Natural Law

Lately, I've been getting more and more into world mythology, that superstructure of belief and narrative upon which modern man stands and flourishes, though in an increasingly precarious position today. I picked up "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell to get a better understanding of these mythical foundations upon which our reality is built, to become more aware of their universality and similarities and convergence into the monomyth. I was discussing this convergent phenomenon–the tendency for all cultures at all times to have generated radically similar stories of creation and death and redemption; to produce near identical journeys that their heroes must follow in order to become a hero–expressing what I believed to be the inexplicability of this phenomenon in rational terms. He, ever the rationalist, provided a finger that pointed towards the moon. He read me a passage from a collection of Isaac Asimov's essays in which Isaac is asked how so many people, unrelated, unconnected, completely unknown to one another all "came up with" the theory of evolution–or adaptation by way of natural selection–at roughly the same. Asimov's answer followed this line of reasoning: All of these people who, in addition to Darwin–"came up with" similar theories of evolution in fact did not "come up with" anything at all. They were all working was at the same existing problem, asking the same pre-existing question. And naturally, the laws of nature being universal, the answer at which they all arrive at–as opposed to "coming up with"–was more or less the same. Likewise, I reckoned, as cultures all cultures have gripped with the same universal questions of man–how to live and how to die and how did we come into sentient being and where do go when that sentience is extinguished–they too had no choice but to arrive at similar explanations, more or less. **** We are perfectly willing to accept the theory of evolution, the adaptation of species by way of natural selection, as common knowledge today. As we should be. But the question still remains, why do we ignore the conclusions of all great myths, despite the scientific rigor by which they were all produced? In fact, I am willing to go one step further and declare that our myths have been produced with even greater rigor than our materialist principals. Our science only has a few hundred years of observations to support it. That is fine. I do not quarrel with its answers. But our myths have thousands and thousands of years of obsessive observations to support their basic premises. And yet we dismiss that divine finger pointing at that divine moon with such cavalier flippancy. Is this smart? ****

I want to submit a very important question to you.

Listen. Is it possible then that, as science is our portal into understanding the unchanging, universal physical laws of nature, our mythologies–being as they are not the spontaneous, whimsy contrivance of a single author but rather the results an organic process of hundreds, even thousands of years of evolution, the sum total of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of minds working in perfect harmony, accruing and refining what is divinely meaningful–is our portal into these unchanging, universal laws a far deeper, greater and truer reality: that of the transcendent, the divine—God. Is it possible that one need not invalidate the other, but the in fact they both equally derive from one another? Our physical world is but an emanation from our metaphysical world and like our metaphysical world is but a result of our physical processes? **** Consider evolution again. The theory of evolution by way of natural selection.

In a nutshell, it states this: In any given species, the weak ones, the ones that are not adapted will be killed off, leaving behind only the strong. And within those species, any born with a mutation–which is to say a transformation of its essential biological structure–that is advantageous in terms of survival will be predisposed to thrive and propagate itself. This is how species flourish, survive and become something new. Speciation. Yes, this is principal of physical science. But is this also not a principal of metaphysics? I would even submit that its importance as a metaphysical principal is far greater. For how does a man become man but by evolution of his soul? To express this differently, I'll refer you to a journal entry I made during my rough patch earlier this year:

Consent to travel. Consent to freedom. Consent to life. Fully. It might lure you to some dark places at times. It might bring you to the brink of death. But it is your duty to go. You’ll encounter some demons along the way. But you’ll also meet some blessed souls. Saints of the most holy order.

You’ll be crippled by some questions but find just as many answers.

And you just might meet yourself at the bottom.

But go.

Go on.

Hit rock bottom and perish. Burn a little. Burn, burn, burn. Let the dead wood turn to ash.

A little rebirth will do you good.

****

This journey might be over, but a new one is to begin.

****

Is the evolution of the self, the soul, not the theory of evolution in metaphysical action? Is not the burning off ones own deadwood of the specie that is you yourself in fact the culling off all its weakest links? Is not your rebirth the most glorious mutation in the immaterial “DNA” of your personality? Consider the hero's journey, which is outlined in meticulous detail in Campbell's book. Not a single epic, myth, or religion known to man is lacking a variant or iteration of this evolutionary tale of death and rebirth. Is not evolution itself then a divine finger pointing at a divine moon? **** I'll leave you with this to consider. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the defrocked priest, the blessed transcendentalist, when addressing the Divinity College at Cambridge spoke these words when contemplating the nature of the divine:

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.

**** Emerson found the divine in even the Law of Gravity.

And that is the gravity of what I'm trying to get at. Our myths, our legends, our epics, our religions are heavy. Thousands and thousands of years of accumulated divine knowledge compressed into poetic narratives. They are the anchor to which our present reality as been hitherto hitched. But as we become unhitched, as we certainly have, I shutter at the thought of what an unmoored reality might look like. Indeee, our newspapers and our universities and our schools and our streets are replete with disturbing, grotesque indications—Inversions of the old order, inversions that are often times regenerative, but even more often moribund. In them we can divine a decomposing finger scratching at a decaying moon. As long as we can divine. If we can.