Religion and Civility: The Primacy of Conscience

Religion & Civility

The Primacy of Conscience

by

Sylvester L. Steffen

BOOK THREE

OF THE

SECOND ENLIGHTENMENT TRILOGY

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© 2011 Sylvester L. Steffen. All rights reserved.

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First published by AuthorHouse 10/10/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4670-4175-1 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4184-2118-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4184-2119-9 (hc)

Printed in the United States of America

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

SECTION I

Dialog

SECTION II

Discernment

SECTION III

Decision

Afterword

Bibliography:

About The Author

Cover Art of Monica Steffen

When self-reflectivity is torn by the necessities of destruction (death) and reconstruction (resurrection) it focuses on essentials that matter. That is the point of the cover art. Monica Steffen’s captivating watercolor was painted after she was told she had a terminal brain tumor and after she was given a life prognosis of five years at best.

The artist embeds herself and her father in the rubble of Earth Mother’s waste-and-rehabilitation cycle, not despairingly but hopefully, realizing that resurrection and enlightenment are processes of evolving life. She accepted her return to the Mother Womb—not a little unsettled by human havoc—in expectation of the new rising of life and enlightenment.

Evolutionary Faith challenges the insanity of monotheistic absolutism, its intolerance, ignorance, fear, ambition, obsession, familial violence and insensitivity to nature. Monotheism’s Armageddon exposes its Apocalypse. The lesson of Abrahamic inheritance is this: that theological absolutism drives believers to alienation and self-destruction. The Apocalypse Now is largely a product of monotheistic absolutism. After the fall of Constantinople to Mohammed II (1453), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) promoted the notion that the children of Abraham who worshipped the same God should seek a common ground of faith. He prayed to God: This rivalry is on account of You, whom alone all venerate in all that they seem to adore. (James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, The Church and the Jews, 2001, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, Pg 352)

IT MUST BE ASKED: Do Creation Theology and Evolutionary Faith coalesce into a unified sense of universal religion? Global apocalypse now compels consciousness toward such rational fidelity. Perhaps tikkun is the rational convergence of universal fidelity that imposes religiously on all. Tikkun is the kabbalist insight that the restoration of creation must be done by the religious acts of people together struggling in the common purpose of universal life. (ID, Pg 388). Fidelity to universal purpose is true worship and the sine qua non of religion and civility.

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

Creation Theology

Creation’s birth pain shows through the art of Monica R. Steffen. Because her sensitivity brings forward to modern consciousness the transformational agony of social evolution it is significant for all time, especially with respect to the primacy role of the Beatrix Femina — Blessed Woman — in the vital embodiment of personal consciousness.

In 1992, based on my sense of the quantum-electric cosmos, I struggled to define Creation Theology, specifically within Trinity / Sacrament understanding. That first definition seems to be credible and useful still because it is open to evolutionary insight. This is my original statement:

"Open-ended Creation diversifies in / by the dialogue of ambiguities: implosion / explosion. Consciousness extends and intends in / by the complexity of interdependent diversification, but diminishes with its dissolution. The obligation of Conscience is revealed in [the] informed consciousness of Creation’s Self-Interest, in which individual persons share, and by which sharing they transform Creation, for better, for worse.

Consciousness of the realities of Trinity and Sacrament is open-minded and is not proprietary to any one culture or to any one age, but belongs to every culture, every age.

From the Back Cover of the book

NEW GENESIS POEMS, 1992, self-published,

Sylvester L Steffen

G & R Publishing

507 Industrial Street

Waverly, IA 50677

************

The SECOND ENLIGHTENMENT TRILOGY amplifies on this definition; the amplification specifies the Trinitarian processing of word/thought/action that self-renews and allows personal entry into Trinitarian spirituality/materiality — the continuity of quantum-electric transformation in the Naturalis Sacramentum Ordinis — the Order of Nature.

Primary Scripture, Cosmic Religion’s First Lessons, the first book of the trilogy, is about the uninterrupted communication of the beginning WORD, and the evolved texts of divine/human work.

Quantum Religion, The Good News of Rising Consciousness, the second book of the trilogy, is about universal consciousness, the ascendancy of cosmic rationality and the evolution of faith and purpose in self-awareness and other-awareness.

This third book of the trilogy, Religion & Civility, The Primacy of Conscience, is about personal/communal conscience, the symbiotic interface of the conscious self and the universal other evolving in the continuity of communication and consciousness. Religious and civil consciousness should recognize in the cultured antagonisms of differing spiritual insights and appetites the causes of irreligion and incivility. The Sacrament-means of reconciling antagonisms and accommodating differences is by way of WORD (communication), LIGHT (consciousness), and LOVE (conscience), the self-renewing dynamic of Trinitarian harmony.

************

Second Enlightenment openly embraces differences of reason and faith. The future does not have to be characterized by the culture of intolerance rather, people can opt to accommodate differences of faith and reason and work to mitigate their frictions. Common nature (materiality) and common nurture (spirituality) are the evolutionary bases of difference and differentiation, of accommodated religion and civility. Second Enlightenment, the intentional embrace of pluralistic religion and civility, the reconciliation of faith (religion) and reason (civility), is now perhaps for the first time rationally intelligible and globally attainable. In mitigating frictions and embracing difference civilizations open themselves to the rational purpose of conscious ascendancy. As cosmic faith and reason are essentially compatible, so too are religion and civility.

To cosmic rationality, no quantum is unimportant in the ascendant dialog of conscious complexity. Nor can one quantum arrogate place belonging to another. Consciousness of relativity is determinative in the organic order of authority. Nor are communication, consciousness and conscience, in the cosmic perspective, unique to human rationality even though humankind is the greatest beneficiary of cosmic rationality’s sensible symbioses advanced by and in the quantum relativity of energy / matter, of Word and work.

In Renaissance times the flourishing of humanism brought with it the popular tilt for rationality even as traditional Christianity countered by reinforcing its faith bias. The fault Petrarch found with Scholasticism was to the effect that it obsessed in spirituality to the neglect of material necessity (secularity). Religion, fixated on / in Scholasticism, labors under the same fault. Neither spirituality nor religion is an end unto itself except in the context of relationships, namely, in the material connections originated and sustained by spirituality. This means to say that the venue of spirituality, of religion, is the self-aware cosmic continuum, such that the alienation of spirituality from its material substance is a schizophrenic fiction.

The end of the Thirty Years Wars of Religions (1648) did not settle the cultured differences between religion and secularity but in many ways exacerbated them. The modern angst between religious belief and secular living roots in the historical and unresolved conflicts between faith and reason. The reconciliation of religion and civility is unlikely until faith and reason find peace and compatibility in personal / social conscience.

When religious and civil forces are joined for purposes of dominion, irreligion and incivility result. One must read secondary scriptures (human accounts) with discernment, for words about (and intending) political dominion come from men who put words in God’s mouth. Why patriarchy has forcibly dominated in societies for so long is for psychological and physical reasons, including sexual instinct and cultural idolatry.

Underlying instinct and culture are components of consciousness that are perhaps best called fear factors involving experiences of subordination, alienation and deprivation. Imperial church / state brought to high culture the use of fear factors in the religious / political dominion of males over females. People were found guilty of no more than being out of step with cultural orthodoxies of the time and were condemned by church authority and punished under state auspices, including capital punishment and threats of eternal damnation to hellfire. Repetitive physical suppression patterns psychical repression, and from suppression and repression, depression, for persistent physiological insult is with profound psychological consequence. Weighing heavily on global conscience is the original sin of the systemic violation of mother Earth — the insult goes on.

The deep cultural conditioning of male dominion has been formally codified in belief culture (religion) and civil (political) practice. In the history of the Western world patriarchal dominion reached its zenith perhaps at the time just prior to the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

Education, the rise of consciousness and the advance of communication now serve the social causes of equal citizen right and opportunity. The psychological and physical fear factors that have served the deifying of males and the demonizing of females are publicly exposed and it is hoped they will diminish and never again repeat; the exposure of them means that humans may move beyond misdirection and discover other fear factors not yet acknowledged.

If we dare to think like God, rationality obliges us to act, as God would have us act. In Godlike thinking and acting we have hardly begun. Before we rationally appropriate God’s Work we must first discern God’s Word; the accommodation of word / work mediates reason, faith and religious pluralism.

The Trilogy seeks to enlighten Godlike insight and action within the unfolding scriptural text of the cosmos. When Faith and Reason, themselves in harmony, bring Religion and Civility together civilization happens; and it begins in family. One prays that female / male mutuality will bring public consciousness to common endeavor in confronting cultural misdirection — a matter as important as can be.

The New, Evolutionary Faith Paradigm

The presumptive worldview of Scholastic Theology still in place pre-dates Christ and obtains from Aristotelian Philosophy. Vatican II observes that a new series of problems, a matter as important as can be has arisen between the old static worldview and evolving consciousness. New analyses and syntheses of the problems arising from this shift of worldviews are now required. (See: Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II, Constitution IV, Introduction, #5)

The Second Enlightenment Trilogy has for its premise the consciousness of the evolving cosmos. In the continuum of cosmic consciousness The Trilogy joins terms of religion and science in order to open dialog toward a comprehensive and new analysis and synthesis of theology and to obviate obstacles fixated against the mind-expanding potentials of the new Evolutionary Faith Paradigm.

Faith grounding tells us that the natural authentication of consciousness originates in divine instance—the evolutionary tensions (voice, intention) of cosmic transformation. While human relationships continually change, they have certain constants in common. Because of change, relationships are open to evolve; and because of amplifying constants they obtain cumulative complexity. Conscionable relationship inspires spiritual growth and authentic consciousness.

The spiritual constants of reason, faith and purpose underlie the theological virtues and enable fullness of personal / social experience. What changes is consciousness, and what endure and grow are trust, hope and love—increase in Godlikeness. Authentic consciousness—faith, hope and love—is the spirituality of common religion, common civility and personal authenticity.

The Primacy of Conscience, the primary motivator of love, personal and social, is an insight evolved from and involved in self-reflective consciousness. Speculations about and presumptions on inspiration outside the continuum of cosmic rationality are misguided. Word Communication in evolving energy/matter raises theological consciousness to an awareness of the Good News of divine instance self-advancing (in) cosmic rationality.

www.secondenlightenment.org

Dedicated To

James N. Studer, OSB,

Who Divined in Quantum Relativity

The Ground of Universal Theology

And Urged Me

To Illuminate It.

James N. Studer, OSB.

Though our friendship came quite by accident it was fortuitous as chance events often are. On February 11, 1992, I wrote Jim and commended him for his letter published in CROSSCURRENTS (winter 1991-1992) in response to an article by Dr. Polkinghorne that had appeared in the previous issue. (Dr. Polkinghorne is an English physicist who later became a priest.) The Polkinghorne article purported to advance the interface of science and religion, as a scientist / priest might be qualified to do. It was my sense of the article that the religion hat of the author co-opted his science hat, for he seemed to portray God as creator of the universe, aloof and uninvolved. Accordingly, I also wrote the editor and my letter was published (Spring 1992) under the caption Theological Fiddlers on a Burning Planet.

"To the Editor: Priest/scientist John Polkinghorne’s God’s Action in the World (Fall 1991) seems headed toward the critically important personal question of ‘me’ in terms of personal connectedness to God and to Creation. But he doesn’t get there. His perspective transports the reader to some place in infinity where he can look down on creation-physics and God interacting in creation-events. What about human agency in terms of its ‘divine’ component and in terms of its participation in ongoing creation? I get a sense that Priest Polkinghorne imposes a religious mindset (that is premised on a 2000-year-old cosmology) on Scientist Polkinghorne that compels him to conform contemporary cosmological knowledge to the priest’s predisposed mindset. Totally skirted is a cosmology that reckons the human agency in (failed) stewardship, in ‘human’ sacrament and its function ‘ex opere operantis’ in ongoing creation.

"From a layman’s sense, theology seems totally oblivious to the critical urgency of an effective theological understanding of ‘contemporary’ divine sonship that corrects the destructive imbalance caused by the historically weighted expectation that is still imposed on the divine sonship of the historical Jesus. The effect of this theological imbalance is the victimizing of personal authenticity, conscience and Earth-ecology. Christian theology needs to search seriously its grounding (Trinity) so as to become relevant now to catastrophic, humanity-made, global perils. Today it is the world that burns (actually!) while theology fiddles."

Jim and I agreed on this: the science / religion disconnect is still pervasive and insidious. A basis of common ground whereon science and religion might find common cause has not yet been elucidated, and serious joining has not yet happened. This writing is an effort to uncover natural sacrament as the organic bridge of joined reason and faith, science and religion. Bridge building by and in quantum relativity is a divine and natural collaboration. Jim would approve of my writing, I am quite sure.

Calligraphy by Monica R. Steffen

In the final months of her bout with terminal cancer,

Monica Steffen could be heard almost chanting the mantra,

O Mother, My Mother, My Anchortree!

Ever since her work trip to Rome with other student architects,

Where she admitted she shed tears at the foot of Michelangelo’s Pietá,

She expressed a fondness for and awareness of womanly identification

With the oak tree. In her final self portrait, unfinished,

Less than a year before her passing,

She put an oak leaf garland on her head

As if allowing that together with her two aunts,

Dubuque Franciscan Sisters Samuel and Justina,

Marie and Eleanor Steffen,

Both physically incapacitated for decades with multiple sclerosis,

She like them had now earned membership in

The Sorority of the Oak Leaf.

(See page 228)

The Call

Youthful good will is quick to respond to The Call of altruism, particularly when the child experiences altruism personally in family and community. Too soon the fervor of family devotion chills when the child comes in contact with circles of other experience. In these wider circles the experience of altruism is challenged by ambiguous and opposing experiences that question good faith upbringing.

The Cross

The experience of The Cross is the challenge of maturity. The clamor of selfish interest challenges altruism and asserts self. Competing internal motivations trouble all adult life. The call of the cross is an imperative for discernment between self-serving and other-serving, and ultimately for quest of communal glory.

The Glory

The Glory vision of selfishness is very different from that of altruism. Religion and civility — motivated in causes of well-being — can and should portray a vision of glory that corresponds to the vision of altruism. When personal conscience prevails in social living so do the common causes of religion and civility, of harmonized community. Harmonized religion (faith) and civility (reason) give birth to social harmony — the glory-exemplification of Trinity in Heaven.

SECTION I

Dialog

THE CALL

Communication/Consciousness/Conscience

By Monica Steffen

Christogenesis

Trimorphic Resonance

Life’s process is a metamorphosis.

In Call, Cross and Glory, humans,

seeds, frogs and butterflies, necessarily

metamorphose and put on divinity.

Cosmic energy communicates continuity.

Correspondence scripts rising consciousness.

Intensely tempered in crucible heat,

conscience conforms differences

with the imprint of the cosmic mold.

THE CALL

(To reform)

Crises of people and crises of place occur in every time and every age. Changes in times, lives and places change relationships and address the need for ongoing reforms. Nothing stands still. Everything is in transition. Everything participates in the ebb and flow of change.

All energetic substantiation is the inheritance of cosmic transformation. Everything is connected before, during and after change. Communication and consciousness are mechanisms of change as well as mechanisms for coping with change. Consciousness underlies the prophetic voice of conscience, which calls for sensitivity to people in their times, for responsiveness to the signs of the times, and for vigilance and adjustment. Fidelity is a constant of consciousness, which serves to give rationality solid footing upon which to adjust and accommodate to the necessities of change.

Reform, a prophet’s most used word, unceasingly challenges consciousness and beckons to every person in every time and every place. Communication is the word-stimulus of ongoing reformation, of new understandings and of behavior compelled by new understandings.

The work of the prophet in every age is not just to sensitize consciousness to the hurt of wrongdoing and fixation, but also to the benefits of self-justification and right living. Self-justification is a conscious process of right understanding and of living in right connection within the socially evolved milieu of life. Right living conforms personal behavior to relationships that swell the rising tide of well-being and sustain interpersonal authenticity.

Fixations against the tides of change inevitably result in crises. The times of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation are a cautionary lesson of failed response to crises and catastrophes that impose long-term their sufferings on people in new times. Ancient structures of fixation, established on the tentative sands of ancient understanding, will be shaken in future times by the compulsions of change. The false confidence of resisted cultural change becomes deeply troubling when the tides of evolutionary consciousness erode its bases. Serious erosions of misplaced confidence are occurring now.

Communication/Consciousness/Conscience

(The Process of Becoming Human/Civil)

Communication is a quantum-electric phenomenon even as are consciousness and conscience. These paradigmatic processes (communication, consciousness and conscience) of cosmic continuity provide the dynamic for moral and rational discourse — the mechanisms of religion and civility. In its cosmic characterization, communication engages the electrical potential of differentiated substance and accommodates polarities. Quantum fields of electromagnetism in least quanta are disposed within complex fields of greater quanta. Compatible signals communicate by attenuation. Atomic / molecular differentiation disposes complexity potential toward greater differentiation. In structured complexity there are built-in complexes of positive receptors and corresponding complexes of negative emitters, between which communication takes place. Light of the visible spectrum reflects from objects and signal eye receptors; this is communication by sight. An outcome of communication happens when emitted negative potential is admitted by positive potential. When electrical connection occurs, leaps of consciousness happen — lights come on — something purposeful happens, namely, new consciousness, edification, and new purpose of consciousness.

The joined process of communication, consciousness and conscience is, in specific manners, operative in all processes of matter / energy transformation and in all processes of vital engagement. They personally and communally access and edify the relationships of trust, hope and altruism; and to the extent that the human species engages these processes intentionally, to that extent homo sapiens behaves true to her/his nature.

The communication of truth (right-minded correspondence) is by example; parents should exemplify truth for their children, for by truthful living, mutual trust causes faith to flower. Mutuality happens only in the self-aware correspondence of reciprocal well-being. The self-aware mindfulness of mutual well-being should also be modeled by parents for their children. Reciprocal complementarity only happens in the self-aware practice of mutual mindedness. From reciprocal complementarity hope blossoms. Mutual mindfulness and reciprocal complementarity exemplify conscionable harmony and from conscionable harmony love blossoms.

In the mutual trust of parents, God’s Word, the sacrament of communication, is made flesh. In concern for others, God’s work, the sacrament of consciousness, edifies hope. In reciprocal communion, love harmonizes Word/Work, the sacrament of conscience. The process of personal / social becoming is the matter at hand.

In Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II directs church, indeed humankind, toward Second Enlightenment: The human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence there has arisen a new series of problems, a series as important as can be, calling for new efforts of analysis and synthesis. (Introductory statement, No 5, Para 4)

In the Second Enlightenment Trilogy, serious effort toward analysis and synthesis is presented, as called for by Vatican II — a useful point of beginning for others to pick up on and to develop. These three, communication, consciousness and conscience expand the cosmic mind of intentional rationality; the harmony of these three enlarges purpose in the provident soul of cosmic substance and in personal and social edification; the magnetic radiance of these shines from the cosmic countenance. The three-way harmony of these is the pacific experience of Godhead community; the mindful engagement of these brings mankind to full religious / civil potential.

In the kingdom of God, and the kingdom is now, mutual trust and other-concern prevail in Godly faith, hope and love. In mutual trust, faith exemplifies God’s Word — the sacrament of communication; in other-concern, hope edifies God’s Work — the sacrament of consciousness; and in reciprocal communion, love harmonizes word/work — the sacrament of conscience. The process of personal and social becoming is the matter at hand.

All consciousness, all civility, resides in the common venue of essential cosmic continuity, that is, in the collective consciousness (religious edification) of cosmic rationality and in the transcendent (handed down) purpose of cosmically ordered relationships (structural edification, political and physical). The process of ordered consciousness / behavior, religion / civility, is a cosmic process of resonance, namely, of the correspondence of communication, consciousness, and conscience with each other. The corresponding virtues (power) of the three-part processing of cosmic rationality are faith, hope and love. Except for the corresponding trimorphic-function of these Godhead virtues, religion and civility are deficient and defective.

The process of being human consists in the harmonic resonance of faith / hope / love consciousness, which is enabled in the transparency of communication, consciousness and conscience. Soul / substance edification, personal / social edification, and religious / political edification come to right ordering in the conscionable engagement of the processes of complementarity, mutuality and subsidiarity; in their conscionable functioning, cosmic rationality is religiously / politically enabled and authenticated. Except for the social harmony of these codependent relationships, neither religion (institutional) nor civility (public governance) can function authentically and effectively in the interest of common well-being.

Being human is a matter of doing in accordance with informed cosmic intelligence. Homo sapiens, the human being, is distinguished from others by the species’ self-consciousness; in the specific, humanness has to do with the species’ level of conscionable (purposeful) understanding and engagement of cosmic rationality, personal and communal, namely, the rational (self-reflective) capacity for sustaining the transformative exercises of communication, consciousness and conscience.

The trimorphic resonance of trust / hope / altruism is the harmonic power of intensional / intentional purpose that edifies civil harmony in interpersonal working.

Homo sapiens is human insofar as humans engage interpersonally the processes of cosmic rationality for the purpose of authenticating interpersonal relationships, especially, in the symbiotic collaboration of sustaining and diversifying the webs of life by using equitably their resources and by securing for the future their essential codependencies.

Civil behavior is the social manifestation of authentic religious consciousness. The absence of civil behavior is evidence of the absence of an authentic religion, relationship. Religion is a word that connotes authentic (civil, public) work. Together, civility and religion are the sign (matter) and the grace (energy) of the sacrament of being human. Being human is both, an edification of consciousness and a process of becoming. Becoming is enabled by consciousness even as consciousness is enabled by becoming. The becoming of religious consciousness enables the becoming of civil behavior; the failure of either is a failure of both.

Civility is a matter of personal conduct in communal polity. Communal polity, public order / governance, is the social work of communal consciousness (word, religion), of public well-being. Religion / civility is the personal word / work (ritual) of the people’s communally manifest intention (purpose) to be human, to behave humanly. To the purpose of celebrating what it means to be human, authentic religious consciousness honors the essential uniqueness of the human person, and the transparency of ritual reveals belief in the primacy place of personal uniqueness and equality.

The hierarchy of class stratification in society, which justifies a presumptive arrogance of one stratum over others, is a flawed ordering of religious consciousness and civil conduct. Absolutist religion of all stripes and authoritarian polity of all stripes are manifestations of presumptive arrogance, of imperial self-electionism, that together vitiate public consciousness and authentic behavior.

Overview

(Cosmic Earth Continuity)

It may be helpful at the outset to posit certain cosmic understandings that seem evident in themselves, that is, axiomatic, in their application to modern consciousness. Cumulative evidence evolves in consciousness so that tentative insights may become self-evident in time. Enumerated below are insights, which in light of quantum-electric science seem, axiomatic. These given assumptions are themselves, it needs to be added, subject to change with new knowledge.

·Occurrences in the early times of big bang expansion recur more subtly in later times in the evolved energy / structure of cosmic complexity.

·Paradigmatic nature is the cosmic model of changing complexity that involves resonance in sub-atomic, atomic and molecular synergisms and accounts for the evolved continuity of subtle forms that well serve the social strategies of intentional human design. Organic evolution obeys natural stratagems. [A paradigm is an in-place model that characterizes a pattern or patterns, for example, processes upon which nature sustainably evolves.]

·The reflex complexity of energetic resonance inheres in the tensional dynamics of molecular structure and coheres the consciousness of self-reflective energy. Social coherency builds on the trustworthy bases of proven intension (faith in things unknown) and intention (the rational choosing of the greater good).

·All matter retains potentials of inherent uncertainty and is ever subject / object of/to the vagaries of the openness of contingent necessity. The wave / particle characterization of cosmic energy / matter, exchange from masslessness to mass and from mass to masslessness, is a gravitation phenomenon of electromagnetism.

· The energy / substance of the cosmos, of conscious embodiment, derives from and is qualified in / by the inherent uncertainty of quantum (wave / particle) relativity.

·In cosmic processing electrons are transformational messengers, the carriers (lucifers) of light. With respect to self-reflectivity, light (photon) is more than metaphor in the consciousness of reality, it is an agency of neural intelligence and conscience. Light is to intelligence as intelligence is to conscience, as reason is to faith, and as science is to religion.

·The spectrum of electromagnetic star glow (wave energy emission) is finite and diminishes in its power to illuminate. And so it is with dated consciousness and its institutions. Except for resurrection and renewal the light of human consciousness fades and fails to illuminate. Consciousness in the light matrix is feminine passion, the sustaining energy of Eucharist in process of becoming — the inherent / coherent compulsion of vitality.

·From its aboriginal edification, the cosmos is essentially transformed in and by purposeful communication, that is, in/by communications having sustainable outcomes. Though human consciousness is subtly diversified and though the human pursuit of knowledge is now self-reflective, knowledge and consciousness derive from and still serve evolving cosmic purpose.

·The General Theory of Quantum-electric Relationship states that truth and justice, like cosmic gravitation (original centricity), are distributive, not centrist, that is, that they are qualified and quantified in evolved relationships but remain open to electro-magnetic transubstantiation.

·The Special Theory of Quantum-electric Relationship states the equivalency of energy and matter, of spirituality and materiality, of soul and substance, of the religious and the secular, of the heavenly and the earthly; the ill-conceived culture of arbitrarily divided realms (spirit / matter) cleaves consciousness and confounds conscience — the continuity of right-mindedness.

__________________________

Essential continuity as used here is the ongoing transformational product and process of the expanding universe at any point in time — Einstein’s MC². Since the process and product of cosmic continuity and rationality involve the whole of the universe, the term presupposes universal connectedness and interdependency. Energy can no more be separated out from the transformational continuum at any phase of the process than soul can be separated out from the transformational body. While energy and matter change in form they cannot be ultimately destroyed. The expansion of original gravity from the dense point of Big Bang happens at the microcosmic level, even as does the growth and maintenance of life from within atoms and molecules. Evolving life is molecular transubstantiation, an irreversible arrow in time whose inner-drive gains momentum and consequence.

First Big Bang energy is unqualified in waveform. Self-conflictive uniformity compelled gravity to expand in waves outward from the point of origin. Multi-forms of streaming energy diversify from original uniformity to waves in subtle and amplifying bands; intermixing streams further complicate energy in mixed patterns. Amplified harmonics occur in wave bands. Creative cosmic dialog begins and continues at all levels of energetic resonance. In its least subtle form, original resonance may evolve from configurations of mass-less wave overlap and diffuse as energy expands across complex impulses and multivalent frictions. Out of the subtle complications of pulsating energy even more subtle formations of differentiated energy conform into forms of substance (harmonized gravitation), the primitive materiality sometimes called gravitons and sometimes, superstrings. Superstrings may be thought of as macramé tails of micro lint, distributed throughout the vast and expanding universe. Analogously, as the crystalline appearance of snowflakes differs from snowflake to snowflake, so the wave configurations of superstrings might differ.

The self-sustaining communications of substantive harmonics build upon the successful configurations of past harmonics, and self-amplify in ever more subtle forms of complexity and recognition-potential. All the above occurs over millions and even billions of years. Such might be communication in beginning time. The cosmos we know and Earthlife we experience are a communicational continuum, the diversified and expanding reality of singular origination (monad).

All that exists on Earth and throughout the cosmos—at this moment—is a continuity of linked causes and events that proceed out of the past—a maze of relationships. The character of the continuing reality is qualified by the interactive participation of cosmic subjectivities. The text of life is constantly being proofed (justified) under the challenges of time-occurring contexts. Contexts are pressures of environmental change, for example, that affect the information recorded in the vital text of the DNA gene code. From the human-participation perspective, it well serves the commonweal to secure and sustain the matrix continuum, its physical character as well as its sustaining balance of complex ecology.

In atoms and in Adam, from atoms to humans, harmonics is the energy of communication that works. There is a link between how purpose finds voice and how humans voice purpose. Harmonics is energy emanating from a source, whether as rainbow waves of light or the polyphonic spectrum of sound. As communication means, harmonics is energy qualified (intensionally / intentionally) by and in the subject whence it emanates and the object wherein it is received, whether the subject or object be an atom, a flower, a bird or a human being.

Thus, the voice of purposeful construct is an inherency complex that continues to become ever more subtle in potential and substantiation. Evolutionary complexity is the transformational necessity of energy / matter. The diversification of purposeful construct is evident in the vast diversifications of nature, whether as expressed throughout the cosmic expanse or whether as expressed in the diverse webs of life on Earth. The diversifications of energy rhythms are evident in the songs of birds, the coloration and shapes of flowers, the intricacies of thought and the emotional range of love. The purposeful combination of thoughtful words and harmonic arrangements is the song of human purpose, self-reflective and necessarily other-intended.

Relational consciousness and personal commitment to communal well-being qualify personal conduct. Increasing complexity increases the need for greater attention to the consequences of actions. Intention is the mind-full consciousness of purpose. At the outset it is well to observe that cosmic purpose, the logic of evolved cosmic rationality, substantiates in the specific the rationality that drives the unfolding cosmos, including human intention. Failure to understand consequences of relational connection is personally to fail in conscionable behavior. The now dire state of Earth’s living web testifies to the fact.

The personal and social commitment that motivates human conduct to do the moral thing (that which has beneficial consequences) is the religious component of interpersonal behavior as well as the civil. The civil and the religious concur in purpose. The common cause of religion and civility is the cause of common welfare.

What has become clear in our present time is the enormous havoc that one person, bent on being destructive, can do to devastate the common ground of well-being. What this speaks to is the power of individual conscience and the ambiguous direction it can take, according to its formation, in wreaking havoc or advancing well-being. It seems that institutional religion and civil discourse should be able to find consensus in the social (moral) conclusion that violence against the essential continuum is not something that can be condoned much less advocated. Not to accept this minimum moral standard seems on its face to be fundamentally hostile to common well-being. The mindless and destructive exploitation of resources for selfish purposes is immoral and violates common well-being. Fanaticism flares up around despots like wild fire in dry brush. Though the flames of fanaticism may flare superficially, their causes may be deep and are not to be taken lightly. Trite but true, violence on violence produces more violence and resolves nothing.

A defining crisis within Islam—and the rest of the world for that matter—is the religious fomenting of global terror in houses of religion by religious people. If Islam is to enjoy religious credibility it needs to correct cultured malevolence. In the same breath it needs to be said that the malevolent consumerism of Christian colonials, the exploitive profiteering of neo-colonial (transnational) corporations need also to be confronted and corrected. No culture or religion is without its own despots and fanatics. As its despots and terrorists have hijacked Islamic religion, so have the despots and mercantilists of Christian nations hijacked Christianity. Make no mistake about it, not only is the conscience of Islam put to the test by terrorists, so also is that of Judaism and Christianity.

Global consciousness is a common ocean of spiritual awareness that seeks to maintain the high ground of complexity and to lift the low. Interdependent life either succeeds to rise above the destructive tides of consciousness or to be swamped by them. The intolerance and incivility of absolutist religion frustrates the very possibility of civility. The past thousand years of history as well as the global predicaments besetting the present starkly make the point. Can we now read our prior bad history and find a way to avoid repeating it?

The plan of this book is to swim reflectively into the ocean tide of cosmic consciousness and observe the history of people and events, particularly, the tumultuous events of the past one thousand years involving Mediterranean countries, Middle East and European countries. A continuity perspective will be attempted through the double lens of religion and politics as they interactively and continuously impact the people of these regions and the generations that follow. The validity of this bi-focal approach lies in the fact that religious / political continuity, as it came together in the theater indicated above, has been radically determinative of global circumstances that now prevail, primarily because of the colonial expansion of Europe and its global exploitation.

The absolutist mentality of Christianity fueled dominion appetites of a grossly uncivil European amalgam, which motivated nations to extend their spheres of influence, both with respect to proselytizing their variations of the Christian Faith on global peoples and to extending national / religious hegemony over them and their resources—all of this under presumed divine protection and preference. Religious and political ideologies are so intimately intertwined in unjust social structures and global exploitation as to lead to the conclusion that they are jointly responsible for the bad as well as the good of the present time.

Two aspects of the dominion rationale in European religion / politics are patriarchy and patronage, a joined theological / sociological duality so ensconced in religious / political evolution as to suggest that they must root in the evolutionary past. Mutually accommodated European theology / rationality has claimed global religious / political right of dominion over the goods and beliefs of the non-elect and has exercised the requisite expansionary force to make good its cult of self-electionism and dominion. Christianity has adopted and modified the male-elected dominion found in Old Testament history and evolved from middle-eastern (Judaic) culture. The Christian presumption of divine right carries into consumerist politics, for example, into the politics of transnational corporations morphed from feudal colonialism.

Patriarchy, rooted in and advanced upon religious / political ideology, must be examined critically, particularly with respect to global socio-economic impacts on world populations, specifically now, with respect to individual human rights and world resource use. Critical examination of patriarchy does not mean to suggest that Christianity necessarily has greater guilt for human rights violations than other religions; it means only to admit Christian guilt, personal and institutional, in this common anti-social phenomenon. No amount of attempted cover-up by the church hierarchy can conceal the historical facts of the wrongdoing of institutional Catholicism. The aggressive politicizing of dominion theology by Catholic colonial nations makes Catholicism their witting accomplice in global exploit. Until now, there is scant admission on the part of the church for its role in causing and supporting the domination and exploitation of colonized peoples. The Catholic Church in the Americas under Spanish colonization was and still is party to religious / political patronage and unjust dominion.

Included in the plan of this book is a consideration of the social continuity of European civilizations from the two eyes of religious and civil continuity. Perhaps the reader will not find it surprising that the religious focus is on Christianity, not because other world religions are unimportant but because, unlike Christianity, they have lacked a self-justifying theology that globally accommodated the absolutist theology of European colonials in their covetous appropriation of indigenous peoples and resources. Religious and political monarchy had become so habituated in Europe that public conscience was feeble in its objections to colonial thievery. Popes, princes and kings shared a common lust for the loot brought to their national ports by colonial riggers. All prospered from wrongfully appropriated gains and in their glad triumph they together suppressed their faint tremors of guilt. The Catholic Church has inherited the market persuasions of the mercantilist and usurious families of Renaissance popes and princes. The sins of fathers are visiting