THE LOGOS
                               by
                          Jim Bauer, MA

This essay is on the Word of God, as interpreted by some sig-
nificant reinterpretations of Teilhard's biological/anthropological
mysticism coupled with a demythologized gnosticism that has been
reduced to an ontological myth.

Teilhard posits two forces in the universe:  "complexification" and
entropy.  Though it's probably untenable to identify, as he does,
"negative-entropy" with an equally fictitious "life-force" (or at
least, something that behaves that way, but for different reasons),
Teilhard's mysticism at its core is not unlike my own religious
beliefs.  As stated above, these are a de-mythologized version of
Gnostic scriptures, transmuted into an ontological myth through the
alchemy of individuation.

One scholar defined Gnosticism as "a-cosmic [ie, outside the
Cosmos] dualism against a background of pantheism:"  like Haeckel's
worship of monism itself, I hold the Universe to be simultaneously
materialistic and pantheistic, the Two made One in the manner of
the Tao or the Neoplatonic nous, or as Jesus says in the Gospel of
Thomas:  "The upper and lower, inner and outer, male and female,
good and evil, are brother and sister to one another.  Therefore
neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life a real
life, nor death, death."  And the Two and the One can also be
justified by asserting that cybernetics also exists on the quantum
level:  Duality exists between the Void and the Cosmos, making of
them binary bits--the earliest form of a pan-psychic Universal
intelligence.

As in Teilhard, the "Word become Flesh" is an emanation down and
out from the Thought of God (ie, the processes of evolution), while
Matter perpetually strives higher and higher, the two waves of the
World Equation meeting at the Omega Point.

The word for "word" in Greek is "logos,"  I've postulated a
companion for the meme:  the logos-meme, the appendage on the end
to distinguish it from the theological meaning of Logos as "the
Word of God."  Such an entity is in general identical to a meme,
except in one--one of the most important--instances:  a gene is a
logos-meme, but it can't be a meme; an entity cannot be an analog
of itself.

"Memes" are one of Dawkins' ideas, from THE SELFISH GENE:  the idea
here is that any "replicating system" is an evolutionary entity,
not necessarily confining evolution to biological entities; a meme
is a gene-analog.  For example, ideas are memes.  Right now, I'm
trying to replicate a meme by posting this essay on the web; those
who disagree will no doubt respond by attempting to replicate their
own philosophical system.

In linguistic philosophy, there are five kinds of "tropes," or
figures of speech, which can be (metaphorically) used to create
logos-meme metaphors:  simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and
irony.

Metaphors were once thought to be nothing but compressed similes: 
"Cops are pigs" was assumed to be a compression of "Cops are like
pigs."  However, there's a counter-example:  "Arnold is a pig."
Here, either someone named Arnold is a slob, or you're watching
reruns of GREEN ACRES.  This statement is thus both a metaphor and
a literal statement.  It depends on the context.

"God is a metaphor" can likewise be viewed as both literal and
metaphorical:  if God is a symbol which is non-existent except in
psychology, God is _literally_ a metaphor.  But if God literally
exists the simile, "The World is like a simile" is existant for the
reason that God cannot be known except thru analogy--you can say
what God is _like_, but God is also absolutely transmundane (or
acosmically dualistic), so that for any object which can be
compared to God, God is more.

"Metonymy" is a form of metaphor:  an assumed metaphor.  Return to
the cop-pig root-metaphor: "Cops are pigs" is a metaphor, but "the
pigs beat up Rodney King" is a metonymy.  The Logos (in the
theological sense) is such a system, the supposition in Chris-
tianity that "Jesus died for our sins" makes Him metonymic:  the
Logos substitutes itself for man in an Anthroposophic sense. 
"Anthroposophy" literally means "Man-wisdom," the mystical belief
that the whole cosmos is contained in the human body.  Jesus is the
only true Anthropos.

To move on to our next trope, synecdoches are a special sub-set of
metonymies:  the whole substituted for the part, or vice-versa. 
For example, "I've got wheels," meaning you have a car, is a
metonymy, as it puts the part (wheels) for the whole.  The inverse,
as far as I can tell, usually applies only for aggregates and not
systems:  an example of upper-to-lower transitions would be, "The
entire bar went outside to watch the fight" when actually, it's the
people in the bar who are watching the fight.  To me, God is an
atypical, upper-to-lower synecdoche in His emanation from the
transcendant and a typical lower-to-upper synechdoche in relation
to Her immanence.

"Irony" is a statement in which the intended meaning is the
opposite of the literal meaning.  In the case of the Logos, it is
the two made one, the Neoplatonic nous, the Oriental Tao, the
_hierosgamos_ of alchemy.

The intent of this project is to create both a reductionistic,
materialistic explanation of the origins of religion, and a
"compensating" (in the Jungian sense) theology/philosophy of
religion, drawn from the same root-metaphors:  the philosophy of
science and the philosophy of religion, not to mention the parent
disciplines, science and religion.

Part of this project is a reinterpretation of Teilhard, who made
some of the first tentative steps toward combining evolution and
mysticismn.  This willbe the creation of an emantory Logos
theology, in which I will try to redefine his radical holism in a
more moderate form.

Returning to linguistic philosophy, all logos-memes are also
memes, except in the case of genetics:  all genes are word-
analogs, because genetics is a language.  One of Wimsatt's grad
students did a thesis on the relationship of genetics to
linguistics.  I am attempting a metaphorical redefinition of
"metaphor logos-memes," or "m-metaphors:"  a "genetic metaphor"
is a pleiotropic (multi-functioned) gene.  A pleiotropic meme or
archetype is a holistic nexus of emergent properties.

This has a psychological parallel in the emergence of "mind" from
"brain:"  the mind is an m-metaphor, in word-analog terms.  One
grad student I told the idea to didn't really understand:  she
said, "But they're the same thing!"  Actually, every meme is also
a logos-meme, but a gene cannot be an analog to itself, though it
can be, and is, a word-analog.

I also want to include some historical material, on the history
of gnosticism and its relationship to alchemy.  I am trying to
ask the reader, "Is it possible for modern science to go back to
the mystical paradigm which was prevalent in the sciences before
the so-called Scientific Revolution?"  The Logos/logos-meme
material would be the method of splicing the various segments of
the World Equation, the Cosmic Chromosome, together.

Alchemy is a descendant of gnosticism--which is where the history
of science comes in.  Though, when I read books on gnosticism,
most of the critics appear blithely unaware of this.  For
example, Kurt Rudolph sees Islam as the modern successor to gnos-
ticism.  Indeed, in Ib'n Al Arabi's writing, there is frequent
use of a term the translator renders as "gnostic."  However,
alchemy, including Islamic alchemy is, as Jung says, "like a sub-
current to the Christianity that ruled on the surface.  The
message of Christianity is gnosis, and the unconscious
compensation is gnosis to a still higher degree."  (I regard this
as the most profound statement Jung ever made.)

The point is, Christianity is exoteric gnosticism.  Bishops,
Popes, leaders of the Protestant Reformation, all practiced
alchemy without realizing where the symbols came from.  Martin
Luther, in his Correspondence, says, "I like very much the
alchemical art, for its fine symbolism, touching on the Last Day
and the Resurrection."  And Walter Pagel has traced elements of
gnosticism and Neoplatonism into the works of Paracelsus.

However, most gnostic critics are also cheerfully unaware that
Buddhism played a major role in the evolution of gnosticism. 
Though, at least in THE NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY, the person who wrote
the intro to THE THUNDER, PERFECT MIND, pointed out how the enig-
matic sayings resembled Zen koans.  There's also a statement in
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS, that, if Jesus really said it, would show a
possible exposure to Eastern philosophy; if Jesus didn't say it,
the Christian Gnostic who wrote it him- (or her-) self was prob-
ably exposed to Oriental world-views:  "Jesus said:  I am the
Light which is above them all.  The All came from me, and it
attained to me.  Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up a
Stone, and you shall find me there."

I'm also interested in the evolution of pre-Christian gnosticism. 
I think Kurt Rudolph lends too much credence to Jewish
Apocalyptic sources as being the precursor of gnosticism, and not
enough to Oriental and pre-Christian, pagan influences.  At least
in one of the other classic studies of the field, Hans Jonas' THE
GNOSTIC RELIGION, gnosticism is seen as having begun during the
Alexandrian Empire.  During that period, trade routes to the East
exposed Greece to Oriental philosophy.  One critic goes so far as
to say, "Gnosticism is the extreme Hellenization of Oriental
philosophy."

Consider the Logos/logos dyad this way:  There are two technical
terms for reproducing systems:  "autocatalysis" and
"heterocatalysis."  Autocatalysis is an entity making copies of
itself (like a gene or virus); heterocatalysis is something
making something other than itself (like messenger RNA and
protein synthesis).

However, with the two themes being tied together by the
Logos/logos pun, I've been researching the Logos, ie, the "Word
of God."  There is a famous passage about the Logos in John:  "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us."
Some scholars believe that this was inspired by a Gnostic hymn,
and one went so far as to proclaim John a full-blown Gnostic
document that somehow found its way into the Christian Canon.
When I first started researching the project, I consulted the
Logos theology of Origen.  There are also elements of the Logos
in Teilhard.

The main element of Teilhard which I like is the movement of
Spirit out from the Godhead, to meet matter moving upward, to
meet Spirit at the "Omega Point."  I use two forms of holism to
render this philosophy:  one, I call "Classical holism," which is
the result of emanation from the Godhead in emergence.  This
philosophy is, "the Whole is more than the sum of its parts." 
The other philosophical principle is reductionistic, "scientific
holism," which is "complex reductionism"--as Herbert Simon
defined it in THE SCIENCES OF THE ARTIFICIAL, "in the face of
complexity, an in-principle reductionist can also be a pragmatic
holist."

Tying Teilhard, the Logos, and the logos-meme together is
accomplished by my monistic mind-body philosophy:  all which is,
is information, information changes over time, due to selection
processes--ie, it's evolutionary.  Wimsatt once framed something
I call "the cognitive-adaptive identity hypothesis.""  This says
that, since  the fundamental properties of evolutionary systems--
heritability, mutation, and selection processes--also exist in
mind (cognition), mind is also an evolutionary system.  Invert
this, you have that all adaptive systems are also mental!  And
the All evolves as the Thought of God thinks it into being;
Creation is continuous and on-going.

This leads to panpsychism (especially as discussed by Gordon G.
Globus), which in turn can be used to support pantheism, and
Haeckel's monistic religion:  Ernst Haeckel, one of Darwin's
bulldogs believed we should be neither materialists nor
pantheists, but worship monism itself, and make all Nature our
Temple.

The panentheism of Christianity, in a Gnostic form, can be
justified through a form of religious atheism:  as in
panpsychism, where all things, and the All, have an awareness, so
there is also an Awareness of the Void.  (Meaning, not only that
the Void has an Awareness, but the that the mystic must have a
Comprehension of that Void; in Knowing (as in gnosis) the Void,
the mystic Knows himself.)  In this case, the Void is the acosmic
element in a neo-gnostic "acosmic dualism against a backdrop of
pantheism."  

The Primordial Awareness was that of a bit:  the singularity
which was the Cosmos before the Big Bang, and the acosmic element
which is radically nihilistic.  The Emanation of the Logos was
the differentiation of Infinite Potency (in the Aristotelean
sense) into variegated complex entities, thru the complexifying
properties of selection processes, ie, teleology. 

In this way, we tie together theology and science in a
complementary manner, with the Word of God existant in both the
physical and material world, and also come to see that both those
two are one.

(C) Copyright 1998 by Jim Bauer