'm fine with people who want to leave science for such a discussion but somehow that does not interest me (in the past yes but not right now).

  Instead of proceeding forward with Kauffman's (and all of your) thoughts I'll refer back to Gregory Bateson (a self-described atheist) and offer a few quotes from him and from his daughter. They were working on some way, grounded in biology, of framing (my term not theirs) the term “sacred” that is “Neither Mechanical nor Supernatural.”

  What is it that men and women hold sacred?

  What does it mean to hold something sacred?

  And why does it matter?

  ‑‑Gregory Bateson & Mary Catherine Bateson (Angels Fear)

  AND...

  Let me give you another example to come a little closer to what I mean by... [sacred].... The following poem by Coleridge is probably well known to many of you. It is part of the story of a ship in terrible straits. The decks are littered with corpses who have died of thirst, and one sailor, the "Ancient Mariner," survives to tell the tale. [His killing of the Albatross was the event that began the ship's misfortunes, and the body of the dead bird has been hung around his neck.] This piece is the central fulcrum‑‑the turning point‑‑of the whole poem. I've always found it singularly moving.

  Beyond the shadow of the ship,

  I watched the water snakes:

  They moved in tracks of shining white,

  And when they reared, the elfish light

  Fell off in hoary flakes.

  Within the shadow of the ship

  I watched their rich attire:

  Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

  They coiled and swam; and every track

  Was a flash of golden fire.

  O happy living things! no tongue

  Their beauty might declare:

  A spring of love gushed from my heart,

  And I blessed them unaware:

  Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

  And I blessed them unaware.

  The selfsame moment I could pray;

  And from my neck so free

  The Albatross fell off, and sank

  Like lead into the sea.

  Of course, I am not suggesting that blessing the water snakes caused the rain that then came. That would be another logic in another, more secular, language. What I am suggesting is that the nature of [the sacred] and the like is most evident at moments of change... I think it is important here to notice how often [such a moment] is a sudden realization of the biological nature of the world in which we live. It is a sudden discovery or realization of life.

  The water snakes give us a hint of that.

  ‑‑Gregory Bateson

  & Mary Catherine Bateson, Angels fear

  AND finally, a quote from Mind and Nature, A Necessary Unity:

  "What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and the to the back-ward schizophrenic in another?

  "What is the pattern that connects all living creatures?"

  —Desert Flower Read Desert Flower's other letters
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