Photo courtesy of Margarita
Delgado
Biography
I was born in southern Germany on March 8, 1936. With much
enthusiasm, I studied botany, zoology, chemistry, philosophy
and pedagogy at several universities in Germany, Austria, and
Switzerland. After receiving my doctorate, with summa cum
laude, in systematic botany from the University of Munich, I
spent one year at the University of Alberta with Ludwig von
Bertalanffy, one of the founders of General Systems Theory,
and another year at the University of California with E.M.
Gifford and L. Stebbins. Then, for 33 years, I was assistant,
associate, and full professor in the departments of botany
and biology of McGill University in Montreal, P.Q. In 1997 I
retired and moved to Kingston in Ontario.
At McGill University I taught courses in botany, general
biology, the history and philosophy of biology, and biology
in relation to the human predicament. I carried out research
on the development and evolution of flowering plants,
continuum and process
morphology, and
the philosophy of biology. At Naropa Institute in Boulder,
Colorado I taught a summer course on Modern Biology and
Zen.
My publications comprise nearly a hundred papers, book
chapters and books. Although predominantly on topics
of plant
morphology, some
of them deal with various aspects of biology, philosophy,
and spirituality.
I lectured at many universities around the world, including
Harvard University, and the Universities of California,
Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Delhi, Malaya, and Singapore. I
presented papers at many national and international
conferences and symposia and also organized symposia at
international congresses. To learn more about the relation of
science and spirituality, I attended several symposia on
science and consciousness. In 1995 I was invited to give a
talk on the relation of science, especially life science, and
spirituality at the 60th birthday celebrations of the Dalai
Lama.
I received many honors and awards. In 1973 I became a fellow
of the Linnean Society of London (F.L.S.), in 1982 I was
elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (F.R.S.C.),
and in 1995 I received an honorary doctorate (D.Sc.) from the
Open International University for Complementary Medicine at
Colombo, Sri Lanka, for my contributions to holistic
alternative medicine.
Since I retired in 1997, I research and write on broad and
integral topics of science, philosophy, and spirituality
(see Present Interests
and Publications). I became an affiliate of the Yoga
& Relaxation/Lila Centre in Kingston, and I continue
giving talks on various general topics such as the
relation of science and spirituality, the importance of
Yin-Yang, and alternative medicine. Furthermore, I
facilitate various types of meditation such as dancing and
laughing meditation, including laughter
yoga.
Photo courtesy of Shelley
Cohl
Flowers and
Mandalas
Flowers have fascinated and attracted me my whole life. As a
child, I enjoyed picking flowers for my beloved mother. Later
on, my doctoral thesis was on the development and evolution
of flowers. At McGill University one major focus of my
research was floral development. In 1973 I published with the
help of students and technicians the award-winning
Organogenesis of Flowers. A
Photographic Text-Atlas. This was the first and to my knowledge the
only major book on flower development in the 20th century
using a microscopic technique that I developed to
display floral development in three
dimensions through colored floral buds.
Although this book was a
scientific book, I underlined also its aesthetic value.
Both science and art have always been important to me. In
the 60s, during the era of flower power, I taught a course
on flowers. Although this course was predominantly
scientific, I also included sections on the importance of
flowers in art and literature, and I concluded the course
with a polysensual multi-media show of flowers in science,
art, literature, and everyday life.
As I have been exploring more deeply spiritual dimensions of
life, mandalas have become increasingly important for me.
They are usually circular, although other figures such as
squares may be incorporated. Often they are symbolic
representations of the Kosmos including ourselves. Their
center may be seen as the source of everything, the source
from which the manifoldness of existence arises. One could
also say that the source represents the unmanifest from which
manifest reality arises. Being unmanifest, the source is
unnamable, beyond words, mysterious, in contrast to manifest
reality that can be talked about. In Daoism, specifically in
the first chapter of the Daode jing (Tao Te Ching), the
unnamable is the origin of heaven and earth, Yang and Yin,
whereas the named is the mother of all particular things.
Free from desire, we realize the mystery, but caught in
desire, we see only the manifestations. Yet these two are
fundamentally the same, which is the deepest mystery.
According to the Heart Sutra of Buddhism that is also very
important to me, this wisdom is expressed as: form is
emptiness and emptiness is form (see, for example, Tenzin
Gyatso, The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, 2005. Essence of the Heart
Sutra. Boston: Wisdom Publications).
In Wilber’s AQAL Map and
Beyond I
present a dynamic
mandala that can
be transformed in so many ways that it could comprise all
mandalas. Therefore, this dynamic mandala can be seen as a
mandala of mandalas, or the set of all mandalas.
Flowers have been seen as mandalas because
they have a mandalic form. In bisexual flowers the female
organ(s), or, strictly speaking, the organ(s) that produce
the female sex, occupy their center. In this sense, the
center of flowers is not the unnamable, but part of form, the
namable. However, if in a more metaphorical sense, the
female, the feminine, is equated with the mysterious
unnamable, then a flower can be seen as a mandala in the
above sense. In the sixth chapter of the Daode jing (Tao Te
Ching), the “mystic female” can be interpreted as emptiness,
that is, the unnamable. In the mysterious Chinese text
The Secret of the Golden
Flower. The Chinese Book of Life, the golden flower is a symbol for light and
the One (see the translation by Richard Wilhelm with a
foreword and commentary by C.G. Jung, 1962. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul; and Osho.1999.The Secret of Secrets. Talks on The
Secret of the Golden Flower. The Rebel Publishing House).
David J. Bookbinder created a wonderful gallery and blog
on flower mandalas, in which the source, the unnamble, is
represented implicitly or
explicitly. I am
grateful to David Bookbinder for giving me permission to
reproduce here one of his beautiful flower mandalas,
Violet Morning Glory I, in which the source is represented
explicitly as the empty center.
It does not seem a meaningless coincidence that during my
life I have been deeply attracted to flowers, the feminine,
mandalas, and the mystery beyond words.
Morning Glory Mandala. Courtesy of
David J. Bookbinder.
Both my scientific research and my
existential experiences and insights have validated the
profound wisdom of Yin-Yang. One of the key concepts of my
research in plant morphology
(the form of plants) has
been the continuum (see, for example, my publications
with Dr. Bernard Jeune and Professor Rolf
Rutishauser). In
the Yin-Yang symbol, this concept is emphasized through
the continuity of Yin and Yang, one merging gradually with
the other, which acknowledges a fuzziness that is very different from typical
Western thinking in terms of mutually exclusive categories
that oppose each other in an either/or fashion. Yin and
Yang also cooperate in contrast to the Western Darwinian
and capitalist emphasis on competition. Furthermore, they
complement each other. My research, and especially joint
publications with Dr. Rolf Rutishauser, have focused on
the importance of complementarity in plant morphology,
science, and society. Chapter 6 (Complementarity) of Wilber’s AQAL Map
and Beyond also
deals with this topic.
In addition to continuity, cooperation, and complementarity,
Yin-Yang emphasizes dynamics. Yin and Yang are not static;
they change continuously: while one increases, the other
decreases. Alan Watts wrote about Daoism as “The Watercourse
Way”. Buddhism also emphasizes impermanence as the hallmark
of samsara, the relative world that scientists investigate.
In my research on plant morphology, I developed a more
dynamic approach that I called process morphology or dynamic
morphology. This
approach is based on or compatible with process philosophy
and even calls for a verb-based process
language (see my
article Why do we
need a more dynamic study of morphogenesis? Descriptive
and comparative aspects. In: D. Barabé et R. Brunet (eds.)
Morphogenèse et Dynamique. Orbis, Frelighsburg,1993).
Although Yin and Yang change continuously, they tend toward a
balance. According to Chinese medicine, health is balance, a
dynamic balance. I emphasize this view of health in my
article on Non-conventional medicines and
holism,
in Wilber’s AQAL Map and
Beyond, in Healing Thinking and
Being, and in Mandala of Life and
Living.
There are
many other aspects of Daoism that have become very important
to me in my personal life and living such as paradox,
wordlessness, silence (Dao cannot be talked about),
non-doing, spontaneity, playfulness, flexibility, softness,
gentleness, humility, wholeness, oneness, no-thingness,
emptiness, and suchness. Some of these are also typical of
Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, and other spiritual
traditions that have inspired me.
See also Present Interests
and Publications