God, "Logos", and the Tao
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I have been reading some books, recently, about quantum physics and cosmology, and have been thinking a lot about the elemental nature of existence. I also read the Tao Te Ching regularly; a very ancient Chinese text illuminating the Tao way of interacting with existence. And I find it fascinating that some of the oldest concepts of existence on Earth; Tao, and some of the very newest theories of existence that quantum theory offers, have so much in common. And then too there's those darn ancient greeks and their "logos", an idea that for me, is just inescapable. All these views of existence float around in my mind, sort of rubbing against each other, seeking unity, and connection. And I believe the connection is there.
As best I understand it, all of existence is essentially a huge ocean of energy. Some of that energy is latent and so becomes space. Some of that energy is "frozen" and has become matter. Some of that energy is expressing itself as action, and as this action effects matter it becomes motion. Matter in motion means interchange, interactions, relationships between things and this creates the illusion of time and of continuum. Because existence is essentially energy expressing itself, it becomes an event. A happening. Existence is something that is going on, rather than something that happened once, and now just is. Existence is participatory.But where does the energy come from? And why does the energy behave as it does? To me, these are the really big questions that are left to us. These are questions that we can't answer. Even to ask them presupposes that there is something before or beyond existence. Yet that limits the definition of existence which becomes a contradiction of the term. It becomes an unfathomable mystery. I personally use the word "God" to describe this unfathomable mystery. And though I know that this mystery lies beyond my ability to unravel, I still want to explore it. I still wish to connect somehow with the nature of this "God" that creates and sustains all that is.
The ancient Greeks observed that existence was more than the matter around them. They knew that behind the matter were some deeper more elemental forces. They knew that matter was an expression of these forces they called energy and they even knew that this energy behaved according to set patterns. They called these patterns "logos". They believed that these patterns all fit together into greater and more complex patterns, like the individual trees and rocks and animals fit together to make up the forest. Existence, to these ancient Greeks, was a forest of these "logos" all fitting together to form a harmonious whole. It was their pursuit of understanding this harmonious whole, the "super logos", that led them to invent geometry and the philosophical debate using the rules of formal logic. Most of our own culture is founded on the ideas and principals that these ancient Greeks developed.
But they missed something very important. As good as those ancient greeks were at intuiting the nature of existence, with it's layers of "truth" from the seen to the unseen, from matter to energy to logos to super logos, they got a little ahead of themselves in their pursuit of the harmonious whole. And they missed a major component of existence. That component is chance. The ancient Greeks did not believe that chance was really a factor. They believed that the harmonious whole of existence was based on divine order alone, and that what appeared to be chance to we humans was only an illusion caused by our not fully understanding the super logos. Sound a little familiar?
The ancient Chinese, however, saw things very differently. They had a view almost opposite that of the ancient Greeks. The Chinese saw a balance where the Greeks saw an ordered continuum. The Chinese, like the Greeks, saw that existence had these deeper layers of truth, from the seen to the unseen, but they concluded that each of these layers of truth and existence were based on a balance between two opposing ideals. So rather than seeing one harmonious super logos being expressed through matter and energy, they saw two opposing "logos" being expressed through everything. They called them Yin and Yang. They did, like the Greeks, unify the two opposing forces in an ultimate whole, called the "Tao", but unlike the Greeks, they saw that this Tao was a unity that was beyond the grasp of all within the Yin and Yang nature of the Tao. And that means us.
So where the Greeks actively sought to understand the harmonious whole of the super logos, the Chinese immediately saw this as impossible. Instead of seeking knowledge and understanding as the Greeks did, the Chinese sought awareness and alignment. The ancient Chinese did not presume to be able to understand what I call "God", and so did not even try. In fact, they developed a philosophy of living based on not presuming to understand the whole nature of existence, but instead upon becoming aware of the flow of existence and of aligning themselves with that flow. And it's because they approached existence with this sort of open minded humility that the ancient Chinese were able to recognize and accept chance as a major element in the way (the "Tao") of existence. In fact, the ancient Chinese saw that the balance between Yin and Yang would be static were it not for the factor of chance. Chance is what causes the balance of influence to sway from one force to the other. Chance becomes the engine that makes life dynamic, and perhaps even that which gives existence meaning (though the ancient Chinese didn't seek to ascribe meaning to existence as we do today, they sought meaning in their relationship with existence, rather than in some virtue of existence itself).
Together, the ancient Greeks and the ancient Chinese have created a view of existence that has held up astonishingly well to this day. They reached levels of insight and understanding that contemporary quantum theorists still only dream of. And so far science has only served to reaffirm their basic concepts. The Chinese were right to leave "God" a mystery beyond our ability to grasp, as our very definition of God places it outside our ken. They were also right to see that existence as we are able to experience it is based upon a balance of opposing forces made dynamic by chance. And the ancient Greeks were right on the mark when they saw that matter is an expression of energy, and that energy is an expression of a pattern, or of order, and that this order has a theme. Both were right in believing that through an open minded interaction with our physical existence, we can come to more fully fulfill ourselves and our purpose within the whole.
This last point is important because it unites the eastern and western views of existence right at the point where a physical man relates to "God". We talk about the traditions of Christianity, and neglect the fact the most of what we believe about ourselves and existence comes not from Christianity, but from those ancient Greeks and those ancient Chinese. Christianity is to a large degree a reflection of those more ancient views of existence. Ultimately all religion stems from the same source, and that source is us. We are where God and reality unites. Christ is where God and us unite. And believe it or not, we are still the product of those old Greeks and ancient Chinese. They saw existence as they did because they were human, and because we are human, we still see things in much the same way. We change the words, and pretend we are unique, but in the end that's mostly just egotism. We wish to believe that we are a unique generation.
The bigger the picture the more as one we become.
Peace,
Dave