Integral Worldview

My reflection this year on worldview, as the skeleton or framework on which our ideals lie or the Magna Carta that governs our thinking and our lives, was inspired by reading a book called, The Powers That Be, by the Protestant theologian Walter Wink. The book is not about worldview, but about the powers that govern this world. However, in five pages of this book, Wink describes the 5 worldviews that have governed the imagination of human beings thus far.

These 5 worldviews are as follows: the ancient, the spiritualist, the materialist, the theological, and the integral. I understand that there are more worldviews than those cited in this book, and also many more beyond the ones I mention in this year's articles. As can be seen, three of the worldviews that Wink mentions are part of my study: the materialist, the spiritualist, and the integral, the latter is the topic of this text.

As we have said, the materialist worldview is the one that governs the world of culture, politics, arts, science, high finance, and universities. These environments have been completely sterilized of any religious sentiment, manifestation, thought or symbol. Western culture, the daughter of Christianity, has thrown its mother in prison and carried out an "ethnic cleansing" of many elements associated with Christianity.

As for other elements, Western culture stole them without mentioning their Christian origin, like for example, the baptismal registry books that the republicans that overthrew the monarchy in Portugal,  stole from the Churches to begin the civil registry. It also stole other elements by changing their names; historians, instead of saying before or after Christ, say before or after the common era to denote year.  

Western society has become so materialistic that it is almost inhuman, cold, selfish, and where nobody cares about anyone; individualism and selfishness have grown out of proportion; atheists and agnostics say they have values, but we do not see them in action anywhere. In this climate of such materialistic inhumanity, many take refuge in spiritualism and, following the law of the pendulum, adhere to a spiritualism that denies and demonizes all matter. They constitute small communities that are authentic oases in this materialistic desert.

The integral worldview is a worldview that seeks to reconcile man with his nature. As we have already said, we understand that modern man represses religious feeling in the same way that a Puritan society represses sex. The integral worldview also aims to overcome the dualisms typical of the spiritualist worldview, to seek the synthesis of these thesis and antitheses: spirit vs. matter, soul vs. body, creationism vs. evolutionism, sacred vs. profane, pure vs. impure, etc.

This new mentality, this new worldview, this new optic, and way of seeing things, is rising from the ashes of materialism, like a Phoenix reborn. It is not a crude, ignorant, reactionary spiritualism that has science as its enemy, but the living of religious feeling in the light of science, in constant dialogue with it. It is a faith that allows itself to be purified by science from all myths, superstitions, and irrationalism; it is a science that allows itself be guided and inspired by faith, that is not ashamed of it. Few are those who already live in this dimension, the majority of the population is either materialistic or spiritualistic.

History of Materialism
From religion to anti-religion, the history of materialism is a history of evolution of the experience of religious feeling. It all began with matter impregnated with spirit, breathing spirit through its every pore: this was the stage of animism. As human beings got to know the material realities of the world around them, they started stealing the souls of these realities.

In moving from animism to polytheism, human beings stole the souls from countless material realities, and to those handful few they did not know, they attributed to them the status of gods, that is, of leaders of a reality such as time, sea, love, war. For the sake of simplification, human beings concentrated these unknown realities into one single deity, but they did not stop there.

Because of the scientific discoveries of the 19th century and their practical applications in the 20th century, human beings began to think that they had discovered everything there was to discover. They became proud and so full of themselves that they destitute the religious sentiment, declaring that it was not God who had created man in his image and likeness, but rather man who created God in his image and likeness. Later, not content with his delusion, he killed God and put himself in his place.

Little by little, however, modern man is realizing that religious sentiment is neither an invention of ignorance nor an explanation for unexplainable things. The very fact that no matter how much the human being knows, there will always be things that he still does not know, proves that matter seems to have certain properties in common with Spirit after all.  

Some intellectuals of our time, not defining themselves as religious, go so far as to say that if God did not exist, he would have to be invented. Yes, because they recognize that this world, as it is structured, presupposes that most human beings are believers. Because if the contrary were true, things would not be as we find them in this world. So, as I have said elsewhere, atheists and agnostics are lucky that most are believers. In fact, the world as it is structured can survive with an agnostic minority, as long as the majority, as is the case, is a believer.

The integral worldview is going to suppose a return of what was stolen back to its owner; giving Spirit back to matter, because neither matter is as material as materialists think, nor is Spirit as immaterial and incorporeal as spiritualists think. The integral worldview will somehow imply a return to animism, but not the same uninformed animism of primitive men or ours when we were children; it will be an animism that will place the spirit at the center of every thing. Today we know from science that visible matter is after all composed of invisible and intangible subatomic particles.

Physics is the Soul of Science
When we talked about worldview and science, we said that scientific discoveries make us change our perspective about everything around us, the way we relate to the environment, our view of life; it is not the same to think that the Earth is the center of the universe than to think that it is not the Earth, but the Sun, and ultimately not even the Sun, is the center of a universe that probably has no center. It is not the same to think that matter and energy are two realities of a different nature than to think that matter is a form of energy and energy is a form of matter, just as water exists in three different physical states, and none is similar to the other, so much so that they even look like different realities.

Every scientific discovery can provoke a metanoia, a conversion, a change of mind, a worldview, or a new way of looking at things. Our mind, our faith, and our life have to adapt to the evolution of our knowledge of the reality that surrounds us and with which we relate. The science that can most stir our worldview is Physics, because it is the one that studies the most basic and fundamental things of our life, such as matter and the cosmos.

It is in this sense that we can state that the materialist worldview is out of fashion because it has not kept up with the latest scientific discoveries in the field of physics, especially quantum physics. The materialist worldview is right and makes sense in the context of mechanistic physics like Newton's, where reality works with the precision, cadence, rhythm, and prediction of a Swiss watch.

This worldview was itself misleading because it featured a watch without a watchmaker. But more than that, since Einstein we know that reality has nothing to do with the precision of a watch, but if it were a watch, it would not be precise as the Swiss kind, because it would be relative, that is, it would not always mark the same hours.

The New Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics changes our minds, modifies our paradigms, attacks the logic that has governed science and our lives, because it breaks down boundaries that used to seem insurmountable and puts an end to the dualisms that opposed realities that we used to think were very different and even contrary, such as matter/energy, static/dynamic, visible/invisible, tangible/intangible, predictable/unpredictable, material/spiritual, scientific/philosophical.

Matter/Energy – The heart of matter is intangible like energy; the heart of matter, the world of atoms and subatomic particles is, in fact, energy.

Atoms can be matter, insofar as we try to weigh and measure them; but the particles that compose them have electric charges and move, that is, they exhibit the properties of energy. We can conclude that they are matter in their essence, describable, qualifiable and quantifiable, but that they are energy in their existence, because they exhibit a voltaic power, they react, and create waves.

Matter is energy in potential, energy is matter in potential. Combustion transforms matter into energy: this is what happens at the center of the sun, where hydrogen atoms fuse, creating helium and energy.

Visible, solid matter is composed of invisible elements, and the further we travel to the center of matter, the less matter (mass) and the more empty space we find, so matter seems to be reduced to tiny vibrating fibers of energy. Subatomic particles are in fact manifestations of energy. Therefore, what seemed so visible and solid is now reduced to electromagnetic waves. As the result, we can conclude that our body and everything that materially exists is reduced to vibrating energy.

Matter in itself does not exist, for it is merely a storehouse of energy, it is nothing more than condensed, accumulated energy. For example, plants, through photosynthesis, convert the radiant energy of the sun into chemical energy that is stored in organic molecules, as if the plant were a battery, a storehouse of energy.

Matter/Spirit - Materialism has no reason to exist, because matter is formed by invisible, almost spiritual elements, and we certainly cannot understand matter without knowing its soul. The atom is the soul of matter, so not only human beings have souls, matter does too. The soul of matter is as invisible as ours within our body.

Inert/Living - It is no longer clear that life only exists in organic matter; there is no longer such a big difference between organic matter and inorganic or inert matter. Subatomic particles reveal to us that life exists not only at the level of cells, but also at the subatomic level of quarks. Of course, this is a different form of life.

Visible/Invisible  - "If quantum mechanics hasn't shocked you deeply, it's because you haven't understood it yet. Everything we call real is made up of things that truly cannot be understood as real." Niels Bohr

The boundary between the visible and the invisible is also broken in matter. The mass of an atom is less than 1% of its size, the rest is void, that is, the space between the nucleus and the electrons. As stated above, if the nucleus of an atom were the size of a basketball, the electrons would be several kilometers away from the nucleus.

Static/Dynamic - The matter that forms objects appear static, it seems stationary, but in fact, this is an illusion: in reality, everything moves. As stated earlier, the electron orbits around the nucleus of the atom at a speed of 2,200 kilometers per second. Matter is therefore not static as it seems, but dynamic.

In quantum mechanics, everything is an illusion: visible matter is composed of invisible elements; it is apparently static, when in reality it is in motion; it is apparently very different from energy, but it is in fact a form of energy.

Pure/Impure - There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile, (Mark 7:15). ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ (Acts 10:15)

There was a time when the sexual act was seen as something dirty, ugly, sinful, and impure; It was only seen as a lesser evil when it was performed in the context of marriage for the sole purpose of procreation. But even then, Christian couples were advised not to enjoy the pleasure of sex and to abstain completely from sexual intercourse during Lent. For the rest, it was seen as a " remedium concupiscência", a palliative for voluptuousness, not as an act of love.

Love is the soul of the sexual act, which is one of the expressions of love in its function of uniting people into one body and one soul. And since it is the act by which the two will become one flesh (Mark 10:1-12), then resulting in three, the genesis of a human being is the fruit of the unitive love between two people, hence in no way can it be an impure act.

Sacred/Profane - When St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and when Jesus tells us that instead of praying to be seen by others, we should do so in our room (Matthew 6:5), we should pray within ourselves in spirit and truth, not on Mount Gerizim or in the temple of Jerusalem (John 4:23-54), where then lies the profane? Was not everything created by God? If everything and everyone was created by God, nothing is profane, everything is sacred.

Good/Bad - Love as a human need (to love and to be loved) does not seem, at first glance, to be connected with morality, but it really is. When we judge we do not love, when we love we do not judge; universal love, especially love of enemies, overcomes the dualistic thinking of good versus evil, and can take us to the eternity that is God, the one who makes rain come down on the just as well as the unjust, and loves everyone unconditionally. We are called to be like Him.

It is also said that love is blind; that lovers tend not to see each other's faults and shortcomings, and naturally refrain from judging each other. And it also seems that when love disappears, only defects and deficiencies are seen. This leads us to conclude that only love can free us from being hypercritical of each other, taking us back to the Garden of Eden.

God/Devil  - There is only God, the devil does not exist, his myth was created to exonerate God from the creation of evil. Evil, or individual evils, were created by man when he misused his freedom. The possibility that this would happen, that is, the possibility that men could sin, choose evil, was created by God in making man free. There is no equally viable alternative to good, to God; he who does not gather with me, Jesus says, scatters, for there is no devil with whom he can gather....

Quantum Mechanics Proves the Power of Faith
Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’  Matthew 17:19-20

In classical deterministic mechanics, knowing the initial position and momentum (mass and velocity) of all particles belonging to a system, we can calculate their interactions and predict how they will behave.

This is not the case in quantum mechanics; Heisenberg's Principle highlights that it is impossible to know both the exact position an electron occupies in the electrosphere of an atom and the speed at which it moves around the nucleus; the more we know about its speed, the less we will know about its position, and vice versa.

According to Niels Bohr, when measuring a subatomic particle, the very act of measuring forces the particle to give up all possible places where it could be and (uncertainty principle) selects the location where you can find it; it is the act of measuring that forces the particle to make that choice.

Unlike Einstein, Bohr accepted that the nature of reality was inherently confusing; Einstein preferred to believe in the certainty of things in themselves and at all times, not just when they are measured or observed. Bohr even went on to say that he "would like the moon to stay in its place even when I'm not looking at it." When Einstein, already quite annoyed, said that "God didn't play dice," Bohr impassively replied, "Stop telling God what to do.”

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot be behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." Max Planck (1858-1947) Nobel laureate, founder of quantum theory.

Integral Worldview
‘No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’  Mark 2:21-22

Those who still have their minds shaped by the deterministic principles and precision of mechanistic physics cannot understand quantum physics and mechanics. Their materialistic wineskins cannot understand a matter impregnated with spirit, bizarre, illogical, judicious, mystical; the Dane Niels Bohr, one of the creators of the new science, once said that only those who did not understand quantum physics were not scandalized by it.

The integral view of reality sees everything as having an outer and inner aspect. Heaven and earth are thus seen as the inner and outer aspects of a single reality. The spirit is at the center of every created thing. This inner spiritual reality is inextricably related to an outer form or physical manifestation.

Heaven or spirit is not up and matter down, but rather the spirit is within the matter. It is in a sense the immanence of God who is at the center of everything. Everything is in God and God is in everything. This is not pantheism that everything is God, but panentheism: everything is in God and God is in everything. This worldview is shared by Native American religions, which speak of father heaven and mother earth.

The soul or spirit, as described by St. John, is also governed by the same principle of uncertainty that governs the interior of matter in the subatomic particles from which it is formed: ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ John 3:8.

The integral worldview reconciles science with religion, matter with spirit, the inner world with the outer world. The enchanted world of subatomic particles has proved to the scientist that after all he cannot grasp everything with his reason and be the master of reality that he thought he was during the time of Newton's mechanistic physics. The new physics tells the man of today to "Grow up!”

Conclusion: the agnostic materialists, out of touch with the reality of today's quantum physics, continue to be formatted according to Newton's mechanistic physics; by robbing the spirit of matter, they eat a bread that feeds but tastes like nothing. The spiritualists, denying the corporeality of matter, live like penitent souls in a world that, being in itself a valley of pleasures and joys, has become a valley of tears. By stealing matter from spirit, they eat a bread that may taste good, but does not nourish. The integral worldview is like a whole grain bread, which nourishes and tastes good; it gives health to the body and joy to the soul.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC