*
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SELF
Man's evolution
Quite apart from the validity of our theory of process, surely the exercise has highlighted an important subject. We become aware that present theories of evolution have nothing whatever to do with the evolution of man, by which I especially mean the evolution of individual persons, which is the issue of greatest importance for each one of us.
In chapter XII we dealt with the inadequacies of familiar evolutionary theories at some length, and it should be obvious that the "evolution of species" cannot apply to man, for all races and colors of man are of one species. One of the aims of Darwin's theory was to account for the many different species of birds he encountered on the Galapagos Islands of the Pacific. He speculated that all these different species had descended from a common ancestor. But the evolution in this case operated to create different species from one more primitive type. A species is defined as a group distinct and different to such an extent that members of different species cannot interbreed and produce fertile offspring. There are six other increasingly broad classifications used by biologists:
Species Lion (leo)
Genus Felis (includes leopards, etc.)
Family Cat (including lynxes)
Order Carnivore (includes bears, dogs, etc.)
Class Mammals
Phylum Vertebrates
Kingdom Animal
But all mankind is only one species, the narrowest category of all.
Moreover, as we noted in Chapter XII, there has been no significant change in man's physical body over recorded history (eight thousand years). While this has been a short time as evolution goes, the evidence in this period has not indicated that survival of the fittest has had any trace of significance so far as changing man's physical body or genetic structure. True, disease and famine may have eliminated the less healthy, but this has not changed man's physique.
Civilization has interposed itself between man and the "laws" of survival by establishing protection partly by separation of function - soldiers, workers, etc. - even to the extent of breeding from the weak; and survival of the tribe replaces survival of the individual. A civilization doesn't succumb because members of its population are unfit, but because the civilization becomes decadent, a phenomenon not to be accounted for in terms of gene structure.
But all these considerations have no bearing on what is really important, your evolution and mine. Here science merges into religion, for we all go about the business of living with a complete seriousness as though we believed that our every act contributed to our total development. It seems to me that we know in our bones that gradual and continued growth of character and competence is more important to us than any other end and that our belief in Christian doctrine is sustained by our participation in evolution. Faith in a heaven and in an ultimate reward for a good life does not owe itself to the Christian Fathers or to the Old or New Testament, but to the fact that evolution has pointed toward a better future for billions of years.
Of course, I am writing about a theory of process, which is to say, of evolution, whose thesis is that we have evolved through billions of years, perhaps even through many universes, from photons and atoms through molecules, cells, and ultimately through animals to reach the stage at which we could be born human and start learning to talk at two years of age and in some cases write symphonies at seven.
While such a theory is straightforward and conservative in the sense that it requires a minimum of assumptions, the reader may find it unconvincing and prefer to await its support by the authority of science.
But I question that source for conviction. Conviction should come from within, and it is my hope to awaken it in the reader. The evidence for it is the concern we have for self-improvement and for long-term goals; the utter importance to us that we be right; the great effort we make, when we are convinced we are not right, to reform; and perhaps most important, our belief in what is better than we are, what is beyond our grasp.
And it is this orientation that has provided the force to bring us to our present stage, which is a long way, a very long way, from where evolution started. For we are not just a bunch of atoms; we are generals of an army or, if you prefer, leaders of an organization whose membership is a billion billion times greater than the entire human race. We lift our finger and a billion cells cooperate with total obedience and precision. When we digest our dinner, billions of complex molecules are rushing about, performing complex chemical tasks.
We have worked long and hard to reach this state, and we have done so by our own efforts. And now the question: what has sustained us in this climb? There can be only one answer. It is sustained by the basic and most fundamental of all the powers, the premonition of a goal implicit in the photon that started it all off. This premonition sustains the quest. It is the thrust, the passion that makes life continually try to excel itself to evolve and, in almost all mankind, has led man to postulate a state of being beyond himself.
Religion does not induce this belief. The belief is in our bones and blood and, when it so chooses, gives sanction to religion. Religion, in fact, is its outward clothing, a method of sharing and articulating the incomprehensible life force.
This brings us to the apparently paradoxical position of seeing religion as the manifestation of physical and emotional, rather than spiritual, causes. But it must be remembered that physical substance and/or energy was itself the product of action, that ultimate totality whose division produces substance and uses it as a vehicle. So the source of the faith in what is beyond oneself is a timeless overview, the same dynamic orientation that has pushed the physical vehicle through its development and that has guided our steps up the ladder of being since the universe first came into existence.
But it might be objected: what of the case when this primal life force fails, as it evidently does when a civilization deteriorates, when a whole people succumb to a newer and more vigorous invading culture, as did Rome and Mexico? The answer lies in the very fact of resignation. Were the life force a true compulsion, a law of nature, it could not resign. It would cling to the corpse as does the force of gravity. Resignation implies volition, and the recognition that the vehicle has become worn out. It implies the willingness to die, to abandon ship and, I insist, take one's chances on finding a better vehicle.
Here the mind boggles. It can go no further, for it says, "If I lose my life, what am I?" What indeed, for with nothing to pinch to assure yourself you are there, you are nothing, no thing. But thing thou never wert. This thing you've been pinching never was you.
So we should view the evolutionary force in man, and in all life, as the promise of self-transcendence. It is not a compulsive force like gravity, if indeed it is a force at all, but it induces internal transformation. The angiosperms, the most highly evolved of plants, put forth flowers which attract insects. We can call this a mechanism for survival, but the simpler plants survive without flowers. We can suppose, if we wish, that the flowering plants know about insects, or we can insist they do not, but to suppose that the necessity of survival has produced flowers is to deceive our intelligence and betray the spirit of inquiry.
So what should we do? Reexamine the question. Look at the corresponding development in another context. Do the most complex atoms develop radioactivity in order to survive? Is survival the cause of DNA? By looking at the culmination of power in these other areas, we break free of the compulsion to view life as caused by outer circumstances, for the atom is under no necessity to survive. Its development is a pattern of unfoldment. We thus see deeper reasons for evolution. It is adventure, the exploration of possibility, the creation of a game and the play of the game - and not just to win, because to lose lays the basis for a better game. The oysters are still at the game of being oysters. Other creatures lost interest in that occupation and crawled out of their shells, not to survive but to expand their sphere of action.
I trust that this point has been sufficiently proven. The Great Chain of Being is testimony to it. The grid is but another voice ushering the facts of physics and chemistry and the progression of life forms to witness the universal ongoingness of Nature, giving testimony to her ambition to explore all opportunities to create forms that can draw on the nourishment she provides.
But in taking thought about life, in trying to observe it, and its forms, we become isolated from it. We are one of these forms. How may we read our role? For while we too are creatures of nature, actors in the great drama, it is not enough for us simply to exist. We have reached a point where we can begin to write the script.
The arc-reapplied
The arc of process describes the course by which molecules learn to become proteins and DNA; cells to become great trees; amoebae to become a million species of animals - the lion and the antelope it pursues, the hawk and the fish it carries aloft. All creatures have their progression. Ours is to be men, not, like our animal forebears, to perfect a specific function - to run, to swim, or to fly - but to have dominion over nature, to rule it and to care for it, to conceive and attain goals beyond our immediate necessity.
In the construction of a theory of process, we have applied the arc to a variety of things. Let us now apply it to ourselves, especially to the question of the continuity of life, for it is to such unprovable and long-term phenomena that the investment of a theory based on broad principles affords a foundation.
As we have earlier pointed out, the upper two levels are by nature nonfinite, the lower two finite. This follows from ontological necessity, for that which is finite must add boundaries to that which endures, and thus is compound. It requires the extra commitment of a form, and thus depends on the prior existence of that which has extension or duration only. Thus the atom is compounded of nuclear particles - a more primitive existence with duration but no form. When these nuclear particles are separated, the atom ceases to exist. The substance it contains, however, continues because substance (the mass-energy of the physicists) cannot be destroyed.
Applying this schema to man:
I Monad
II Soul
III Mind
IV Body
We may now define his essential ingredients. At the top level we place that principle in man that is at the core of consciousness. We may refer to it as the monad and give it the function of attention, intention, or purpose.
To the second level we may assign the first vehicle of the monad, that which makes possible experience, that by which it feels pain and pleasure, and has the function of memory. We call this soul.
To the third level we assign mind, self-consciousness, identity. This is the function that makes concept formation possible and, it would appear, requires a body with its nervous system, sense mechanism, and brain.
To the fourth level we assign the physical body itself. This includes the physical substance that makes up the body.
This assignment of principles in man implies that what we are calling soul is immortal. It cannot be destroyed. Like the mass energy to which we have correlated it, the soul is without form, it has no parts, and hence is indestructible. This correlation, in fact, is most instructive, for the fluid nature of the soul is what adapts it to taking on the imprint of experience. Like water passed from one vessel to another, it takes the form of the vessel it is in, and supplies the content of experience. The physicist too finds the analogy to water most suitable to describe nuclear particles, whose behavior is often likened to water drops.
The monad too is immortal, but in so describing it we are guilty of an inversion, because the monad is not in time. Here language fails us. I trust, however, that the reader, having come this far, realizes the predicament of describing this essence, which is analogous to the eye that can see everything but cannot see itself; so I will not attempt the impossible. It is necessary, however, to point out that this principle (spirit) is often confused with soul partly because, regardless of words, it is not realized that there are not one, but two, "nonobjective" principles. And let us not be confused by the fact that the words soul and spirit have reversed roles over the years. There were times when spirit has had the connotation which we would assign to soul (i.e., "earthbound spirit" or "thy father's spirit" used as in Hamlet in the sense of ghost). In any case, what we assign to first level is prior to soul; it is the Hindu atman, the nous of Aristotle, etc. Soul is the precipitation of spirit into time, the first stage of its "descent" into matter.
Macrobius, who based his view on Pythagorean traditions, thus described the soul's entering into its descent:
Just as the line is born from the point,
so the soul from its point, that is monad,
comes into the dyad, its first lengthening.*
*Mead, G. R. S. Thrice Great Hermes (vol. I, p. 288). London: John M. Watkins, 1906.
The "lengthening" is duration in time. However, the spirit or monad is not entirely lost in this descent, but remains itself.
The concept is a difficult one. It is, in fact, one of the great mysteries of existence, and has been lost to Western tradition. Aristotle, who inherited from Plato the notion that the soul was an indestructible substance, in later life rejected this view and described the soul as a formative principle and not separable from the body.
In reaching that conclusion, Aristotle established the direction which modern thought has taken up to now, putting emphasis on that which can be defined and rejecting the notion of substance. This emphasis has led to logical positivism, which explicitly states that it can deal only with that which can be defined, which is to say, with form.
We have repeatedly stressed the shortcomings of the modern rationalist view, which would eliminate substance (and value) because it cannot be defined. Only substance can supply the chemist with the material for his experiments (as opposed to the information), and the concept of substance is essential to such critical facts as the number of molecules in a gram, or the absolute magnitude of what otherwise is known through ratio.
The concept of energy as used by science conforms precisely to the concept of substance as used by philosophers, and thus constitutes a refutation of Berkeley, who argued that the concept of substance should be dropped. It also reassures those skeptics like Locke who, without trying to reason substance out of existence, remain in doubt about what cannot be objectively verified - for the answer is that energy, despite its nonobjectivity, does exist.
It then is important to attend to what science has found about the indestructibility of energy. This principle (the conservation of energy) was first recognized in conjunction with the conservation of mass. It was sometime in the 18th century that Carnot, a scientist, vigorously stirred a container of water and measured the amount of energy he thus expended. He then measured the rise in temperature of the agitated water, and found that the energy he had expended had gone into heat. This inaugurated the principle of the conservation of energy. The conservation of mass had previously been established on the basis that whenever a chemical change takes place, the mass of the products is the same as the mass of the initial ingredients. Thus:
Mass of fuel (e.g., hydrocarbon) + oxygen = mass of carbon dioxide and water
More recently, it was recognized that energy has mass, and that when energy is released from combustion, there is a very small reduction in the mass of the products. This principle had its complete confirmation in the atomic bomb, with the famous equation:
The amount of energy in mass is enormous. The term now used, megaton, measures the energy of atomic explosions in terms of millions of tons of dynamite.
So great is this ratio, however, that for ordinary chemical processes the change in mass is far too small to be measured. The true authority for the principle is not experiment but theory. That which exists cannot vanish into nothing. It was such authority that impressed the primitive mind with the persistence of life after death, and I can see no essential difference between immortality and what science calls conservation.
The importance of this excursion into science will now be clear, for the same reasoning which establishes the substance of physics establishes the substance of the soul. Unfortunately, this may seem to the reader an inversion. Surely, the soul, if it exists at all, is of a spiritual nature not accessible to physical experiment. But this is just what the soul is not. The soul is the counterpoise, the complement of spirit. It is that which draws the spirit out, or down.
The intercourse of spirit and substance (or soul) creates the physical universe, for the creative spark can fulfill itself only by engagement with matter (mater = mother). This is the intercourse of the divine parents.
And the concept is not new. It is perhaps the oldest of all. What we are doing in this book is to show that science bears out the truth of this oldest of myths of spirit and matter; for the photon, or initial light pulse, is the nonmaterial partner whose interaction with matter creates activity, whether the activity be the motion of nuclear particles, the energy changes of atoms, the changes in bonds of molecules, or the photosynthesis of plants.
Teleology
But we have also done more. We have shown that all process partakes of this nature and has as its first cause a purposive or goal-seeking thrust which can realize itself only through a marriage with matter.
This justifies our bringing the principle to bear on the nature of man. Man shares with all other creatures and entities an origin in light, but, as a creature which has evolved through all the stages previous to dominion, he takes seniority over those stages, as Genesis puts it:
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
So much for the promise held forth for the dominion kingdom. But as in other kingdoms, the power which makes dominion possible has to evolve.
We recall by what long and involved evolution the mobility of animals was attained. How, in order to gain size, mobility was at first sacrificed (in sponges), how the animal then had to devote its whole attention to creating a stomach, then other organs, then their placement in an organized chain of command, until finally, with the addition of articulated feet, true mobility was at last attained.
Man is doing a different thing, but no less difficult, and the investment he must make in means entails at first a loss of the very freedom that is to be his ultimate reward. We have indicated how we may follow the substages: collective man in substage two, individuation in three, modern man in four, genius in five, etc., but we need to see the whole arc in terms of an organic development, from spirit through the levels of soul, mind, body, and back again through growth, through mastery, to spirit's fulfillment.
This requires realizing that the four levels - spirit, soul, mind, body - are traversed twice: on the way down and on the way up.
It will have become apparent to the reader a long while back that there is a great difference between the left- and right-hand branches of the arc. Soul, like the horse of the Chinese metaphor, wanders about eating grass; mind like the driver, is intoxicated; and spirit, like the owner, is asleep.
This is their natural disposition, which is not set right until the owner awakes and by his own efforts, unaided by natural law, does something. Here is the "turn," when the monad, having accomplished the descent, realizes its heritage and the task it has set itself, and turns back toward its home, the celestial world, going through mind2 (genius), soul2 (higher soul) to reach spirit2.
This does not mean to become unworldly. It means rather the intensely practical task of learning the way things work, for that is the reason for descent into matter, to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The importance of the turn is recognized in almost all the great religions and mythologies. It is often referred to as the birth of the hero. Thus in Egyptian tradition Osiris first undergoes a series of increasingly severe limitations leading ultimately to complete dismemberment. Isis, the sister and syzygy or mate of Osiris, then picks up the pieces and puts them together, with the exception of the phallus, which is lost. Despite this, she conceives and bears the infant Horus, who grows up, defeats Set, and becomes the Sun God. The birth of Horus is the beginning of the resurrection of Osiris - the upward turn of our V-shaped arc.
Now, it is of great interest that the rebirth of Horus is a virgin birth, that the conception is without benefit of the usual male organ. What does this mean? The reader will recall our stressing that the monad must initiate the turn by its own efforts, unaided by natural law. The monad at this point becomes first cause, which is to say that it draws on the spiritual prerogative that is its heritage from the first level. This self-induced conception leads to the virgin birth (a virgin birth being one that occurs without a prior cause, without a father) .
Similarly, Genesis treats of the fall of man (his expulsion from the Garden of Eden). The fallen Adam is redeemed by Christ, who symbolized the spiritual rebirth of man as son of God, crucified in matter, but able to rise again and ascend to heaven, where "he sitteth at the right hand of God."
My purpose in mentioning the Christian teaching and correlating it with Egypt is to point out that both accounts are dealing with the same general thesis that we have used to describe evolution.
The reader will appreciate that it was by the superposition of a number of examples of process that it was possible to arrive at the general theory. Many of these examples I have not used in the present text. But it is important to study all possible sources and not be distracted by irrelevant differences. These ancient myths are extremely rich in content, each throwing light on details of process in general that are obscure in other examples, much as the geology of one continent fills in details of history that are obscure in that of another.
For example, myth was of great help in my understanding of the third stage, identity. In Genesis, Adam is the first stage, the monad. Eve, the "mother of all living, " is the second principle, that of desiring or wanting. The third stage begins with disobedience, the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This principle has to do with form and identity. But Genesis links it with disobedience. What is the connection? Clearly, the disobedience is an act of self-determination, necessary to both self-consciousness and the sense of identity. This, in turn, adds meaning to "having its own center," the general descriptive phrase applicable to the third stage.
Applying this progression to the self and its evolution, only by self- determination can the self become responsible for its own acts, and only by such responsibility can the self attend to the consequences of action, and thus learn.
Thus the self, in taking on an identity, becomes responsible to itself and learns how to deal with law in the fourth stage. Having learned the law, it can then act deliberately; it can become cause. This is the turn, and it is followed by the self's "growth."
But the price of identity is finiteness - finiteness in space and time -and this finiteness has a positive value, for were the self not finite, it could not learn. It is because only a self that is finite can suffer from wrong actions and hence learn from experience.
This takes us back to immortality of the soul. We can now reverse the question and ask: if the soul is immortal, why then is the body mortal? It is because only the finite (or mortal) body is appropriate for learning. If the body were indestructible, it could not be injured and no learning could occur. This is the reason for mortality.
The whole system of interrelationships is hereby tied together. The two upper levels are nonfinite, the lower levels finite, and the self "falls" into the mortal realm for very good reasons. It is only by taking roles that the self learns to act, to achieve the competence required in order to have dominion over nature, to become, as Genesis puts it, "as wise as gods, knowing good from evil."
Conclusion
This concludes our testament. We have gone into science and discovered that in addition to its well-explained areas, clearly mapped like the streets of a city, there are portals leading to unknown and unexplained areas, the world of nuclear particles and of light. This is the world of quantum physics in which, contrary to reason, it has been discovered that there is a basic uncertainty, the quantum of action. This is a principle that activates, in contrast to the more accepted scientific principle of law that maintains and regulates.
Thus the creative aspect of the universe revealed by quantum physics confirms the teachings of myth and revealed religion, and hence fulfills our quest for an integration of science and those nonphysical realities thought to be unverified by science.
This is what we have done. We have gone into the inner sanctum of science. We have discovered that it is not billiard balls but action which is fundamental. Putting the fundamental entities of science in the precise order of their generation, we have discovered the sequence to be that of the most profound religious teachings.
In the beginning. . . the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. . . . And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
For the quantum of action is light.
But it is not only light; it is directed energy. As it issues from its source, for example the sun, each photon has its precise frequency. Falling into matter, it performs the function that the particular matter requires: if a leaf, the synthesis of starch; if a chromosome, its mutation into a higher form; if on a page of mathematics, the possible illumination of its reader.
How important in this regard is the eye, the quintessence of vertebrate evolution! For the eye is the vehicle most worthy to receive, and most able to benefit from light. Perhaps its nature may help us to comprehend what is perhaps the greatest gap in our theory: the correlation of the quantum of action to the monad.
By the necessary nature of things, reception of light must be opposite to light. How can we understand the monad to be at once positive in the sense that action is projective, and also receptive in the sense that consciousness reflects or is aware of existence? There is apparently a dichotomy between spirit and mind, between light and its reception.
The way I have resolved this question in my own mind is to go back to the word used for the perception of truth, to recognize. While we may think (cognize) deeply about a problem, we re-cognize the solution. Cognition or awareness, which receives the light because it is opposite light, is not the essential activity of the monad. Rather, it is recognition (which is opposite cognition) that is the monad's role. This is the light that dawns when we "see the light." It is a positive creation of light. Thus Creation comes at last to recognize itself.
