Why I think Energy Refuses to Live Only in the Upper Right Quad

 Below is an excerpt from the book I am currently writing, Christians Thinking Like Energy. The main theme is that energy and energy fields are such a good metaphor for "spirit" and "spiritual" that Christians would benifit by using energy and "thinking like energy" as a "Secular Translation Of Christian Knowledge (STOCK). The modern mind may not be receptive to bible-talk, such as the Holy Ghost, etc. But the modern mind is familiar with the concept of energy and energy fields.

  Why not use that modern tie-in (the concept of energy) to old spiritual concepts that, as Ken says, many unfortunately equivocate with low level, mythic or magical, thought/stages? Wilber calls the unfortunate equivocation the "Line/Level Fallacy", and attributes this fallacy to the "steel lid on the pressure cooker", in which modern minds feel they must either choose rationality or religion - that they can't legitimately have both. Ken advocates that the church commit to helping take the lid off the pressure cooker.

  In a way, Christians Thinking Like Energy is my attempt as both a Christian and a modern philosopher to do just that - to help take the steel lid off of the pressure cooker. Science can help take the lid off also, by acknowledging the overlap of purer energy forms or dynamics with religion's concepts of "spirit." As a non-scientist, did I (in the book) drag science into the lid removal process without science's permission/consent? I try to be careful to say in the book that by "energy", I mean a modern layman's view of it - not a highly trained scientist's view of energy. 

  The following is an excerpt from the book. I include it here mainly to run past those who are familiar with Ken Wilber's thought. I hope to solicit feedback about the reasons I disagree with Ken's insistence that energy be conceptualized as an objective thing that should be catagorized only in the upper right quadrant. I advance reasons why energy, or its concept, may not stay in the place Ken assigned it. I think there is a valid reason that so many spiritual people speak of "spiritual energy" and don't think twice about crossover between the UR and UL quads (or, for that part, the LL, in the form of Holy Spirit collective effects).

  I invite you to check out my reasoning, and to say why you agree or disagree. Since the book is still in progress, I may be able to include counter aguments to my stated case for the quad-crossover characteristic of energy. Or may even decide my main premise of "thinking like energy" is too off to proceed further. Perhaps I am merely engaging in reification by mistaking the metaphor of energy with energy itself, or by projecting UL mind onto energy and energy fields. I challenge you to challenge my already considerable amount of thought about the "matter" (or about the "energy"). 

 Here is the excerpt (from chapter 3, Where On the Flare?) BTW, the "flare" I refer to is the human life as analogous to a solar flare connected to an energy Source (the "sun" as metaphor of that) or to "God." "TLE" is shorthand for "Thinking Like Energy":

Patterns and TLE

    The flare model is both an image and a pattern. It is a pattern of something moving, but something that has a basic form midst all of its movement. In fact, our mental image of a flare is probably based on a freeze-frame photo. I know I have never actually seen a solar flare, but have probably seen pictures of one way back in my school years, or formed a picture in my head after hearing a verbal description of it.  

   Most, if not all, material things have form - patterns that accompany their physical, fixed, properties. While the material object may be static, the patterns themselves are rather dynamic. Many an artwork composition is composed of still life objects that show a dynamic visual interaction of the patterns and colors and textures of each object. The items represented may just sit there, but the painting reveals a composition that invites the eyes of the art spectator to dance across the canvas. A still life comes alive.  Much of the magic of visual arts is that very ability to make the "same old same old" appear fresh and vibrant. 

   In this sense, art reveals energy - helps us to see like energy and to think like energy. In fact, the patterns represented in the artwork seem to be one of the main gateways between static matter and fluid energy. 

   And just as a pattern can turn static into dynamic, a pattern can bring a dynamic thing into the static realm of familiar objects. A visual pattern can act as a translation tool to translate the language of energy into the language of matter.  If we have been conditioned to think like matter (and it sure looks like we have!), then this translation service is valuable. We need something in between energy and form to help us integrate the two views of reality. 

  Between a reality model of static things with clear locations and a reality of dynamic processes with indefinite location stands the good old pattern. Patterns can help us walk back and forth between those two "worlds," without falling flat on our faces from confusion. Without patterns (and other similar translation devices or processes) the Seinfeld sit com episode about "two worlds colliding" would happen every time we try to mentally integrate TLE and TLM. 

   Systems theories make use of some form or another of a pattern that helps us see how all the things in a system manage to somehow dynamically interact. As such, the systems theorist, with his/her models and "maps," is one of those agents who stand in the gap. Of course it's not the same gap that the Cultural Creatives may opt to place themselves in order to help the church and the modern world communicate better and work together better. It is a gap in the world of thinkers - a world that is often polarized between TLM an TLE conceptualizations. 

    Ken Wilber offered a pattern to the world of thinkers. He mapped out what he calls "the four corners of the known universe." His map of the integral quadrants is intended as a kind of tool that helps us navigate between those 4 corners. Successful navigation allows us to form an integrated view of the different knowledge perspectives. Used properly, Ken Wilber's quadrants form a pattern that helps us pull the seemingly isolated parts of the world of knowledge together. It's almost as if the pattern he created were a kind of modern mandela (whole image with patterns within it) that acts as a yantra (a pattern that stimulates meditation) to get the thinkers of the world to "vibe" together.  

   Lets briefly look at Ken Wilber's quadrant pattern. His upper left quadrant represents the "corner" of subjective thought and experience - the first person, "I," perspective and the values domain of "the beautiful." The lower left quadrant represents the corner of intersubjective reality - the plural form of the second person, "you" (as in "yuz guys" or "ya'll"), perspective and the values domain of "the good." The upper right quadrant is the corner of objective knowledge about, or science of,  individual things - the third person, a him/her-seen-from-the-outside sort of "it," perspective and the values domain of "the true." The lower right quadrant represents objective knowledge of things in social conglomerates - again, the third person perspective, but a plural we-seen-from-a-distance sort of "its" and, again, the values domain of "the true." 

   While Wilber sees the scientific investigation of energy as falling within the upper right quadrant (Perhaps he places it there because science has traditionally been taught to investigate objects in an "objective" way, even if the item being investigated is a slippery sort of "object" like energy and energy fields, etc.), it is the lower right quad where science is more or less forced to think in a dynamic, energy-like, way. This lower right corner of the known universe seems to be an interface between energy fields and static things. It is the home of systems thought. It leans heavily on the skill of pattern thinking, requiring active participation by the right brain hemisphere that specializes in pattern thinking, in seeing wholes, and in depth perception (sensitive to multiple dimensions?). 

  Even at the subatomic level of upper right quadrant scientific investigation, waves and random-appearing characteristics rock the boat of individual "things" quite a bit, and demand a more systems view. Deep (looking deep) somehow or another seems to hurl the scientists wide (looking wide). I can almost hear the Bible school song again,  "Deep and wide, deep and wide; there's a fountain flowing deep and wide!" 

   After an intermediate level of studying Wilber's concepts, I still can't see eye to eye with his placement of energy as an object confined to the upper left quadrant. To me, energy's characteristics seem to blur the boundaries of individual vs collective, as well as the boundaries of inward vs outward. 

   "Grits is good." Like that saying's confusion of the plural and the singular, energy (because of its trans-object and trans-location qualities) seems both plural and singular. Energy is often here, there, and everywhere. "Here" and "there" suggests that the energy field consists of many things - a plurality, like the "grits." "Everywhere" indicates the singularity of the energy field.   

   As regards the distinction of in and out, energy has as one of its qualities the translocation characteristic that seems to prevent it from remaining in the upper right corner as a discrete object being viewed from the outside for very long. Like a Mobius strip, whose continuous loop twists from inside to out, energy seems to twist the observer from the outside-looking-at perspective of the right two quadrants to the inside-looking-out perspective of the upper left quadrant.  This quad-crossing tendency is, I believe, due to the fact that energy seems to closely match qualities of the human mind. 

   The slippery stuff (energy) "out there" matches the slippery stuff in here, in my subjective mind realm; so much so, that the two, like a couple of lovers, just can't seem to leave each other alone! They can't seem to stay in their respective "corners" of "the known." Both energy and mind act like especially good portals to the unknown. Neither limits itself to the known. Using the flare analogy, both energy and a fully functioning, open, mind move freely (or at least much more freely than matter) from the surface "knowns" toward the top of the flare to the deep "unknowns" at, or near, the base of the flare. 

  Sure, you can see from the upper right quadrant's perspective that a particular type of energy consists of particles such as molecules or electrons. This much is known about certain forms of energy. But the exact nature of the attracting or repelling forces that make those particles move is not really known. As soon as more tiny particles or discrete packets of energy are found deeper down inside the force, more questions arise about new forces that might be operating on those "particular" particles!  

   Scientists can observe how each new level of forces act. They may even eventually identify and measure those forces. But the "why" always seems to end up escaping us.

   In fact, it seems illusiveness is part of the definition of the concept of a force. To say a force is illusive is almost a tautology, like saying water is water, or mind is mind. Or maybe it's more like the near-tautology of "water is wet." A force is a force (and a horse is a horse, of course, of course!), and a force is, by definition, somewhat illusive. 

   At the deeper levels of observation and analysis, energy is very slippery stuff. Furthermore, energy at any level seems to be a slippery slope to that slippery "stuff" down deep inside. Like a gateway drug that begins an addict's decent into heavier and heavier drug states, energy - even at its more superficial and "known" levels - is a gateway for descending into deeper and deeper states of not knowing. 

    The more we get to know energy's characteristics and to think like those characteristics (mentally imitating energy's ways), the less it seems appropriate to conceptualize energy in the upper right quadrant's category of individual things observed from the outside. A trained dog (superficial level) version of energy may fit there, but not the real energy. A portion of the "truth" about energy may fit there, but not the "whole truth." 

   I suppose that could be said about anything. At the deepest levels of observation and analysis, nothing - no thing - passes the knowing test. But energy seems particularly good at getting us to this point sooner. If wine is fine, but liquor is quicker, then matter (and TLM) is the wine. Energy (and TLE) is the liquor! 

  Before taking this little side trip about the quad-crossing characteristics of energy, we were discussing the relationship between patterns and TLE. It turns out that even our side trip originated from one of those patterns - Ken Wilber's integral quadrants. The integral quadrant pattern seems to have the power to translate from each knowledge domain to the overall body of knowledge. 

   In terms of our primary focus here of exploring the ways that TLE serves our spiritual understanding and growth, patterns seem to have the power of translating from TLM to TLE, as well as from TLE to TLM. In providing this communication function between two modes of thought, patterns are also serving our spiritual understanding and growth. The servant of the servant serves the master. Patterns can be highly effective servants. 

  Below are a few more patterns that presented themselves, and offered their services, to me recently. These patterns left me with a sense or impression of how the flare as a dynamic system might best be depicted and conceptualized. These new patterns simply fill in the picture-model a bit more. And they provide cues to the fact that the flare is a moving picture.  ......

END EXCERPT

   Thanks for taking the time to read that rather long and heavy-with-analysis excerpt. What do you think? Mainly about the reasoning behind it, but I wouldn't mind writing critiques as well. 

    Darrell