I would like to suggest, along with what has already been shared from the Tao-te-Ching, that the manipulation of phenomenal forces, forms, and fields has unleashed the exact opposite of what, traditionally speaking, progress intends? All of the 'apparent' gifts, which have come from the increasing ability to manipulate our lifeworld, come with a gargoyle included. The apparent positive conceals a hidden negative. To imagine otherwise may be to miss out on one of the most incontestable facts of Life... that manipulation always comes with a price!... that progress demands a sacrifice!

Controlling and manipulating the external world is like putting our psyche in chains; and making it perform as we alone see fit. Manipulation of the external world (ecology) results in consequences; manipulation of the internal world (psyche) results in consequences --- not always intended/expected/perceived. Yet, because the "mechanical worldview" states that the external world is ours to manipulate --- that it is all just dead, inert matter anyway --- we often fail to recognize that there are consequences until after the fact. The same with the internal world of the subject that is just now beginning to be revolutionized through increasing use of surgery and pharmaceuticals, gene pool revolutions and nanobotic protocols. Not always pleasant circumstances await those that gamble with the psycho-ecological domains of the subject through inner revolutions. The nanobotic protocols carry unforeseen consequences as do the gene pool revolutions. This is assured because it is in the nature of progress to not always know the results until the results are in.... By then it is sometimes far too late to go back, to put the lid back on Pandora's box, or the genie back in the bottle.

It is quite simple to know that the seduction of scientific understanding will continue to run uncontested and unabated for some time now. The drug of an expectant future is too alluring. Science cum technopolies will give us that expectant future. We are hooked; chasing the "superunknown"; ready to re-make the subject through any means available. We'll deal with the bridge across the river catastrophe when we come to it. For now it is time to march on. Discovery awaits.

The assumptions that we most often empower are those which tend to make us want to believe certain outcomes are, more likely than others are, inevitably all good. There are certain courses that are "more good" than are others. We believe in our discoveries with a faith that is at times cruel and cunning. And if the last leap into the unknown didn't pan out, then the next one surely will. Prigogine and Stengers:

The experimental dialogue with nature discovered by modern science involves activity rather than passive observation. What must be done is to manipulate physical reality, to "stage" it in such a way that it conforms as closely as possible to a theoretical description. The phenomenon studied must be prepared and isolated until it approximates some ideal situation that may be physically unattainable but that conforms to the conceptual scheme adopted.

Conformed, prepared, isolated conceptual scheme? Doesn't sound like a prescription for Truth but for a way to get the results that one wants! Twinkle with the experimental set-up until the results match the theory. That's science? "What must be done is to manipulate physical reality..."

They just said it. Two eminent scientists, one a Nobel Prize Winner, just summed up the so-called "scientific truth pursuit". I say that it is just a benign term for the "will-to-power"; the increasing capacity to manipulate physical reality, which is now setting its sets on the inner man, i.e., the subject him or herself. Gene pool revolution: t minus 9 and counting. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4,....

Has our every seduction to power via knowledge always tended to rest at the positive pole of expected results? The Myth of E-Progress says, "Yes. Yes it has". Science writer John Horgan calls "Belief in the eternality of progress... the dominant delusion of our culture. Because we were all born into and grew up within this era, we simply assume that exponential progress is now a permanent feature of reality that will, that must, continue. But an historical perspective suggests that such progress is probably an anomaly that will, that must, end."

It seems that our former faith in a God or Gods has now been transferred onto a new God --- one that lives as the Myth of Eternal Progress. Via progressive scientific understanding and an increasing manipulation of the phenomena of life our new God shall lead us. Marshall Feigenbaum, himself a scientist, tells us that "A lot of my colleagues like the idea of final theories because they're religious. And they use it as a replacement for God, which they don't believe in. But they just created a substitute." How ironic is that? Faith does live on. Faith will find a home. The question becomes where do we project that faith, what transference takes place in regards to our faith, what object or ideology does our faith finally rest on and with? For we most certainly know that transference of faith does take place; none of us live without an empowering belief or faith of one sort or another. The only difference is where we place that faith or belief. For instance, the addict places faith in the drug of choice; while the scientist projects faith onto his or her imminent discoveries and the protocol and tools that will allow for those imminent discoveries. The mystic places faith in the Unity of the One and All; while the nihilist attaches their faith to the meaninglessness of existence.

Faith is a most primordial characteristic. Carried in the talons of personal belief we hunt down an object to place our faith in.

A predominant tendency is to believe that Science is not about faith at all, but about reason and rationality-where verifiable and repeatable proofs are held up as the high standard. Yet, we should bear in mind that rationality tends to its own sort of faith; a faith in reason and verifiable hypotheses; a faith in the protocols of Science; and that Science can say all that is meaningful and that we need to know about Being-in-Existence, i.e., about Reality. It is a sort of faith in reason, a faith in the ability to rationally explain every single interaction that has occurred, will occur, and is occurring now. It is as much a fundamental faith as what we see embodied in Koran wielding Moslems, Bible-toting Baptists and ochre-robed Buddhist monks. Faith is a fundamental component of humanity, and we profess our faith with each and every breath depending upon "what" in Life we are devoted to. Our devotion, or lack thereof, speaks volumes about where our faith lies.

Is our faith in reason or skeptical inquiry? Is our faith in the inalienable freedom of humanity, or the nihilistic meaninglessness of existence? Physicist Max Plank, who has a mathematical constant named after him, called Planks Length, spoke of this faith that scientists do have:

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in the scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispose of.

The scientist does have faith; faith in the scientific process; faith in the assumptions; faith in the forthcoming discovery; faith in logic and reason; faith in verification. The faith of Science is neither more nor no less than the faith demonstrated by the Buddhist chanting mantras, the Christian saying her Hail Mary's, the Moslem prostrating in the direction of Mecca, and the Hindu offering prasad to one of the Hindi deities. Faith is, without doubt, a fundamental component of Being-human; even for the faith-less whose faith is in the belief that there is nothing to be faith-full for.

Where are the faithful; to what or whom we are faithful varies. Faith lives on. Even in its denial.

"Certainly", you might say, "the faith of the scientist isn't of the same order as that of the mystic, is it? For the scientist has verified his faith with proofs that can be repeated by peers; so this must make it of a different order of faith than that of the more religious type, right?" Well, let's not be so hasty. Philosopher Ken Wilber has stated that if a rational, materialistic scientist --- one who poo-poo's meditative or spiritual faith --- were willing to take up the meditative injunction, then this scientist would be able to verify the faith of the mystic or contemplative. But if the scientist does not take up the meditative injunction, then there is no means by which he or she can qualify their skepticism (other than that their subjective predilections and personal opinions exclude meditation or spirituality from being authentic and scientifically verifiable).

Wilber outlines the "three forms of any valid knowledge quest. The first is injunction, which is always of the form, 'If you want to know this, do this'." In other words, an injunction is a specific protocol that clearly elucidates the requirements necessary so as to come to an understanding of the phenomena being inquired into. The injunction will "lead to or disclose or open up the possibility of an illumination, an apprehension, an intuition, or a direct experiencing of the domain addressed by the injunction." So apprehension or direct experiencing is the second form, while confirmation of our apprehension or direct experiencing is provided by a community of peers who take up the injunction themselves, and either confirm or deny our insight, experience, and/or apprehension.

Confirmation results in a tradition of injunctions that are passed on as verifications of apprehension, insight, or experience. Because these experiences or illuminations have been validated again and again --- as being "of" the domain of knowledge or understanding as it pertains to the specific injunction --- they are noted as being direct results of the performative injunction. What Wilber has pointed out is that science is not alone in their use of "exemplary injunctions --- that is, shared practices and methods that... disclose and address the important issues of their field." Any person or group of persons can formulate their own injunctions and seek confirmation from others. It doesn't need to be objectifiable data either. The gift of Wilber's insight has been to show that contemplative traditions have used their own version of "exemplary injunctions", and long before modern scientific experiments hit the world stage with their own version of "exemplary injunctions". Wilber:

The contemplative traditions... have always come first and foremost with a set of injunctions in hand. These injunctions (zazen, shikan-taza, vipassana, contemplative introspection, satsang, darshan) --- these are not things to think, they are things to do.

Wilber is telling Science that, "Yes, meditation and spirituality as we have known it in the past is open to being verified by scientific protocol. But you, Science, have to be willing to take up the injunctions. You must "do" and "follow" the meditative injunction as it has been handed down. Just as you expect a new science initiate to follow the proven injunctions of Science, so too are meditators expected to take up the meditative or contemplative injunction --- so they can find out for themselves; directly, experientially."

But Science can be a bully. It is big, brutish and powerful. In other words, Science doesn't like to bend for no one. Science has a proven and verifiable method that has gotten results and Science doesn't need to change for anyone, least of all for some whacked out airy-fairy meditators. Science made its break from the Church in blood and sacrifice; it isn't going back to the mytic hyperbole. Hard, raw, verifiable, objective data. Science has demands.

We can engage a dialogue, though, can't we? I mean, we can, as our preference is warranted, take up each other's injunctions and learn from that dialogue. We aren't really expecting Science and Spirit to agree on every front, because, well, for one, they are dealing with fundamental differences. Science is inquiring into "objects"; and objects in relation. Spirit inquires into "subjects"; and subjects in relation. At fist glance it appears that there is little to connect Science with Spirit. Science, as we have noted, broke away from so-called Spirit-ism and has been gaining influence in our lives and our world ever since. Spirit has just barely been hanging onto its own during this period. In fact, we could say that there has been a lot of faith that used to be devoted to Spirit that is now devoted to Science. If the split, the divorce, can be healed, we might come to find that Science and Spirit can enrich one another; perhaps all of us will be better off not living in the fractured world were Science and Spirit compete for devotees and followers. First they must talk. And that means taking up each other's injunctions with the same respect that is warranted their own "exemplary injunctions".

 

24

Both Science and Spirit have a huge impact in our lives. If not directly, then indirectly. Science gifts us with material advances, and perplexes us with as many toxic and destructive setbacks and concerns. Spirit gifts us with meaning and purpose, and perplexes us by seeming to foster so much war and hatred through the ages. If there is a dialogue set up between Science and Spirit, then we have some ready checks and balances in place. Without a dialogue, then all we have is war and conflict between competing ideological factions; a world-wide fracturing, a winner take all mentality, one where neither side takes the other seriously except in battle.

If Science and Spirit can both be shown how much they share in common, which is Being-human pursuits, then the hope of dialogue and formal exchange increases vastly. If not, then protected camps and isolated fields of elites battling over the "war for the definition of Reality" is more of the same. We have seen ideological wars for the right to define Reality. We know the result.

Let's assume that, just like individuals and cultures, Science and Spirit have specific interpretations of the lifeworld that render them blind in certain areas while extremely insightful in other areas. In other words, there are limitations that both Science and Spirit must deal with due to the running assumptions and interpretations that they foster and propagate amongst themselves and their kin. The specific languages that Science and Spirit use kind of exclude the hope of dialogue. But if we know going in that the languages are unique in some respects, and we have a way to translate the uniquely framed insights, experiences, and understandings, then there is hope for a more thorough relation between the distinct camps. On the other hand, if we don't take into account these issues of language-use, interpretation, and translation, then we are shooting ourselves in the foot from the start. There is ground-work to be done; it involves translating from sphere to sphere, from realm to realm.

We may not initially be able to point out the weak-spots right off the bat. First, as we have shared already, we will have to build the bridge of commonality. What is shared by both Science and Spirit? What is held in common? What cuts across the domains of specificity and particularization?

Science may not like it. But I would answer with Faith.

Clarification: The aspect of faith enters front and center, right off the bat. Simply because so many beings have proceeded us, and have found the specific injunctions fostered by each party to be quite necessary and fundamental, this is why we demonstrate faith in relation the specific injunctions fostered in our tradition. There is faith in the injunctions. Faith for each party rests in the heritage of the injunctions; where follow apprehensions and confirmations that further form that injunctive heritage. Whether we are talking science or mysticism --- it really doesn't matter --- both share in an exemplary tradition formulated and supported by the confirmation of many who have preceded us. Science and Spirit share Faith in their injunctions. The exemplary status of yesterday's discovery and intuitive insight is support and foundation for today's further exploration. And this is true no matter what the endeavor.

Mystics and scientists share in the injunctive process; they are not ever that far apart in matters of faith. We are all devoted; only the "matter", the issue of our devotion differs.

The injunctive process is a process of learning, and it is one that we are all immersed in. We decide and determine which "injunctions" we are going to take up. Growing and being nurtured in a community, it stands to reason that we will all ask, at various points in time, "How'd you do that?" The answer comes back from the community, "If you want to learn how to do that, then do this first." The injunctions become like maps, maps that lead us to destinations. The destination may be the outcome of a certain scientific protocol or it may be the outcome of a tantric ritual. Still, no matter the form the injunction takes; there lies faith in that process. "If you want to know this, then do this first."

We could even say that the statement, "If you want to get drunk, drink alcohol" is itself a type of injunction. This injunction leads to the direct experience or apprehension of drunkenness, and can be confirmed by a group of peers on almost any given night in just about any town in America.

Injunction-apprehension-confirmation; this is how we come to know. There is faith in the process; both Science and Spirit demonstrate faith in the injunctive process. "Follow these steps, experience/apprehend the results, then seek confirmation of your experiential results from a group of peers". This is "how" we come to know. It is an illuminative process that both scientists and mystics alike share in; as well as musicians and artists, carpenters and plumbers, doctors and lawyers. "If you want to know how to do/be this, then here are the steps that have led to others learning how to do/be this."

 

25

What do we want to know? In other words, what questions are we going to ask? And what injunctions will those questions lead us to?

My sense is that the questions we ask are very important, in that they lead to certain answers and not to others. If we are asking questions by framing experience in a certain manner, by searching for answers within a specific domain, then we are bound to only receive the answers that are within that domain --- not outside of it. Questions are guides along the journey. The question "How can I love?" leads to a completely different and distinct experience (answers), than does the question "Where can I find love?" The question "How can I love?" assumes that one has love to give, and that "how" to give that love one already has/is is the only issue up for debate. On the contrary, the question "Where can I find love?" assumes that love is not present already with the one asking that question, and that one must go looking for love somewhere "out there".

Asking the question "How can I love?" stems from the awareness that love doesn't necessarily need to be sought, but is given; while asking the question "Where can I find love?" stems from the awareness that one doesn't have love now, that it must be found, sought out there somewhere. Same issue: Love. Yet, distinctly framed questions stemming from totally different conceptions of the conditions of love, which will culminate in distinct answers to those questions as well.

Thererfore, we can state that the questions that we ask of the world, and of ourselves in relation to the world, dictate and demonstrate where we are at in relationship to the self and the lifeworld of that self.

Questions are, more often than not, assumed to precede answers; just as causes are assumed to precede effects. If we want an answer we must frame a question. If we want to bring about a specific effect we must initiate a specific cause. Specific questions lead to specific answers in much the same way that specific causes culminate in specific effects. "If you want to know what it is like to be/do this, then be/do this first."

There is an instance from my youth that remains with me to this day. I was walking along a trail near home. It was a day when I was searching intensely for answers; one of those adolescent existential-type crises of the young and becoming. I happened to come upon an elderly couple while walking a trail in the woods; we greeted each other.

"How are you?" they asked.

"Good", I replied. "Just out searching for answers."

"Oh, we're looking for questions", they said.

It struck me as ironic at first. I thought they were just balancing out my statement. But after long periods of reflection it dawned on me that I had a tendency to ask amorphous not totally well-framed questions. You know, questions like Why? How come? What should I do know? These questions are abstract. They don't really relate to concrete circumstances --- to a definite context. In other words, looking for answers without forming good questions first is meaningless, and often leads to a sense of desperation because we will receive answers back that are just as vague as our questions were.

"Why?" comes back "because". Vague question = equally vague answer.

The heritage of the injunctive process educates one into the specificity of asking the right question in as much detail as possible. Both traditions, those of Science and those of Spirit, require a definite, specific, contextual framing of the question under consideration. We ask how to do something or how to get a certain result --- specifically. The injunctive tradition replies back with a specific set of instructions that we must take up and follow. Specific question = specific answer in the form of certain "exemplary injunctions".

Life is concrete. Life is relational and specific. There is nothing general about any of our lives. If we are looking for sweeping general answers we will find that they are hard to apply to Life as we know it. Why? Because Life as we know it is not general; it is specific. There are specific circumstances that we are each involved in now. General answers do not work; they are meaningless and quite inapplicable in most cases. Generalizations are good for orientation and a sense of place in a greater scheme of things. Yet for most of us it is the specific, contextually-bonded nature of our existence which we seek answers to. Certain abstract concepts and generalizatons may apply from time to time, yet for the most part we are dealing with specifics that require a proper framing and format.

It struck me, after the fact, how totally "right on" that the elderly couple were in their reply to me. Looking for good, meaningful, specific questions comes first. The best question results in the best answers. How we frame our questions results in the answers that follow, that we receive either experimentally or intuitively. Merely looking for answers without framing a question, specifically, concretely, results in confusion and despair. The answers that we receive by searching without the guidance of a well-formed question are themselves not well-formed, and may not even apply as such.

There have even been many instances in Life, as I am sure you can recall yourself, when the search for an answer became so intense that the original question which compelled us to search in the first place is somehow forgotten --- lost in the shuffle of disparate answers and follow-up questions.

"What was the question again?"

We may have forgotten. And not until we remember the specific question can we hope of finding the most appropriate answer --- specifically.

 

26

Each of us has sought out answers in our own time. We are an answer-seeking type of beings. By Nature we are asked to seek out the answer of food to the question of hunger. Answers come in many guises. Nature poses many questions of a necessitous nature. "Seek or perish" seems to be the modus operandi here on Earth. And once the necessitous questions of Nature have been sufficiently answered, then "other" questions arise... questions of desire... of longing... of temptation... of fear... questions from the depths of the psyche... seeking resolution in the world.

Which brings us to the following: "What after Nature and Necessity?" When Nature has been answered, what questions do we pose, or what questions do we note arising? What is the level of questioning beyond necessity?

The threat is that we can lose sight of, while immersed in our answer-seeking processes, the quality and nature of the questions that we are asking. In other words, just as the goal becomes the focus so too does the answer; meanwhile the causative factor (the question) is omitted from our awareness. Hence, we never get anywhere. We fancy the goal, the answer, forgetting the question, the injunctions in the porcess. So we have neither; only an imagined fantasy-ideal that haunts us as a "far-off" state or condition that we cannot reach because we have forgotten how to ask the right questions.

Specific injunctions are necessary in seeking. The injunctions that arise in response to the questions we pose are a reflection of what we want most of all, of where our chief desires lie, both collectively and individually speaking. And increasingly, I have found that the questions that we most often ask are centered upon issues of power and control. Now, I am not saying that this is good or bad right off the bat, yet it cannot be argued that we are educated to want to best understand how to manipulate and control both ourselves and the forces around us; so, we ultimately end up asking questions that deal with issues of power, control, and manipulation of ourselves, our states, our world, and conditions. And when we cannot manipulate and/or control then we have the childish temper-tantrum; the adult rage; the victimized being.

For instance, if we find ourselves the victim of circumstance (and who hasn't at one time or another) we often formulate questions that center around understanding "why this has happened", "who is to blame", and "what we can do about it". These sorts of questions imply a power external to us that, a) we want to understand; b) we will blame for our condition; and c) hope to get a handle on so it doesn't happen to us again. In other words, at our present stage of development, we ask questions that seek to find those ways that allow us to take our power back from external sources and forces. The irony of all of this is that we have been the ones and continue to be the ones who project power onto external forces, and then we anguish over this fact that the external has so much power over us. Later we try and get it back by manipulating the external so as to feel internally powerful through doing so. But we can't get there from here. It is virtually impossible to project power outside of ourselves, and then to attempt to take that power back so we can feel internally satiated --- it never lasts, we become rapacious vampires living off of the blood of others, i.e., those external to us. Said another way, projection and reclamation creates the eternally recurring cycle of displacement. If we project, then attempt to take back what we have projected, we have not ended the cycle of dissociation between internal and external. Only --- and only is a strong term --- only by not projecting power external to ourselves do we sever the habituated cycle. The fact of the matter is that we can never ever get enough external power --- you'll have to eat again tomorrow. Because we are no longer Power-Source, we have to gather it from outside of ourselves, ever outside of ourselves. This creates the manipulation and domination game. We become unconscious covert operators manipulating for power, for our psychic food. We are unaware that we are manipulating the external environment for power. We know we are, obviously, but we are not yet aware enough to know that we have become like hungry ghosts, rapacious heathens. Literally, we are feeding off of external sources of power. We have forgotten how to generate authentic power internally, consistently.

"How do we get more power over external conditions?" has become the main question that the Myth of E(ternal)-Progress asks. The Myth of E-Progress needs power, more power than yesterday and more power than last week if it is to continue to be a progressive myth. Without collecting more and more power there is no progress. Where is progress without power? By this right, then, The Myth of E-Progress is a Power-hungry Myth.