// The following is an excerpt from what the bleep study guide ... interesting read . Sorry, but i have nothing original to add;-)
Today the Newtonian view of physics is referred to as classical physics; in essence, classical physics is a mathematical formalism of common sense. It makes four basic assumptions about the fabric of reality that correspond more or less to how the world appears to our senses. These assumptions are reality, locality, causality, and continuity.
Reality refers to the assumption that the physical world is objectively real. That is, the world exists independently of whether anyone is observing it, and it takes as selfevident that space and time exist in a fixed, absolute way.
Locality refers to the idea that the only way that objects can be influenced is through direct contact. In other words, unmediated action at a distance is prohibited.
Causality assumes that the arrow of time points only in one direction, thus fixing cause-and-effect sequences to occur only in that order.
Continuity assumes that there are no discontinuous jumps in nature, that space and time are smooth.
Metaphors We Live ByWORLD AS BATTLEFIELD"Many people see the world as a battlefield, where good and evil are pitted against each other and the forces of light battle the forces of darkness. This ancient tradition goes back to the Zoroastrians and the Manichaeans. . . . There is the sense that you are fighting God's battle and that ultimately you will win. William Irwin Thompson called this kind of certainty and self-righteousness 'the apartheid of good,'" Macy tells us.
WORLD AS CLASSROOM"A more innocuous version of the battlefield image," Macy offers, "is the image of the world as a classroom, a kind of moral gymnasium where you are put through certain tests which would prove your mettle and teach you certain lessons, so you can graduate to other arenas and rewards. Whether a battlefield or a classroom, the world is a proving ground, with little worth beyond that. What counts is our immortal souls, which are being tested here. . . . For the sake of your soul, you are ready to destroy." These two views are strong among monotheistic religions. But according to Macy, agnostics can also fall prey to this way of thinking when they become militant or self-righteous. Fundamentalism has both religious and secular adherents.
WORLD AS TRAP"Here the view is not to engage in struggle or vanquish the foe, but to disentangle ourselves and escape from this messy world. We try to extricate ourselves and ascend to a higher, supra-phenomenal plane. This stance is based on a hierarchical view of reality, where mind is seen as higher than matter and spirit is set over and above nature. This view encourages contempt for the material plane," says Macy. The Western worldview was based on this metaphor, with the trap being the illusion that the phenomenal world is real. To know truth one must directly apprehend the eternal, transcendent Platonic ideas or forms. These perfect forms are unchanging, a welcome relief from the overwhelming flux and chaos of the world. Elements of this worldview have entered all major religions of the last 3,000 years,regardless of their metaphysics. Macy tells us, "Many of us on spiritual paths fall for this view. Wanting to affirm a transcendent reality distinct from a society that appears very materialistic, we place it on a supra-phenomenal level removed from confusion and suffering. The tranquility that spiritual practices can provide, we imagine, belongs to a place aloof from our world and to which we can ascend and be safe and serene." For those not engaged in spiritual pursuits, another version of this worldview is the idea that we need to get healed from all our neuroses and hang-ups first and then we can participate in the world. In this view the self and the world are seen as essentially separate, so we believe we can heal one without healing the other.
WORLD AS MACHINEAlso known as modernity, the world is viewed as a collection of inanimate objects that interact in predictable, mechanistic ways based on mathematical laws (developed principally by Isaac Newton and thus known as Newtonian, or classical physics). Introduced in the seventeenth century by Descartes, Newton, Bacon, and others, modernity established a discontinuity between mind and matter, the subjective and objective, and ultimately between science and religion. Over centuries of struggle between a rising tide of empiricists who battled against an entrenched theology, an uneasy truce developed. Science claimed the domain of the physical world, religion claimed the domain of the mental world.
Our core assumptions about the universe are embedded in the metaphors we use. Ecophilosopher Joanna Macy explores five central metaphors through which people in different spiritual traditions see the world: world as battlefield, world as classroom, world as trap, world as lover, and world as self. We have added to this list: world as machine.
Resource: For more information about Joanna Macy's work, see www.joannamacy.net
In a worldview where the physical and the mental have split allegiances, what happens to powerful religious and spiritual impulses, which address the essential role of meaning in Paradigm Shift our lives? Integral theorist Ken Wilber argues that when driven underground the basic human need for transcendence comes out "sideways," through compulsions to accumulate possessions and stroke the ego.
WORLD AS LOVERMacy tells us that with this view, "The world is beheld as a most intimate and gratifying partner. In Hinduism we find some of the richest expressions of our erotic relationship with the world. Desire plays a creative, world-manifesting role here, and its charge in Hinduism pulses onward into Krishna worship, where devotional songs, or bhajans, draw on the erotic yearnings of body and soul. . . . You feel yourself embraced in the primal erotic play of life. This erotic affirmation of the phenomenal world is not limited to Hinduism. Ancient Goddess religions, now being explored, carry it too, as do strains of Sufism and the Kabbalah, and Christianity has its tradition of bridal mysticism."
Nineteenth-century Romantic poets like Blake, Wordsworth, and Shelley felt this erotic affinity with the world, as did Walt Whitman in his "body electric." The American Transcendentalist Movement, with Emerson and Thoreau, also communed deeply with the natural world to discover that in doing so they became more fully human.
Resource: For information on Paticca Samutpada, see www.akshin.net/philosophy/budphilcausality.htm
WORLD AS SELFThe world as lover is a complement to the world as self. The subject (the lover) and object (the beloved) are no longer separate. The world is an interconnected whole and each individual a node in a living web of life. The Hindu tradition offers the image of Indra's net, in which each node is a jewel that shimmers with the reflection of all the other nodes. In Buddhist thought we find this idea expressed in the concept of "dependent origination," or mutual causality. Today this perception also arises in the realms of science—in general systems theory, complexity science, and quantum physics. We are discovering that Mind is immanent in nature, extending far beyond the spans of our individual conscious purpose.
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