Gregg, yes, I feel there's a very promising convergence afoot. John's
recent conversation with Rich Blundell was one of the main reasons I was
inspired to make public two of the meditations I do with one of my classes
(which I shared to the TOK list last week).  I believe what I have been
teaching for many years covers very closely the territory Rich and John
explored in that conversation -- the 1st- and 3rd person (participatory and
objective) approaches to Big History, but also much else that is in
convergence.  And I shared the meditations to the TOK list because of their
obvious, to me, relation to the inner/out dynamics of the coin and the tree
that you have been exploring.

Specifically, since 2007, I have been teaching a course called Paradigms of
Consciousness, which combines living systems theory; philosophy of mind;
autopoietic cognitive science (Varela/Maturana/Thompson); Big History/new
cosmology; indigenous wisdom; some aspects of quantum theory, carefully
handled; the practice of holistic dialogue (Bohmian and other); creative
myth-making; and philosophical-phenomenological inquiry as a means of
addressing the fundamental fragmentation and disconnection of our modern
way of being.  This course is a foundational one for our whole program,
which overall includes multiple courses that go into each of these facets
in even more depth.

I don't mean to suggest at all that what John is doing, or what you are
doing, is not new and ground-breaking in very important ways -- I think you
both have great contributions that people need to attend to -- but I do
feel that I've already been working in my classes for 15 years on
presenting a particular convergence of elements and themes that are getting
a lot of emphasis in these recent conversations.  That's one reason why I'm
so attracted to both of your bodies of work.  But I also sometimes burst a
little with excitement, wanting to say, "Yes! yes! I've been taking my
students to these places for a good while now," very specifically with an
aim to address the current psychocultural crises in which we find ourselves
enmeshed.

On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 6:52 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi TOKers,
>
>
>
>   Just wanted to highlight the latest Voices with Johnny V episode, where
> John welcomes Rich Blundell:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DCfbqaj5Gxyo&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=VVuSeivWKLTAoI_HzOA1PHJNP83Fba59DcKDZ5tnYWE&s=O7OBin7J0dg-g08TvWwgLZkr79dvzoasMWxzdMvd8fA&e= 
>
>
>
> I found this episode interesting because Rich is an ecologist who starts
> with Big History and then does the “journey inward” so to speak and arrives
> at a participatory inside-out/outside-in view of the world. And he reached
> out to John to build that bridge. From a UTOK vantage point, Rich IS
> pointing to us being properly aligned via the Tree and the Coin.
>
>
>
> So, just so that we are clear: The Tree of Knowledge System gives us the
> proper Big History descriptive metaphysical ontological scientific
> naturalistic behavioral position that properly frames the levels and
> dimensions of complexification. It “fixes” the normal big history view,
> which posits eight complexification thresholds, leading to a ninth.
>
>
>
> As this article makes clear
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__drive.google.com_file_d_1jitwSMNzeDY6R-2DDAAsOr1yplcf-2Du7nYN_view&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=VVuSeivWKLTAoI_HzOA1PHJNP83Fba59DcKDZ5tnYWE&s=GTJ5FRJRHEMgwzxQCJo119v1Qqm8D5n41LQpVV49Lgg&e= >
> (and made even clearer in a chapter in my current book), the standard Big
> History frame is not adequate for a holistic philosophy because it CLEARLY
> fails to even see, yet alone resolve, the problem of psychology. And, it
> also fails to realize that complexification is a function of both levels of
> part-whole-group across scale AND different dimensions of complexification
> networked together by information processing/communication systems that
> make the shift form chemistry to biology different and “more” than the
> shift from physics to chemistry (which remains within the Matter
> dimension). Here is the relevant vision logic:
>
>
>
> With that picture of big history corrected, we can now shift from the
> vantage point of natural science to the vantage point of each of our unique
> particular psyches. Specifically, we can experience the field of our
> awareness as material entities, organisms, animals at the
> animal-mammal-primate level (i.e., pleasure pain, mind’s eye,
> attachment/relational heart), and person (justifying ego-persona) and
> transpersonal-spiritual dimension (5th joint point, Elephant Sun God as
> iconic of right relation to transcendent wisdom).
>
>
>
> This brings us back directly to Brendan’s mythopoetic narrative and
> metamodern spirituality which we shared last week and generated this symbol:
>
> The point is that we are in an Energy-Information Complexification Web
> that we can see now both from the vantage point of (a) the psyche
> (subjective), (b) natural science (objective), (c) transjective pragmatism
> and (d) relational-intersubjective (create common ground into social
> construction/justification systems in context). This is iQuadratic Aspect
> Monism:
>
>
>
>
>
> We have the right frame at our finger tips. The problem is now a problem
> of translation and bridging.
>
>
>
> Big hug to all,
>
> Gregg
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________
>
> Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
> President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration
> (2022)
>
> Professor
> Department of Graduate Psychology
> 216 Johnston Hall
> MSC 7401
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg, VA 22807
> (540) 568-7857 (phone)
> (540) 568-4747 (fax)
>
>
> *Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.*
>
> Check out the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org_&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=VVuSeivWKLTAoI_HzOA1PHJNP83Fba59DcKDZ5tnYWE&s=Njn6E_yIucnMzYyvnI7QWdAu0ZwDgwOiIFIikkmHe0s&e= 
>
>
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