Materialism, Holism, and Mysticism
– A Mandala
or
Fragmentation, Wholeness, and Mystery - A
Mandala
A Open
Book by Rolf Sattler
Permission is
granted to quote from this open book provided proper
attribution is given to Rolf Sattler: Materialism, Holism,
and Mysticism - A Mandala
So far only the
Introduction and Lessons for the 21st Century
have been
published.
Below you find the following four sections:
Contents
An Open Book with Alternative Titles
Preface
How to
Read this Book
Contents
ALTERNATIVE TITLES
PREFACE
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
INTRODUCTION: Questions - Disturbing Contradictions
between Answers - The
Mandala as a Solution - Outer and Inner Circles (Mechanism
and Holism) – Inner and Outer Circles as Yin and Yang –
Materialism and Holism as Levels of a Hierarchy
(Holarchy) -
Continuum between the Outer and
Inner Circles - Complementarity – Lessons from Physics -
Mystery - Art - Spirituality - A Joke - Out of Balance -
Health – Ken Wilber’s AQAL Map - Fundamentalism - Education -
Silence - A Meditation: Beyond Words and Sounds - About Jokes
- Liberation through the Mandala - Mandala Meditation
1. FRAGMENTATION AND WHOLENESS: From Words to Conflict and
War -
Abstraction (Fragmentation) - - Hierarchy: Boxes within Boxes
within Boxes -
Unity Dissolving Hierarchical Structure - The Whole in the
Part - From Fragments
toward increasing Wholeness - No-Mind - Integral Structure of
Consciouness
and Beyond - Re-member - This-Worldly and Otherworldly - Sex
- A Joke -
Romantic Love - Enemies - Alienation and Loneliness - Jokes -
A Meditation:
Include Everything
2. DISCONTINUUM AND CONTINUUM: Plants -
Soil-Plant-Air-Continuum -
Plants and People Continuum - Prana and Chi - Are there
Western Equivalents of
Chi? - The Web of Life - Jokes - The Interior of the Web of
Life - The Evolution of
Consciousness - The Big Three - Waves and Lines of
Consciousness in the
Mandala - A Meditation: From the Witness toward ONE TASTE
3. EXACTNESS AND
FUZZINESS: Logic - Identity - Either/or Logic - Both/and
Logic - Fuzziness: Fuzzy Logic -Semantic Interlude -
Fuzziness in Science - Fuzzines in Religion - Fuzzinessin
Ethics - Fuzziness in Law - Fuzziness in Politics - Fuzziness
in Everyday Life - From Fuzzy Sets to Fuzzy Systems -
Yin-Yang - Yin-Yang and Fuzziness - Nature is not Perfect -
Plato and Aristotle - Polar Opposites - Love and Hate - Life
and Death - Other Polar Opposites - Beyond Polar Opposites -
Standing Meditation - Standing with a Tree
4. CLOSURE AND OPENNESS: Breathing - What Did You Do Today? -
Life as a
Living Flame - A Joke - Radiance, Radiance, Radiance... -
Subtle Energy -
Relativity of Openness - Opening and Closing - Open and
Closed Minds -
Broad Science - Science and Spirituality - Openness is
Related to Love, Closure
to Fear - Love Relationships - A Meditiation: Remember
Yourself as Light
Add: contraction and expansion
5. MECHANISM AND THE ORGANIC: Mechanism - A Joke -
Conventional
Medicine - Jokes - Organicism and Alternative Medicine - Is
Alternative Medicine
Scientific? - The Many Faces of Science - Beauty - Goodness -
Truth - Dancing
Meditation
6. COMPETITION AND COOPERATION: Competition - Cooperation -
The
Darwinian World View - Is Science Value-Free and Objective?
We Select What
We See - The Danger of Competition - Sociobiology - A Joke -
Alternatives to
Darwinian Evolutionary Theory - Stress - Relaxation and
Meditation
7. STATICS AND DYNAMICS: Statics - Structure and Process -
Physics - Life
Sciences - A Leaf is a Cosmic Event - The Human Being as a
Cosmic Event -
The Primacy of Process - Process Philosophy - Process
Language - Just Loving -
No “I” - Essentialism - Flow Creates Happiness - The Wisdom
of Insecurity -
Relationships - A Joke - Transformations of the Mandala -
Transcendence of
Statics and Dynamics - A Centering Meditation
8. RIGIDITY AND FLEXIBILITY: Introduction - Norms in Society
- Education -
Categorical Thinking - Perspectivism - Relativism and
Complementarity -
Tai Chi and QiGong - Spontaneity - Laughing Meditation - A
Joke
9.INVARIANCE AND VARIABILITY: Invariance - Variability -
Genetics - Are there
Laws of Nature? - The Semantic View of Laws and Theories -
Law and Order -
A Joke - Uniqueness - Suchness - A Meditation - Instead of a
Meditation
10. ISOLATION AND CONTEXT-DEPENDENCE: Context-Dependence -
Verbal
Communication - Isolation - Medicinal Drugs - A Joke - Genes
, Genes, Genes -
A Joke - Widening the Context in Forest Ecology - Widening
the Context in
Medicine - Contextualism - Meditation: Circulation of the
Light
11. SIMPLICITY AND COMPLEXITY: Simplicity and Complexity -
Simplicity -
Linear and Hierarchical Thinking - Goals, Goals, Goals -
Circle: No Beginning
and no End - Complexity: Nets or Networks - A Joke - No
Causes - Simplicity as
Simplification - Nets within Nets - The Mathematics of
Complexity - Science and
Art - Order and Chaos - No-Mind Meditation
12. SUBJECT-OBJECT DIVISION AND SELF-REFERENCE: Introduction
- The
Environmental Crisis - Ethics and Morals - Hate - Love -
Object-Referral - Self-
Referral - Dependence, Independence, Interdependence - The
Mandala is Self-
Referential - Five Interpretations of the Mandala - Dzogchen
Meditation:
Sky gazing
APPENDIX: Lessons from the 20th Century for the 21st Century.
An Open Book with
Alternative Titles
An open book is a book manuscript that can be changed and
expanded any time in contrast to a book with an ISBN number
that is fixed until a revised edition is published. In this
sense an open book resembles Wikipedia whose articles also
can be modified any time.
Instead of 'mysticism' - another 'ism' - I would have
prefrerred to refer to the mystical, the mysterious, mystery,
the unnamable, the un-speakable, the indescribable, the
ineffable, emptiness (in the Buddhist sense), the empty
center, no-thingness, no-mind, the formless, the unmanifest,
spaciousness, infinity, silence, stillness, the source, the
timeless eternal now, ever-present awareness, absolute
freedom, nirvanic Self, true Self, big Mind, the Seer, and
the Witness. Since I could not include so many words in the
title, I simply opted for 'mysticism' instead. I also would
have liked to add concepts that are more or less related to
materialism and holism. Since these concepts could not be
included in the title, I present the following alternative
titles that together with the chosen title - Materialism,
Holism, and Mysticism - give some indication of the scope of
the book:
Materialism, Holism, and Beyond –
A Mandala
Mechanism, Holism, and the Unnamable – A Mandala
Modernism, Postmodernism, and Beyond – A Mandala
Mainstream Culture, Alternative Culture, and Beyond – A
Mandala
Rational, Holistic and Integral Levels – A Mandala
Fragmentation, Wholeness, and Emptiness – A Mandala
Life, Living, and the Source – A Mandala
Instead of having three major concepts in the title, one
could have only two: the first one comprising the first two
concepts and the second one referring to the third in the
above titles:
The Namable and the Unnamable – A
Mandala
The Namable and Beyond – A Mandala
Form and Emptiness – A Mandala
The Manifest and the Unmanifest – A Mandala
Appearance and its Source – A Mandala
Appearance and Mystery – A Mandala
When I began working on this
project many years ago, I called it “Mandala of Life and
Living.” Since “life” is more static than “living,” “life” is
more representative of materialism and mechanism, whereas
“living” resonates more with a holistic, holodynamic view.
Both life and living arise form the unnamable represented by
the empty center of the mandala.
The title of the Appendix, Lessons from the 20th Century for the 21st Century, could have been chosen as a
title for the whole book. As I will show throughout this
book, individual, social, and global health could be
greatly ameliorated by the implementation of these
lessons. However, most of these lessons have not yet been
sufficiently incorporated into our culture. Learning these
lessons and living them is still a great challenge for
most people, including myself. Each lesson can be
associated with a person, several persons, a philosophy,
or movement:
Limitations of Reason – Sigmund
Freud, Carl G. Jung, Paul Feyerabend, postmodernism, etc.
Existentialism – Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, etc.
Postmodernism – Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Richard
Rorty, etc.
Limitations of Science – Jürgen Habermas, Paul Feyerabend,
postmodernism, etc.
Limitations and Ambiguity of Language – Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Alfred Korzybski, Roland Barthes, postmodernism, Osho, etc.
Incompleteness in Mathematics – Kurt Gödel
Uncertainty – Werner Heisenberg, Alfred Korzybski, Pema
Chödrön, etc.
“The Wisdom of Insecurity” – Alan Watts
Relativity and Relativism – Albert Einstein, postmodernism,
etc.
Perspectivism and Complementarity (both/and logic) –
Friedrich Nietzsche, Niels Bohr, Ernst Peter Fischer, etc.
Fuzziness (fuzzy logic) – Lofti Zadeh, Bart Kosko, etc.
General Semantics (Non-Identity, etc.) – Alfred Korzybski
Self-Reference – Douglas Hofstadter, etc.
Open Systems and Systems Thinking – Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
etc.
Organicism and Contextualism – Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Paul
Weiss, etc.
Process Philosophy – Alfred North Whitehead, etc.
Holomovement – David Bohm
Non-Locality – Alain Aspect, etc.
Information – Claude Shannon, David Bohm, etc.
Superstring Theory (11-dimensional M-theory) – Edward Witten,
etc.
Complexity (Fractals, Chaos, etc.) – Benoît Mandelbrot,
Stuart Kauffman, etc.
Self-Organization – Ilya Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman, Herbert
Fröhlich, Mae-Wan Ho, etc.
Morphomatics – Ian Stewart
Laws as Habits – Rupert Sheldrake, Ken Wilber, etc.
Network Thinking – F. Vester, Fritjof Capra, Internet, etc.
Not in our Genes and IQ – Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, Leon
J. Kamin, Stephen Jay Gould, etc.
Dangers of Genetic Engineering – George Wald, David Suzuki,
Mae-Wan Ho, etc.
Ecology, Sustainability, Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism – Arne
Naess, etc.
Planet Earth as Gaia – James Lovelock
Pollution and Global Warming – Rachel Carson,
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc.
The Limits to Growth – D. H. Meadows et al.
Small is Beautiful – E. Fritz Schumacher
Cooperation and Coevolution – P. Kropotkin, Lynn Margulis,
Game Theory (non-zero-sum games = win-win situations)
Economics and Ethics – Amartya Sen, etc.
Ills of Communism, Capitalism, Consumer Society, and
Mechanical Work – Erich Fromm, E. Fritz Schumacher, Herbert
Marcuse, Noam Chomsky, etc.
Feminism – Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, etc.
United Nations Charter
Universal Declaration of Human Rights – John Peters Humphrey,
etc.
Earth Charter – Maurice Strong, Mikhail Gorbachev, etc.
Gestalt Psychology and Gestalt Therapy – Christian von
Ehrenfels, Wolfgang Köhler, Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, etc.
Humanistic Psychology – Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, etc.
Transpersonal Psychology – Abraham Maslow, Roger Walsh,
Stanislav Grof, etc.
The Conscious Universe – Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, etc.
Subtle Energy – William Tiller, etc.
New Perspectives on Language and Linguistics – Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Alfred Korzybski, Roland Barthes, Benjamin Lee
Whorf, David Bohm, David Peat, etc.
Nonviolent Communication – Marshall Rosenberg
Holistic Education – Waldorf Schools, Naropa University,
Schumacher College, David Peat’s Pari Center for New
Learning, etc.
Innovations in Art – Claude Monet, Dada, Pablo Picasso, René
Magritte, Marc Chagall, T.S. Eliot, Herman Hesse, Samuel
Beckett, James Joyce, John Cage, etc.
Importance of Laughter – Henri Bergson, Osho, Madan Kataria
(laughter yoga), etc.
Importance of Silence – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alfred
Korzybski, John Cage, Osho, etc.
“God [as an external power] is dead” – but the mystery
remains (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas J. J. Altizer, Osho,
David Peat, Gerald Walton Paul, etc.
Meditation, Spirituality – The East and West, Alternative
Culture, Some Aspects of the New Age Movement
Spiritual Teachings – Rudolf Steiner, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana
Maharshi, G. I. Gurdjieff, J. Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Zen
Masters (Shunryu Suzuki, Philip Kapleau, etc.), Chögyam
Trungpa, Dalai Lama, Osho, Shinzen Young, Pema Chödrön, Byron
Katie, etc.
Divergence and Convergence of Science and Spirituality –
Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, Ravi Ravindra, Ken Wilber,
etc.
Integral
Philosophy and Integral Spirituality – Ken Wilber’s AQAL Map,
Thomas J. McFarlane’s Integral Sphere, Integral World, etc.
Whereas some of the above ideas such as human rights and the
Earth Charter are having some impact, most others such as
Korzybski’s general semantics (non-identity, etc) have not
yet been sufficiently recognized. In this book I draw
attention to the enormous potential of these and other ideas
for the betterment of society, for greater understanding,
integration, conflict resolution, and peace.
A Condensed Version of the Lessons
Limits to reason, science, control, and progress
Limits to law and order, regularity, and prediction (quantum
physics, laws as habits, chaos theory, fractals,
nonlinearity, strange attractors, complexity theory,
self-organization, etc.)
Incompleteness, ambiguity, and uncertainty, relativity,
perspectivism, and complementarity
The wisdom of insecurity
Limits to and bias of perception, logic and language
General semantics, both/and logic, fuzzy logic, network and
systems thinking
Wholeness (holomovement), non-locality, and self-reference
Existentialism, organicism, contextualism, process
philosophy, post-modernism
Gaia, environmentalism, deep ecology, cooperation,
eco-feminism
“The Limits to Growth,” “Small is beautiful.”
Dangers of Genetic Engineering, Pollution, and Global Warming
Ills of communism, totalitarianism, capitalism, consumer
society, and mechanical work
UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Earth
Charter, feminism
Subtle energy and the conscious universe
Gestalt psychology, humanistic and transpersonal psychology
Innovations in the arts and linguistics
Non-violent communication and holistic education
The importance of laughter and silence
“God [as an external power] is dead” – but the mystery
remains
Meditation and Spirituality – East and West, aspects of the
New Age movement and the alternative culture
Divergence and convergence of science and spirituality
Integral philosophy and spirituality
Preface
This book deals with life in the broadest
sense ranging from our personal life to life of the Earth and
the Universe. But it is not only about life; reading this book relates directly
to living and the
transformation of living. Transformation of living can, of course,
happen through intellectual understanding. But for deeper
transformation we have to go beyond mere intellection.
Therefore, in each chapter I inserted jokes that may release
tension, I included poetry that may open up higher realms,
and, at the end of each chapter, I described meditations that
- if they are practiced - may create deeper awareness and
lead to wisdom and compassion beyond one’s imagination.
As the basis for the book I devised a mandala that is
presented in a conceptual and pictorial version (Figures 1
and 2).
Fig. 1. The conceptual version
of the Mandala
Fig. 2. The pictorial version
of the Mandala
The
conceptual mandala consists of an empty center and two
circles of twelve concepts. The empty center represents the
unnamable, the mystery, the source, the unmanifest from which
the manifest of the two circles arises. The twelve concepts
of the outer circle describe mainstream science, society, and
culture; and the twelve corresponding concepts of the inner
circle characterize holistic science and holistic alternative
culture. Thus, the mandala as a whole provides a framework
for an understanding of the relation between materialistic
mechanistic mainstream science, holistic science, philosophy,
culture, art, and spirituality. In this context are discussed
many topics of personal, social and global dimensions such as
fragmentation and wholeness, competition and cooperation,
life and death, love and hate, health and sickness, ecology,
politics, conflict, war, alienation and loneliness,
meditation, humor, laughter, liberation, compassion, wisdom,
etc. (see Contents for a fuller range of topics). As a symbol
of the self and the universe, microcosm and macrocosm,
exploring the mandala can be a meditation, it can provide
novel insights, new connections, and it can lead to healing
ourselves and the world. Hence, in our deeply fragmented
society, where materialistic science confronts holistic
science, philosophy, art and spirituality, the mandala can
help to synthesize and reconcile and thus contribute to
greater holos (wholeness), holiness (sacredness) and health.
As the mandala emphasizes synthesis, it points to many
bridges, bridges between East and West, science/philosophy
and art/spirituality, materialistic mechanistic mainstream
science and holistic science, this-worldly and other-worldly,
body and mind, body and soul, the mundane and the sacred,
thinking and being, the many and the One. It can create
awareness that, although we often cannot see the bridges,
they are already there. We just have to re-member them and
then we can walk over them, then we can join “the other half”
that has been separated and for whose union with us we have
been longing so much.
Although the book deals with materialistic mechanistic
mainstream science, society, and culture, the major emphasis
is on holism, wholeness, wholes, holomovement, holodynamics,
health and healing, cooperation, coherence, continuity,
continuum, interconnectedness, integration, integral
philosophy, integral spirituality, mysticism, mystery... I
try to convey that living can be like a mandala that
encompasses the sun and its radiance, the source and its
efflux, the unmanifest and the manifest, mystery upon
mystery...
The spiritually inclined reader might ask: So why bother with
science and philosophy? My answer is simple: because science
has become an integral part of our society and our lives.
Almost everything has been touched and permeated by science
and technology. Unless we completely retreat from society, we
cannot avoid science. And philosophy is at the basis of
science. One cannot engage in science without making some
philosophical assumptions. And our society and our lives have
also been conditioned and permeated by philosophical ideas
and worldviews.
Yet beyond philosophy and science we still have a profound
yearning, consciously or subconsciously, for art and what
some call spirituality and others simply know as profound
happiness, joy, bliss, enlightenment. It is for this reason
that the relation between science and philosophy on the one
hand and art and spirituality on the other may be one of the
most pressing issues in our society and our lives. Ken Wilber
in his book on “The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating
Science and Religion”(1998, p.3) wrote that “there is
arguably no more pressing topic than the relation of science
and religion [spirituality] in the modern world.” This book
is about this relation, and it also includes philosophy and
art that are important forces in our society besides science
and spirituality. It is based on a mandala that complements
Wilber’s four-quadrant (AQAL) map as his four-quadrant map
complements the mandala of this book.
How to Use this
Book
One
special feature of this book is the use of boldface in the
text. Words, phrases or sentences that present major ideas or
concepts are printed in bold letters.
Thus the reader who
looks only at the headings and subheadings plus the words in
boldface can get a rough idea of what the book is about.
Like any other book, this book can be read from beginning to
end. However, since it is based on a mandala, it need not be
read in a linear fashion. The mandala is circular and in a
circle there is no beginning and no end (see Chapter 11). In
other words, there is no privileged concept pair that marks
the beginning, and there is no prescribed sequence either.
You may start anywhere in the mandala and move from there
anywhere else. For example, you may start with the concept
pair of competition and cooperation, move from there to
fragmentation and wholeness, or to mechanism and organicism,
or anywhere else. This provides considerable freedom, which
is inherent in the mandala. Nonetheless, as I wrote the book,
I had to follow a particular sequence for the chapters. I
began with fragmentation and wholeness, which made much sense
to me, and I continued clockwise in the mandala. But I could
have done otherwise. And you as the reader should feel free
to do so. Each chapter is relatively self-contained, but
there are connections between chapters, some of which are
indicated by cross-references.
Most important of all, whichever way you move through the
book, you stay near the empty center and the underlying space
of the mandala, which means you may always enter the
unnamable mystery, emptiness, the formless and the source
from which the circles of the mandala full of concepts or
images arise. Thus you can always go beyond thought and
feeling, and you can return to thought and feeling with the
realization that they are not ultimate. Not being ultimate
means that they need not enslave us: we can go beyond and
remain free.
Introduction of the book
Appendix: Lessons from the 20th Century for the 21st
Century
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