Subject headings:
Spirituality ; Observer
; Self-organization
Mystics often talk about knowing. They
know their spiritual experiences and the feeling that
these experiences are at a higher level and more
important than mundane, secular experiences. They also
know the character of unity and coherence inherent in the
spiritual experiences. See Elaine Smith’s poem on
the next page.
This may be difficult to reconcile with
"old fashioned" Newtonian science, which
focused much on separate particles, but more recently
science has developed interest in coherent patterns such
as the electromagnetic field and unites such as systems
uniting subsystems and elements into wholes. Science has
thus become more reconcilable though not identical with
spirituality. The spiritual experience of unity is often
reported to comprise unity between observer and observed,
an elimination or weakening of the subject-object
boundary. This seems to be reconcilable with the
unbreakable relation between observer and observed
assumed by second order cybernetics.
Tetsunori Koizumi writes about the
unity of man, nature and spirituality in traditional
Eastern thought compared to Western thinking. With the
emergence of ecological thinking, systems thinking and
second order cybernetics in the West in this century the
conceptions of East and West appear to be converging.
Axel Randrup gives examples of the
unity and felt importance of spiritual experiences
related to nature (nature spirituality). He argues that
these experiences also intellectually indicate an
experiential (mentalistic) conception of nature. He finds
this supported by examples of problems and paradoxes
pointed out by several disciplines of science as
consequences of the materialist-realist conception of
nature.
Eric Schwarz focuses on spirituality
and its compatibility with system science based on
wholistic views. He points to many works of this kind, as
moving us forward towards new fruitful understanding of
the ecological and relational problems in our new world
of complexity, non-linearity and self-organization.
Pierre Marchais discusses
Randrup’s paper critically and analyses the use of
the concept of spirituality. He underlines the fact that
the word spirituality as currently used had several
meanings.
In the Praxis section Ervin Laszlo
writes about a practical spiritual-social project, namely
the Club of Budapest. It is dedicated to the proposition
that promoting and facilitating the evolution of
planetary consciousness is a vital aspect of our
sustained well-being as individuals as well as for our
social development.
