The Heartwood of Synchronosophy (Part II, Chapter 12/12)
Polarity & Wholeness
Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography
〰 Henry David Thoreau 〰
Myth and Science of Good and Evil
Wholeness does not mean perfection:
it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.
〰 Parker J. Palmer 〰
Billions of people around the world have grown up in cultures heavily influenced by the creation myth in the opening chapter of the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an.
As the story goes, the first human couple were instructed by the Divine Creator how to behave in the Garden of Eden. They were allowed to pick and eat any fruit ~ except one. If they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there would be dire consequences.
Adam and Eve, being only human, were tempted to try the forbidden fruit, got evicted from Paradise, and only had themselves to blame forever after.
This is the official story, which has been heavily promoted as the ‘true one’ since these words ~ allegedly straight from God’s mouth ~ have been written. No wonder it comes as a huge surprise, when Amy Balogh, scholar and university lecturer of religious studies, tells a different story:
“There is another antique line of tradition, popular in Judaism and non-Augustinian forms of Christianity, that sees the story not as a fall from grace but as a story of human becoming, wherein the acquisition of ‘knowledge of good and evil’ is what enables the first couple to succeed in the world beyond the garden and raise children capable of civilization.”
A story of human becoming! In this older creation myth, God didn’t tell humans that they were ‘rotten to the core’. He didn’t condemn them to be ‘born in sin and repent forever’.
The Ancient Creator Deity is far more forgiving and realistic than its biblical mutant (adopted by all Abrahamic religions). They simply inform humans of the risk that comes with the knowledge of good and evil.
Once you’ve taken a bite from that fruit ~ which is out of bounds because this Creator Deity, in their divine foresight, can already tell that humanity will struggle to handle the knowledge ~ you will have to deal with the consequences.
The consequences of taking the first bite of this very tempting Fruit of Knowledge (FoK) are straight forward. The first human couple have to grow into the new knowledge ingested by the ‘forbidden fruit’, which includes life AND death and everything in between. It also includes leaving the heavenly safe little home of Paradise, because there is a wide wild world out there for them to explore.
Immortality is no longer an option, just because that’s the law of nature. It’s not a punishment. It’s not a death sentence. Taking a bite of the FoK is not a ‘deadly sin’, or even a ‘fatal error’.
The Fruit of Knowledge is a portal leading to a new level of Consciousness.
To give ourselves a better chance at understanding the creation story, which is still holding large parts of the world hostage, let’s take a closer look at four key points about myth in general.
The Truth about Myths
Myths are ways of interpreting the world.
〰 Mary Midgley 〰
1- Myths contain a kernel of truth and are fleshed out with claims about being linked to ‘higher forces’. Amy Balogh defines myth “as a narrative in which those who adhere to it find some aspect of truth about the nature of their experience, often by appeal to supernatural events or beings.”
2 - Myths are not ‘the truth’. They are interpretations of human perception. Most scholars agree with British philosopher Mary Midgley that myths are “ways of interpreting the world”.
3 - Creation myths can be healing. Karen Armstrong, scholar of comparative religion, suggests that “Creation stories had a therapeutic purpose.”
4 - Myths have a dual purpose. They start out as attempts to understand the world we live in, and then are accepted as laws to live by. Amy Balogh concludes that “myth simultaneously explains worlds and creates them.”
Myths are important because they have a far more powerful effect on human life than we commonly imagine. You might think, they’re only those Ancient stories. They have nothing to do with us anymore. Now we’ve got science instead. And science explains to us how the world really works. If you ask Mary Midgley, that’s a myth too.
“We are accustomed to think of myths as the opposite of science. But in fact they are a central part of it.” Midgley writes in her book The Myths we Live by. Zooming in on one contemporary myth, she guides her readers’ attention towards the doctrine of Memes. “This myth describes memes as entities which work like genes of culture, parasitising us by producing all our ideas and customs so as to extend their own dominion.”
The word and concept of meme – as a unit of cultural information spread by imitation – was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene. The trouble with Dawkins’ theory is that it is rooted in an older story (note the parallel with the Christian Genesis account).
The link hasn’t escaped Mary Midgley’s perceptive mind. “The more general myth at work behind this is the somewhat wild idea that mindless natural selection is the basic mechanism that runs the whole universe.” she writes, without mentioning Dawkins.
“This odd opinion is now actually attributed to Darwin, though Darwin himself took trouble to point out sharply that he was sure natural selection was not the sole cause even of biological evolution, and he clearly never considered invoking it anywhere else. This is just one example of a place where the myth-garden badly needs weeding.”
Myths are imaginative patterns of the world. They are not rumours, or urban gossip, or outdated superstition. They are maps which shape human Consciousness and our understanding of life right now. They influence every human action and interaction. Today, living in the digital age, caught up in the promises of AI. Racing towards a world run by robots who can’t even eat fruit! Which just proves Midgley’s point.
“Machine imagery, which began to pervade our thought in the seventeenth century, is still potent today.” she wrote in the late 1980s. “We still often tend to see ourselves, and the living things around us, as pieces of clockwork: items of a kind that we ourselves could make, and might decide to remake if it suits us better. Hence the confident language of ‘genetic engineering’ and ‘the building-blocks of life’.”
And ‘progress/ salvation by artificial intelligence’, I might add.
(You can find more on the theme of myth in my wordcast The Myth of Mythos)
Knowledge of Good & Evil
And Adam knew Eve
〰 Genesis 〰
In the Bible, the verb know is used regularly in the sense of copulate, mate, couple, breed, have sexual intercourse with. This association with the word know has since been translated into make love, sleep together, fuck, screw, shag, plus an infinite list of euphemisms and vulgar terminology.
The seed of the sexual connotation of knowledge was sown into the soil of the Garden of Eden. “Adam knew Eve”, and as a result of his ‘knowing’ she produced a couple of children. Sons of course. There is no mention of any girls being born. How did the human race survive?
Never mind that. Adam allegedly ‘knew’. As soon as Eve had bitten into the forbidden fruit, and ‘seduced Adam to follow suit’ ~ which he did, obviously not knowing any better ~ they discovered they were naked, and felt shame.
So they covered their genital areas with fig leaves, in an attempt to hide from God. That didn’t work, but it got the balls rolling for the fashion industry, entwined with an ongoing obsession with sexuality in many evil forms ~ sexual violence, pornography, sex slavery, prostitution, trafficking of sex slaves, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual trauma, gender dysphoria, gender wars, not to mention pædophilia …
Did the first couple feel shame about being naked, or about having broken the divine rule by eating the forbidden Fruit?
Despite the fact that the Genesis account doesn’t offer such details, we do know, beyond doubt, that shame and guilt ended up as a mixed mushy blend with sex in all societies who have taken this particular creation myth on board.
Had the creation myths of the Abrahamic religions promoted the older version suggesting ~ “the acquisition of ‘knowledge of good and evil’ is what enables the first couple to succeed in the world beyond the garden and raise children capable of civilization” ~ perhaps human social structures would have grown into being more civilised (and less screwed up sexually)?
Difficult to say. It’s not what happened. Our ancestors have picked ~ for better or worse ~ the shame, guilt & sex myth as the central narrative of our current (Western) human story. This explains why the plot of human sex-related trauma has curdled into its current maddening climax, and we are left with the challenge and opportunity to resolve it.
Higher Forces in Unexpected Places
The universe, they say, depended for its operation
on the balance of four forces which they identified as
charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness.
〰 Terry Pratchett 〰
One version of the Genesis account has been imprinted into Western human Consciousness. Another version has been running its course in parallel. Like an invisible track.
One version is telling us we have been expelled from Paradise, disgraced sinners, evil, guilty, condemned to live unhappily ever after. The other one encourages us to take what we’ve learned in the Garden of Eden and apply it successfully in the wild wide world.
What if both versions are true? The Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil signals that we can’t escape this knowledge, and we wouldn’t want to either. Evil & Good are expressions of the same polarity we have explored in the last chapter.
Knowing Good & Evil in an intimate way, like ‘Adam knew Eve’, is a portal into human Consciousness of Chaos & Order aka Yin & Yang.
We think we know Evil & Good as opposites, separate from one another, worlds apart, as if we can choose between one and the other. That’s what most of us have been taught more or less from the day of arrival on planet Earth.
This is the temporary selective truth of the Intellect. It’s not the whole truth of all Faculties of our Consciousness. Because the whole truth is about the whole of life, which includes death and all the rest. It’s a cycle of polarities. Both polarities are embedded within the same sphere of oneness, as captured in the Yin & Yang symbol.
Many years ago I had an opportunity to get to know this polarity within the Wuji circle of universal Consciousness, in the intimate way of knowing.
I was twenty-five years old, backpacking in Tunisia with a boyfriend and my 4-year old son. One evening we were invited for dinner in a tent by a small group of fishermen. They were very friendly, we were tired and hungry, we appreciated the hospitality and generous invitation.
It was a working tent near a small harbour. The men were on night duty. We hadn’t yet made plans where to stay the night. After dinner the fishermen offered we could sleep in the tent. We happily (naïvely!) accepted.
My travel-companion and young kid dropped off to sleep almost instantly. I was lying in my sleeping bag, listening to the sounds of the Tunisian night, Mediterranean waves gently lapping against the harbour wall.
After half an hour or so I heard the men talking to each other in hushed voices. They were speaking in Arabic. Our conversations with them had been in French. They didn’t have a clue that I would understand what they were saying.
They were getting into an argument. I soon figured out what it was about. Me! Three of the guys were keen to rape me. One was against it.
The pitch darkness turned into an abyss. I wanted to kick my travel-companion to wake him up. My legs wouldn’t move. My body had turned into a corpse of ice. My mind went into fever-pitch panic. I wanted to scream. No sound came out, my throat was in lockdown.
The whispered conversation crept to a point of no return. The guy who didn’t want to be involved in the assault was about to leave.
In that moment, with all my voluntary Faculties suspended, the autonomous Faculties of my Consciousness took over and shot into the doomed darkness with a perfect pitch. Out of my raging inner space, a clear voice spewed from my mouth into the gloomy tent ~ in fluent Arabic ~ condemning the treacherous ‘hospitality’ of our hosts.
I summoned their Allah, their Prophet and religion. ~ I questioned their bloodline, asking whether they were sons of donkeys or bitches? ~ What would their mothers think of them, contemplating such abominable felony? ~ I let out a whole barrage of Arabic curses I didn’t even know existed in my vocabulary.
All went quiet for a stunned few seconds. Then one guy started to speak and apologised profusely. I assume it was the one who didn’t want to rape me. He explained that they didn’t realize I was their ‘sister’. He assured me he wouldn’t let any ‘son of a mule’ harm me in any way, I had nothing to fear, he would protect me with his life and honour, he would be my brother…
I didn’t get much sleep that night, despite the promises of my newly won ‘brother’. However, I was and will forever be deeply grateful to him and my Guardian Angels!
The Dance of Yin and Yang
There is a thing formed in chaos
Existing before Heaven and Earth.
Silent and solitary, it stands alone, unchanging. It goes around without peril.
It may be the Mother of the world.
Not knowing its name, I can only style it Tao.
〰 Tao Te Ching 〰
The Taoist world arises due to the interaction of nonbeing and being, oneness and multitude. Absence has priority over presence.
[The Western world arises by establishing cosmos (= order) out of chaos (= disorder). Order has priority over chaos.]
In the Taoist view of the universe, chaos is a positive, creative principle, which “contains the seeds of all things in the world.”
Everything that comes into existence emerges as a result of the interaction of nonbeing and being, unknown and known, Yin and Yang.
The known emerges from the unknown. The world was not created by God, but came into being out of its own potential existence, the infinite rhythmic dance between Wuji and Taiji*.
[In the Western worldview, chaos is a negative, destructive principle which threatens to suck everything into the dark void. Everything in existence is produced by an external Creator God.]
In her essay Born out of Nothingness, Tatiana Danilova (researcher at the NAES of Ukraine) writes: “Taoist worldview is not focused on the human: humans are not superior to nonhuman world. The basis of the Taoist worldview is one unified pulsating Cosmos and all its manifestations.”
[The Western worldview is firmly focused on human supremacy: human as the supreme ruler over nature and the nonhuman world, and more specifically man’s power over everything, including woman and his own emotions.]
In the Taoist understanding, everything comes into being through the interplay between stillness (Yin) and activity (Yang). This interaction transforms Wuji (the unmanifest aspect of the Tao) into Taiji (the manifest aspect of the Tao).
The universe is continuously transforming, in unity and diversity, in the infinite spiralling current of the Tao. Oneness is formless, while moving like a riversea.
The Tao is the principle of constant change, the continuous creation of the world in the unbound flow of life processes. As a phenomenon which is permanently transforming it cannot be adequately described, defined, or named.
This essence of Tao is not a substance but a vital force known as Qi (aka Ji, Chi, or Ki). This pure living energy ~ Qi ~ animates all life forms including the universe itself. Wuji is literally the absence of Qi, while Taiji is the presence of Qi.
Danilova calls Qi a “vibrating component of existence, continuous flow of life at the molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic levels.”
In one of various Taoist creation myths, the world as we know it was formed out of Hundun 混沌, an amorphous primordial being, reminiscent of a cosmic egg. The formless Hundun (= primordial chaos) was a nebulous state of the universe before heaven and earth separated.
“There was something featureless yet complete, born before heaven and earth; Silent—amorphous—it stood alone and unchanging,” says the Tao Te Ching, suggesting that “We may regard it as the mother of heaven and earth.”
When Hundun ‘died’, they gave birth to the universe, our world, and all living phenomena and beings, including humans.
*For further explanations of Taoist principles and language see my wordcast No Words.
The Holorhythm
Life is enfolded in the totality and
~ even when it is not manifest ~
it is somehow implicit.
〰 David Bohm 〰
Fundamental differences between the Western and Eastern views of wholeness did not escape David Bohm (1917 - 1992), one of the great thought leaders and physicists of the 20th century, collaborator and close friend of Albert Einstein, largely ignored by the established structures of physical science in his lifetime.
“Instead of focusing on the contradictions inherent to quantum mechanics on the one hand and general relativity on the other, Bohm appealed to the scientific community to consider what both theories have in common, a property he referred to as undivided wholeness.” Richard de Grijs and Doru Costache write in their essay The Cosmology of David Bohm.
While Einstein and other famous colleagues believed and promoted the idea that the universe is essentially a vast empty space ~ a vacuum in between the estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy ~ Bohm followed the contrasting Ancient Greek thought that the universe is a plenum (= a vast space full of stuff).
Bohm saw the physical universe as a space where everything is essentially related to everything else, connected by what he called an ‘implicate order’ ~ a constantly unfolding and enfolding structure.
His suggestion of describing the physical world in terms of organic processes was a radical thought at the time. Drawing parallels between the movement of electrons and individual human freedom, the idea of wholeness crossed his path and became a lifelong companion.
“Bohm suspected that an unknown underlying reality, process, or potential somehow informed the behaviour of electrons.” (Grijs & Costache)
Stimulated by a fertile exchange of thoughts with Indian philosopher and teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986), the embryonic idea of wholeness gestated in Bohm’s creative mind. The two men agreed “that life, nature, and consciousness were a single, indivisible whole.” And Bohm gave birth to a new theory.
Bohm’s theory basically suggests that within an apparently empty space particles interact, informed by an invisible quantum potential, which has an effect on the emergence of the cosmos.
In other words, Bohm believed that the universe as we know it comes into existence through the information enfolded within the quantum potential. This invisible encoded information unfolds into reality at the right time, as directed by the implicate order.
“Reality is thus undivided wholeness, combining life, the universe, and everything.” (David Bohm)
Bohm came to the conclusion that the essence of the universe is not some mysterious substance ~ which his predecessors had been looking for over the past centuries ~ but a life giving process. A cyclical process of interaction between the implicit and the explicit.
He called this process holomovement, because it involves and is informed by wholeness.
The deeper we delve into Bohm’s concept of the holomovement the more similarities we discover with an interactive process which has been known for millennia in Eastern philosophy as Tao.
In Synchronosophy, we call this primordial process, which gives life to everything in the universe, holorhythm. The term is explained in a wordcast on Symbiopædia (to be published 24-04-24).
The holorhythm finds expression in human Consciousness through the 8 Essences of the Faculties, which are supplied by the Soul ~ our Inner Sovereign ~ the vital organ which is most intimately connected with wholeness and integrity.
What happened that night in that tent in Tunisia was a vivid illustration of the holorhythm in action. Paralyzed by panic and terror I was unable to move or speak, while my Consciousness was fully awake and focused on defending my integrity.
In that moment ‘higher Consciousness’ took over and made me say just the right words at the right time to avert the danger. Instead of acting from the level of ordinary awareness, which was arrested, no longer under my control, and may not have had the desired effect, the Tao, or the implicate order, or the holorhythm, which governs all life in the universe, became explicit. I must have been practicing Wu Wei ~ albeit without knowing ~ while ‘the right thing did itself’.
In such mysterious moments ~ when the holorhythm swept me up and carried me through difficult situations ~ I’ve had the opportunity to experience oneness with the universe, and be reminded of the remarkable fact, that I have access to this all the time, anywhere! We all do!!
Because oneness with the universe is our reality. Not just mine. It’s yours too. All living beings are part of this astonishing web of Oneness, by virtue of the natural laws of Taoism/ the implicate order of physics/ the holorhythm of our own Consciousness.
The Noctarine and Synchronosophy can teach us how to develop the skills to communicate with this marvelous universe, which is our home.
End of Part II of Synchronosophy: A Rough Guide to the Feral Side of Life
Missed the earlier chapters? Click the links
The Rootstock of Synchronosophy
Chapter 1 The Mycelium of Synchronosophy, Chapter 2 Sub-Soil of Synchronosophy, Chapter 3 Nutrients for Synchronosophy, Chapter 4 Adjustments to an Unnatural World, Chapter 5 Loss of Self and Identity, Chapter 6 The Destructive Trail of Trauma
The Heartwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 7 Emotional Messengers, Chapter 8 Love Thyself, Chapter 9 The Birth of the Noctarine, Chapter 10 Subjective Experience, Chapter 11 The Inner Wilderness
I have taken so many notes from this sweeping chapter that I think I should’ve just copied the entire chapter! Beginning with a wholeness that includes brokenness, and ending with a living universe “in a cyclical process of interaction between the implicit and the explicit.”
Your synchronosophy shines with a truth so necessary for humanity’s next evolution and healing. Is this the end of your book? If so, I need to now go back to the beginning and start again.
Wonderful and deeply contagious writing here Veronika. Thank you. It takes me to a place I somehow know but cannot explain. A place where I bit into the fruit of knowledge and surrendered to the chaos that swallowed me home. The holorhythm still swims through my veins. I am awaiting eagerly the next piece/part of this story of remembrance. Your gift of words found you in Tunisia. Bless those words that found you then and the ones you shine a cascade of light with today 🙏❤️