The Neural Buddhists

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

The Neural Buddhists

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes the argument that moral relativism is contradicted by the existence of universal moral feelings, or notions, that are buried somewhere inside us.  In Neural Buddhists, David Brooks reports that science seems to be confirming this:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

It has been said that "when the aliens land, we're all human."  In other words, we're all members of the same species, and that species has engaged in behaviors, and prohibited or encouraged certain types of acts, on a universal basis, for thousands of years.

One of the books I'll be reviewing here before long is Frances Yeats The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.  One of the historical features that rarely comes up is that, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, famous and interesting personalities (Newton, Novalis, Dee, Comte St. Germaine) saw Science and Religion as leading toward the same goal: what Jung referred to, roughly speaking, as a unity of Self.  In fact, what the Alchemists were about, Jung discerned, was not transmuting earthly elements, but the elements of human personality: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  More than one thoughtful writer has known and understood what religion has always really been about: Unity of Self.  See Paul Case's True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order and Inner Guide Meditation.  Brooks' summary has been the guiding force of the Aquarian Age:

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

I won't live long enough to see this development fulfill itself, but it is very exciting to see it move as far as it has.  There is a God.  The prime subject of God's Evolution is Personality.  When the individual personality understands how important he really is to the Big Whatsis, amazing things begin to happen.

Or, so Cicero tells me!

Barbara O'Brien is Threading this Topic.

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