Remembering Our Indigenous Pathways to Knowing: Latin America (Peru), David Bohm, the Grammarian and Dervish Continued

The dervishes' (the mystical sect of Islam, yet some say Sufi's are a completely independent spiritual path) way of life has come to embody what many of us are now calling ecopsychology. The ecopsychologists and their more wordy intellectual cousins the ecohilosophers, are part of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC's) eclectic community of interdisciplinary scholars.

Bound together by their mutual search for alternative ways of knowing and understanding beyond the presently dominant emphasis upon analysis and their interest in healing the increasing fragmentation of scientific knowledge as a symptom of EuroAmerican sciences' over-emphasis on analysis: a subtle process of inquiry whose modus operandi has prevailed upon nature to reveal her secrets by employing the procedure of asking properly formulated questions. Taken to an extreme, our present scientific agenda based solely on analysis begins to resemble the work of an interrogator. The interrogator's goal is to obtain the secrets of nature using whatever means of experimentation that are necessary to possess the knowledge of its workings, including techniques of investigation that wold otherwise be illeagal or immoral because of their close resemblance to methods of torture.

It is because of this orientation that ecophilosophers and ecopsychologists have begun to recognize the importance of remembering our indigenous pathways toward knowing and understanding. Among these is Jurgen W. Kremer, who has drawn inspiration from the contemporary Andean peoples of Peru: (what follows is a very long quote)

"The conversations held between persons and the other inhabitans of the world are not primarily engaged in the purpose of 'knowing reality.' They are engaged in as part of the activity of criar y dejarse criar, of nurturing (raising) and letting onself be nurtured (raised). The verb criar is used to speak of raising children, animals, plants, relationships, etc. It is the activity that fosters the growth and development of ones potentiality as generativity. . . . [A]cting in the world is being in relationship with the world, so the language of conversation is more appropriate than the language of knowledge. . . . This is not to say that conversing with the world does not involve cognitive faculties; it of course does, but that the activity is not primarily and certainly not exclusively a cognitive one. Criar demands not only understanding but love, tenderness, patience. But it is to say that the point of conversation is not the attainment of knowledge through the interrogation of nature, it is rather to generate and regenerate the world and be generated and regenerated in the process" (Apffel-Marglin 1994, 9, quoted in Kremer: 42, 1996).

David Bohm's philosophical legacy also echoes this critique of EuroAmerican science, proposing what he has referred to as the "generative order" (Bohm & Kelly, 1990; Bohm & Peat, 1987). The aim of Bohm's generative order, contrary to the development of "normal science" (Kuhn, 1970), is not simply an attempt to construct a particular theoretical agenda as a guide to incremental stages of data collection. Neither does Bohm consider the generative order as a method of problem solving that is working toward some specific end, such as a scientific revolution. Bohm's generative order is instead a creative play of thought, an ongoing exploration of our unconscious infrastructure of ideas, a means of awakening insight based on the contextual unfolding of non-directive dialogue, a continual examination and re-examination of our fundamental conceptual proposals holding together our views of science and culture.

Those of us that share this critique of EuroAmerican science will welcome Bohm's "generative order," which can be thought of as an invitation for the scientific observer to enter into an intrinsic synthesis, or cooperative partnership of mutual respect with nature, in order to learn, understand and share in her secrets. It is a call for a more intimate and sensual understanding of the universe in which we live. Morris Berman has referred to this call for a new way of knowing as a reawakening of humankind's "participating consciousness" (Berman, 1981). Paul Devereux, John Steel, and David Kurin have suggested its represents a waking up from our "geomantic amnesia" (Devereux, Steel, and Kubrin, 1989). Thomas Berry (Berry, 1988), Charlene Spretnak (Spretnak, 1991) and Matthew Fox (M. Fox, 1993a, 1993b) have called it a renewal of humankind's sense of "communion with our earthbody." Leslie Gray refers to it as "shamanic counseling" (Grey, 1995). Ralph Metzner has pointed to this more intimate and sensual understanding of the universe as one means of "healing humankind's dissociation from nature" (Metzner, 1999; Schroll, 2007). Theodore Roszak has suggested that is is a process of learning how to hear once again the "voice of the earth" (Roszak, 1992, 1993): suggesting that the essence of humankind's "right relationship" with our earthbody is the need to recognize and remember our co-evolutionary symbiotic orientation with nature.

Therefore, like the wandering dervish, those of us that have become concerned about global warming and many other related social and environmental crises would like to tell the grammarian that if our strict adherence to the worldview of EuroAmerican science is more important than the essentials of "getting out of the well," that he had better stay where he is until we have learned to speak properly. Unlike the story of the grammarian and the dervish, we cannot walk away entirely. This is because the growing number of social and environmental crises are not localized problems that simply affect one person, like the grammarian: they affect all of our lives, consequently there is nowhere on Earth that we can go to escape them.

References

Berry, Thomas. (1988). The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco, CA.: Sierra Club Books.

Berman, Morris. (1981). The Reenchantment of the World. Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press.

Bohm, David & Peat, F. David. ((1987). Science, Order, and Creativity. New York: Bantam Books.

Bohm, David & Kelly, Sean. (1990). "Dialogue On Science, Society, and the Generative Order." Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 25 (4), December, 449-467.

Devereux, Paul, Steel, John, & Kubrin, David. (1989). Earthmind: A Modern Adventure in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Harper & Row.

Fox, Matthew. (1993a, May 21). "Spirituality and Addiction." Lecture presented at the Keiwit Conference Center, Omaha, Nebraska. An audio tape of this lecture is available from Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado.

Fox, Matthew. (1993b, August 25). "Transpersonal Values and the Global Challenge." Keynote address presented at the 25th Anniversary Convocation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology Conference, Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California. An audio tape of this lecture is available from http://www.conferencerecording.com

Grey, Leslie. (1995). "Shamanic Counseling and Ecopsychology." In Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes & Allen D. Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, pp. 172-182.

Kremer, Jurgen W. (1996). "The Shadow of Evolutionary Thinking." ReVision, 19 (1), 41-48.

Kuhn, Thomas S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (2nd edition., enlarged). Chicago: The Chicago University Press.

Metzner, Ralph. (1999). Green Psychology: Tranforming Our Relationship to the Earth. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions Press.

Roszak, Theodore. (1992). The Voice of the Earth. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Roszak, Theodore. (1993, August 26). "Ecopsychology and the Soul of the Earth." Keynote presentation at the 25th Anniversary Convocation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, CA. On tape and CD from http://www.conferencerecording.com

Schroll, Mark A. (2007). "Healing Humankind's Dissociation From Nature: Does Environmental Disregard Suggest the Need for a New DSM Category?" Association for Humanistic Psychology-Perspective, February/March, 12-14. This essay is also available on-line and can be found from any search engine by typing in Mark A. Schroll and looking for AHP-Perspective.

Sprentnak, Charlene. (1991). States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.