I have another book on the subject of emergence arriving in the mail today, so I need to blow through this one in order not to fall behind. Our Cosmos always runs more smoothly when I'm able to write as I ponder, instead of trying to remember what I was pondering two or three weeks ago -- which is like dredging yesterday's nouspaper out of the recycling. Let the dead bury the tenured.
In short, this blog is always written at the crossroads of the now and eternity, not from memory. You could say that I don't know anything except what I know right now. I am not advocating this aloofstyle. It's just the way I'm built, and it's too late to change now. Retirement has only aggravated it.
Not to get sidetracked right away, but since I've never met anyone who reminds me of me, it is helpful to occasionally run into one in books.
Schuon calls such personalities "pneumatics," and here are some examples of what he says about these misfits. I cite them because if you are a fan of the blog, you just might be a touch pneumatic yourself. To be honest, I'm pretty sure Schuon is describing himself, nor do I relate to all of the traits, but maybe you will, and in any event, it's close enough for blogging:
the pneumatic is situated, by his nature, on the vertical and timeless axis -- where there is no “before” or “after” -- so that the archetype which he personifies or “incarnates,” and which is his true “himself” or “his very self” can, at any moment, pierce through the contingent, individual envelope; it is therefore really “himself” who is speaking.
The pneumatic is a man who identifies a priori with his spiritual substance and thus always remains faithful to himself; he is not a mask unaware of his scope, as is the man enclosed in accidentality.
.... the pneumatic “realizes” or “actualizes” what he “is,” whereas the non-pneumatic realizes what he “must become” -- a difference at once “absolute” and “relative” about which one could argue indefinitely.
[He] does not attribute any “state” to himself, for he is without ambition and without ostentation; he has a tendency rather... to disguise his nature inasmuch as he has, in any case, awareness of “cosmic play” (lila) and it is hard for him to take secular and worldly persons seriously, that is to say, “horizontal” beings who are full of self-confidence and who remain, “humanists” who are below the vocation of man.
“Know thyself” was the inscription written above the portico of the Temple of Delphi; that is, know thine immortal essence but also, by that very token, know thine archetype. This injunction no doubt applies in principle to every man, but it applies to the pneumatic in a far more direct manner, in the sense that he has, by definition, awareness of his celestial model in spite of the flaws which his earthly shell may have undergone in contact with an all too uncongenial ambience.
The “pneumatic” is the man in whom the sense of the sacred takes precedence over other tendencies, whereas in the case of the “psychic” it is the attraction of the world and the accentuation of the ego that take priority, without mentioning the “hylic” or “somatic” who sees in sensory pleasure an end in itself.
This actually touches on the subject of emergence, because if Schuon is correct, it seems to imply that one doesn't so much become (or emerge as) a pneumatic as be revealed as one.
Now, pneumatic -- that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from, for it can't help but sound more than a bit pompous and pretentious. Nevertheless, it certainly seems to describe the sort of thinkers to whom I am naturally attracted. True, there's a lot about their lives that doesn't make a whole lotta sense to me, but then again, maybe that's why I find them s'durned innarestin'.
So, let's just say I have some abiding pneumatic tendencies mixed in with some other tendencies that only make it more complicated for me to have pneumatic tendencies to begin with -- for example, inability to take myself seriously. That's one problem Schuon did not have.
Back to the subject of emergence. The reason I am interested in the subject is that it seems to be the best candidate for a truly cross-discipline unification of everything. For example, the book in the mail is called Origins of Self-Organization, Emergence and Cause. I have no idea if it's any good, but here's the description, emphases mine:
This book is about how emergence, self-organization, and cause come into existence. These fundamental processes play roles in the origins of virtually everything, thus the book describes the basics of how everything comes into existence....
Development can be creative, leading to a progressive increase in complexity. It is a universal factor that provides a way to develop a universal conceptual model....
The modern generalist mode is like a Rosetta Stone of understanding. It translates the intrinsic deep structure of reality into a form that can be comprehended by a living mind.
I'm betting right now that the author does not have pneumatic tendencies, so it remains for us to translate this into plain Coonglish, i.e., to make sure the creative telovator goes all there way to the top floor, otherwise we're left with a completely incomplete or consistently inconsistent explanation. Come to think of it, one of the benefits of not taking oneself seriously is that we don't hesitate to go places where a mere scholar wouldn't be caught dead.
Eh, I think we're done with the first book. I'll just cite this one passage that appeals to the pneumatic in me:
the lower level's "dependence" on the novel and emergent higher level is no less essential than the "involution" of the higher level on the lower....
Therefore,
the existence of God, here understood as the highest guiding, sustaining, and directive Activity on which all other levels below depend -- and which is itself not emergent -- may be demanded by explanatory consistency.
In others words, as God is the Uncaused Cause, he must be the Unemerged Emergent, so to speak.
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