|
|
|
||||||||
Spirit and Cosmos
( The Pleromatics Project )
by Donivan Bessinger
[ Project Index ]
From 1997 - 2002, this site was designated
"The Pleromatics Project"
which
"... seeks to contribute to the process of bringing together
our understandings of spirit and cosmos, and to point toward
a renewed sense of meaning for individual and social life."
"The Project" contains a variety of material, including chapters from a previously abandoned manuscript entitled Spirit and Cosmos. This site index restores the original Spirit and Cosmos sequence. The Pleromatics Index includes these articles, and provides background material for Spirit and Cosmos and the Noetic Medicine sites, along with further development of ideas in Religion Confronting Science.
Spirit and Cosmos
1. The Spirit of the Cosmos: [ A ] , [ B]
2. Religion of the Whole
3. The Unification Problem
4. Eastern Spirituality
5. Western Spirituality
6. Modeling the All
7. Dynamis: The Psychology of God
8. COSMICA: Sistina Revisited
Pleromatics: Why?
Pleromatics is a word coined by the author, to designate the search for new meaning at the interface between physics and psyche. It is "the search for meaning in the experience of the fullness of reality." It is based on pleroma, the Greek word for fullness, which has also been used since ancient times to refer to spiritual reality.
It is widely acknowledged that traditional religion is facing a crisis of relevance. Modern knowledge has discredited literalist interpretations of ancient spiritual formulations. The reductive view of traditional science has denied the significance of, even the existence of, a transcendent realm. Inevitably, modern people are facing a crisis of meaning, and our old values and ethical formulations are rapidly breaking down.
Yet at the same time, science itself is in something of a philosophical crisis, for quantum physics has shown the existence of a nonlocal reality, and demonstrated that consciousness is a critical consideration in quantum effects. Neither situation fits the old reductive frame of reference. New formulations are required to accomodate the existing evidence.
Analytical (Jungian) psychology has presented the empirical evidence for the collective unconscious as the nonlocal reality of psyche. It is clear that a "grand unifying theory" must reconcile more than the physical forces and symmetries. It must reconcile physics with psyche as well.
The new "World Age" convergence is taking place along the front lines of many disciplines, including quantum physics, neuroscience (consciousness studies), philosophy, depth psychology, theology, comparative religion, and undoubtedly others which should be mentioned. Yet this convergence must be concerned with more than mere knowledge. It must address meaning as well, and that is beyond the scope of most of the academic disciplines, as traditionally defined.
[ TOP ]
[ Pleromatics Project index ]
[ Homepage: dbScriptor ]Original site 1997; Update 27 Sept 2002
Copyright notice