Copyright 1994 and 2008 by John R. Mabry
Process Theology: "A view of God which is based on the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. The traditional view of a immutable, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent deity is replaced by a God is who is in process. He is constantly changing, learning, and evolving along with humanity." www.metaglossary.com/meanings/1018406/
Wisdom comes at us from all directions. Just as, with the discovery of "curved space" traveling in one direction will eventually bring one back full circle to where the journey began, so it is that the linear, Cartesian, parts-mentality stream of Western thought eventually brings us back to where we began: the perception and appreciation of the whole. This return to holistic awareness in philosophy, religion and science not only revolutionizes and energizes these fields, but it humbles us that it has taken us so long to discover what so-called "primitive peoples" have known so well for so long: all things are interconnected. It humbles us, and in so doing, enables us to admit that perhaps many of our perceptions of the universe are just that: perceptions, and not necessarily "objective" reality at all.
In reviewing certain perceptions of time and the nature of the universe as perceived by the Hopi peoples of North America, it became apparent that many of them are quite similar to the cosmological intuitions of early twentieth-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Following the lead of Hegel in the Western philosophical tradition, Whitehead came to many conclusions regarding God, the universe, and the nature of time and its relationship to reality that are strikingly similar to the Hopi cosmology. … Both philosophies share a common intuition: that the material universe is not distinguishable from the progress of matter through time. Static, objective matter is an illusion of the Western imagination. The reality is harder to pin down, messier, and far more glorious. Matter and time cannot be divorced, and we can only talk about one in terms of the other.
In Whitehead's view, there are no static moments; all is moving in four dimensions at all times; all is in flux; all is in the process of changing from one state to another; all is in the process of "becoming" other than it is. There is no choice: time marches relentlessly onward, and any illusion of permanence or security is just that: illusion. All of reality is in a constant state of "becoming," in process toward the fulfillments of its potentialities.
Likewise, as Suzuki and Knudtson write, "The Native Mind tends to view the universe as the dynamic interplay of elusive and ever-changing natural forces, not as a vast array of static physical objects. It tends to see the entire natural world as somehow alive and animated by a single, unifying life force, whatever its local Native name. It does not reduce the universe to progressively smaller conceptual bits and pieces." (1)
In both philosophies, separating the Creator from the Creation is impossible, and even distinguishing them is sometimes a challenge. As Roger Sperry, the Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist says, "The Creator and Creation cannot be separated. The two of necessity become intimately interfused and evolve together in a relation of mutual interdependence. Thus, what destroys, degrades or enhances one does the same to the other." (2)
In a Hopi creation myth, the androgynous being A'wonawil'ona created clouds and the waters from his/her own breath. "He-She is the blue vault of the firmament. The breath clouds of the gods are tinted with the yellow of the north, the blue-green of the west, the red of the south, and the silver of the east of A'wonawil'ona; they are himself, as he is the air itself; and when the air takes on the form of a bird it is but a part of himself. Through the light, clouds, and air he becomes the essence and creator of vegetation." (3) In a similar Navajo myth, Changing Woman fashion the Navajo people from shreds of her own skin. (4) In both of these stories the natural world is not separate from the Creator, but part of the Creator him/herself. …
The Native American conception of deity likewise differs from the prevalent Western notion. As David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson write, "Native wisdom sees spirit, however one defines that term, as dispersed throughout the cosmos or embodied in an inclusive, cosmos-sanctifying divine being. Spirit is not concentrated in a single monotheistic Supreme Being." (5)
The Native God, like Whitehead's, is not a static one. It is a deity caught up in the ebb and flow of the material universe. God is not a thing with an objective, separate existence, but is as much a process as anything else in existence. Since this has been the Native view for sometime, it is no wonder that Native Americans have had such a hard time describing their conception of God to White People. As Dan Moonhawk Alford writes, "The toughest job the Indians ever faced was explaining to the white man who their God was. That's because they don't have a Noun-God...you can't make it into a person with form and shape. It's not a person, but a process--a profound mysteriousing."(6)
…What treasures might await the fields of philosophy and science if somehow the marriage of the native mind and the scientific method could be achieved? What leaps might Process thought or systems theory be capable of, in the hands of a Hopi philosopher or scientist with the proper tools for such exploration at hand? What might the Native Mind glimpse that the scientist's more myopic gaze cannot? Or as Suzuki and Knudtson ask, "What creative images of the cosmos might holistic minds that are equally gifted intellectually conjure up if they were granted limitless access not just to the mind's reason but also to its capacity for feeling, compassion, visceral experience, and soaring imagination as it struggles to convey its personal vision of nature's boundlessness?" (7)
What, indeed?
Copyright 1994 and 2008 by John R. Mabry
NOTES:
1 David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson, Wisdom of the Elders (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), p. 17.
2 Ibid., p. 30.
3 Ibid., p. 31-2.
4 Ibid., p. 3.
5 Suzuki, p. 16.
6 Dan Moonhawk Alford "God is Not a Noun in Native America" collected in Foundations of Integral Linguistics Reader (San Francisco, 1993), p. 2, 7.
7 Suzuki, p. 14.