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Hi Reinder, I’m deeply moved by your post here and I also echo with your question: to know and realize all these thoughts and ideas and theories is one thing, but how can we use them to come closer to a re-enchantment of humanity is another thing.

Whitehead with his work on process philosophy has very eloquently argued for a re-enchanted cosmos, but basically in a speculative way. How could these insights be turned into the daily experience of all of us, of any one who are interested and willing to embrace such a re-enchanted world?

I think he had also pointed to the right direction, to be more conscious of our own experience so that it can be continuously transformed and intensified, so that we can vividly experience that we are closely interconnected to all beings. For this purpose, the rich practical experience in the east, with the tradition of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism should be very inspiring, as these are traditions that focus on the transformation and cultivation of the experience/consciousness. Through mutual fertilization with process philosophy, the deep insights and existing methodology applied by these traditions can be further developed and more vailable to the general public.

It would be great if we could find time to talk over zoom. my email address: jinzhenbao@hotmail.com, in case you are interested.

in my case, through the practice of meditation with focus on the circulation of Qi in the past 13 years, I can now basically experience the circulation of Qi anytime when I start to do meditation, and its gradual intensification with the time goes by. The first time I experienced the circulation of Qi was around 3 months after I had started the practice. It was very powerful and I was euphoric. after that, I still had the experience of circulation of qi when I practiced meditation, but it’s not that dramatic like the first time. However, with the practice deepening, the experience of circulation of Qi is continuously intensified and I am filled with a great sense of safety and vitality whenever I sit down and empty my mind. For me this is no longer mystical experience, as it’s part of my daily experience. However, I’m still very interested to know about the more dramatic mystical experience as described in this thread. The cosmos is so rich and amazing.

For this interesting issue, the following quote from Whitehead should be helpful:

“the main objection, dating from the sixteenth century and receiving
final expression from Francis Bacon, is the uselessness of ph ilosophic speculation.The position taken by this objection is that we ought to describe
detailed matter of fact, and elicit the laws with a generality strictly limited
to the systematization of these described details . General interpretation,
it is held, has no bearing upon this procedure; and thus any system of general
interpretation, be it true or false, remains intrinsically barren . Unfortunately for this objection, there are no brute, self-contained matters of
fact, capable of being understood apart from interpretation as an element
in a system . Whenever we attempt to express the matter of immediate experience, we find that its understanding leads us beyond itsel f, to its contemporaries, to its past, to its future, and to the universals in terms of
which its definiteness is exhibited . But such universals, by their very character of universality, embody the potentiality of other facts with variant
types of definiteness. Thus the understanding of the immediate brute
fact requires its metaphysical interpretation as an item in a world with some
systematic relation to it. When thought comes upon the scene, it finds
the interpretations as matters of practice. Philosophy does not initiate
interpretations . Its search for a rationalistic scheme is the search for more adequate criticism, and for more adequate j ustification, of the interpretations which we perforce employ. Our habitual experience is a complex
of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a
record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography. Every scientific memoir in its record of the ‘facts’ is shot
through and through with interpretation.”

I would say there is already a certain form of consciousness, how primal it might be, in the most basic form of experience as the building block of the universe. It can not be imagined that consciousness does not emerge until an actual entity/experience has evolved to a certain level.

And what is consciousness? Could we say all levels of consciousness are but the derivatives of the ultimate force of the Cosmos, the Consciousness, the Emptiness, or the Oneness, or Tao?

· Novelty and Creativity: Whitehead’s philosophy has a strong emphasis on novelty and creativity in each concrescence. A function’s execution is, in a purely deterministic system, fully predictable. However, in modern systems with random number generators, non-deterministic concurrency, or AI models, there is a genuine element of novelty and unpredictability in the outcome, which strengthens the analogy.

With respect to this, I doubt, even in modern systems with random number generators, non-deterministic concurrency, or AI models, there is also no genuine element of novelty. Novelty in process philosophy is an experience. When we talk about experience, it’s the experience of the whole entity, be it an actual entity, or an organism like a dog and results in the transformation of the whole entity, not any part of it. With that, the whole entity evolves in an organic way. I think that’s not the case of the execution of a computer program.

I would say an organism is an agency that is capable of experiencing for its own purpose/satisfaction and organising its experience in such a way that it evolves continuoulsy, from the most primal and simple actual entity to the very complicated and structured being like ourselves, as well as the cosmos as a whole.

is a stone an organism? I would not say that. I would say it’s more like the by-product of the evolution of organism, like the feces we have to produce or the corpse that is left when we die. it does not has the consciousness of a stone. but of course it’s composed of actual entities, which are organism.

“3” is a magic number. In Tao Te Ching it says: Tao begets One, One begets Two, Two begets Three and Three begets myriads of things. Myriads of things carry Yin and Yang, and are brought into harmony through the mediation of Qi.

For me this sentence can not be understood unless through the experience of Qi in the practice of meditation. Qi can be experienced in a quite objective way, even comparable to our experience of tangible objects. For that purpose, it’s important to experience its circulation in us, down in the front and up in the back. With this experience, the meaning of Yin and Yang, thus, Two, is very obvious. Yang is the process of creativeness, of becoming more consciousness of the external world and gaining new experience, while Yin is the process of preservation, of having the new experience being well organized and integrated together with the previous experience, so that the organism can grow in a healthy way. and the two seemingly different and sometimes even conflicting processes of Ying and Yang have to be brought into balance and harmony through the circulation of Qi.

By comparison, Spirit is more mysterious and subjective than Qi. actually one can cultivate Qi in a very reliable way and its effect upon the body can be reliably anticipated, while it’s not easy to simply experience the Spirit and find some reliable way for the intensification of our experience with the Spirit.

my undersanding of the Trinity is very limited. but I think it also tries to capture the relationship between the stable source of life and the dynamic force of creativeness, as well as the medium that brings them into balance.

like Ying, Yang and Qi are all the functioning of Tao, maybe we could understand Father, Son and Spirit as the different functioning of God in concrete process. the primordeal nature and the consequent nature of God seem to me not enough to elaborate on how God actually functions in each moment of our life.

It seems to me Taoism and Confucianism echoes more with Christianity on the issue of God, as in Taoism and Confucianism there are the concept of Tao (Literally the Way) or Tian (literally the Heaven) which are regarded as the ultimate force of creativeness. This ultimate force of creativeness is both transcendental to and immanent in all beings. So Tao and Tian are very comparable to the concept of God which is modified by process thoughts. Tao is also understood as Wu, which could be translated as Emptiness or Absence. So Tao is very close to Emptiness in Buddhism. However, a slight but critically important difference from Emptiness in Buddhism is that Tao is the generative source of creativeness and evolution.

of course, what makes Tao different from the concept of God especially in traditional theism is that Tao is not simply an object to believe, but has to be experienced and cultivated. This is regarded as the way of one’s life, to become more and more the embodiment of Tao, although this is obviously a journey that sees no end. What this really means invites the scholars to ponder over generation after generation.

Yingying, I think human is special as the homo sapiens somehow have survived in the competition for life on the arena of evolution on earth and in the cosmos. I think they are not chosen, but simply the natural result of a natural process of cosmic evolution, which is also a process of the development of consciousness.

However, this relatively higher level of consciousnss, “higher” in the sense that they share all the Divine Qualities, not just some of them, not in the sense that the human are superior beings so that we can manipulate all the other beings in a willful way. In this way we can more and more appreciate the interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings and learn to take the responsibility to take care of and cultivate the interconnectedness and interdependence, which goes together with the transformation of our own being and the intensification of our satisfaction as a living being. This is what I’ve learned with Confucianism and it seems echoing with what is shared with Islam in our course.

Thank you George for raising this interesting issue about the role of sacred texts. For me those sacred texts in different traditions are the insights of our ancestors with their exceptional intuition into the true reality of life and cosmos. However, as the true reality of life and cosmos is beyond all phenomena and can not be simply put into words, what are recorded can be regarded as metaphors. their purpose is to cultivate our consciousness so that we can somewhow experience what the authors of those sacred texts wish us to experience. so the purpose is about the transformation of our own consciousness and experience. if this is the case, the difference between the orthodox, the conservative and the reformed would not be a big issue, I think.

Thank you Roni and Leslie for your discussion. I agree that “all religious traditions have a vital place and role in human evolution and purpose.” As for Leslie’s question, which tradition shall we commit to and why?, I think this is first of all an issue of fact or fate. each of us is born into a particular tradition by fate. we may or may not like it, but we are deeply influenced and even shaped by it. If we regard the tradition we are born into as dogmatic, then we have to decide wether to further stay with it. but we can also regard it as a starting point, as a scholarship with the true reality of being as its subject which is open-ended and needs to be broadened and deepened. For that purpose the particular wisdom and perspective of the other traditions, including the tradition of science, are complementary and can be used to broaden and deepen our understanding of the tradition we are born into. and most probably we would find that what we gain in this process is not just the knowledge of some exotic tradition of culture, but the transformation of our own whole being and our level of consciousness.

This is a very inspiring stream. thanks a lot Yingying, Chris and Leslie. the reading materials offered by Chris are very striking to me as they reveal to what degree our relationship with the land, with all the beings in the eco-system and with other people could be, which are completely beyond the imagination of an un-indeginous person as I am, or rather, I was.

my way to re-indeginize myself is through the practice of meditation and doing relating research, which an un-indeginous person typically does. I haven’t reached that deep intimacy with the land or the other beings that an indigenous person could have, but surely my relationship with my body has been obviously greatly enhanced. I can clearly experience how the flow and circulation of energy is affected by my emotional and mental activities. and I no longer simply communicate with my family and the other people at the information/mental level, but more at the level of energy and emotion. and I find great pleasure in living close to the nature.

so as I have shared in the class, I think the point is not simply to live in a traditional village among other indigenous people, but to deepen our relationship and understanding of the true reality of being, especially with our body, which is, after own, the part of nature that we are most intimate with.

Hi George, I agree with you that there are people whose belief we find it very hard to sympathize with. and I think there are accasions we have to fight for the values we hold dear. however, I think even with the most difficult, maybe even the mose evil persons, there is some need to try to understand, try to sympathize with, so that we can broaden and deepen our consciousness, for our own sake.

as for those great traditions in the world that are different from ours, not the belief of a particular person, such effort to understand is especially rewarding, so that our consciousness and our own being can go through profound transformation. the liberation and freedeom we can achieve in this way is beyong our imagination.

Hi George, as you understand humans as sequence of AEs and AEs, according to Whitehead, are drops of experience, what do you think would be the proper methodology to gain knowledge about AEs, and naturally, about the deeper nature/reality of the human nature? for sure it would no longer suffice with the object-observer model of science, as any act of observation would inescapably has some effect upon the “object” and changes it.

For this purpose, I would argue that the practice of meditation in the tradition of Taoism and Buddhism could be very inspiring. And the work of philosophical reasoning can actually also be regarded as a practice of meditation.

Hi George, it seems to me that Whitehead argues for a concept of God that is both eternal and temperal, that is, a sequence of temperal occasions. The primordial nature of God represents its eternal nature, that is,as mentioned above, it’s the reservoir of all possibilities, while the consequent nature of God represents its temperal nature, that its infinite potential has to be gradually unfolded and actualized in the process.

does that mean the primordial nature represents the mental pole of God, while the consequent nature represents the physical pole of God?

Does each actual entity also have the primordial nature and the consequent nature as God has?

I’m wondering what Whitehead would say to these questions.