(Words underlined in the following text were given particular emphasis in my presentation.)

I intend to claim that Bateson’s lecture, Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art, and the publications of his last years offer to us a new understanding of the inseparable unity of the living world. Bateson combines a uniquely wide understanding of ‘the sacred’ with a dynamic conception of ‘grace’. These, together, offer the basis for a new and unifying philosophy – one which could become a (scare quotes) ‘religion’ that might yet enable the continuance of life on this planet. Bateson’s requirement of reverencing the living world as sacred, proposes a new (and very old) understanding of human life in membership of the living community of Earth.

I will now display a list of key points in Bateson’s thought – as an aid to understanding the relationships between these insights - so that we can properly appreciate his concept of the sacred. They can remain on display as a ‘framework’ for my talk:

Given the short time available, I must assume that you have (at least) a basic understanding of Bateson’s theory of ‘mind’. You will know that, for him, all systems of sufficient complexity, everywhere in the living world, are minds. These systems circulate and respond to information – “news of difference” which flows between their material components. Such minds are not necessarily conscious; there are many sorts of perception and response that do not require consciousness. Much of human mental process never reaches the “screen of consciousness”. Our mental going on is the same sort of process as the systemic activities in a living cell (maybe opting for division or death), a healing organ (rebuilding its symmetry), an ecosystem (moving towards a new balance of species), a herd (defending or killing a weak member), a human society (perhaps learning the humility of its interconnectedness with the living world) or the whole Gaian process as it maintains the conditions for life on Earth. Bateson sees evolution as an immense process of learning and memory.. So - we participate in ‘more-than-conscious’ processes with all of nature. The world is an intermeshing hierarchy of processes which are ‘mental’ in kind: “comparable, [says Bateson] to thought”. This is the foundation for his thinking about beauty and ‘the sacred’.

Bateson believed that the most pathological feature of the human mind is our “purposive consciousness”, the way we go for exactly what we want by the shortest path. We want more carrots per acre but there is a problem with carrot-fly so we spray the fields with insecticide, which poisons many birds. Next year there are fewer insect eating birds, the problem is worse, the insects become resistant to the insecticide, we spray more chemicals and eventually there is human illness - and so on. Our greed renders us unfit to live in the Earth community. We rely only on our consciousness - a small part of our minds. All of us, claims Bateson, can access a far wider, ‘greater-than-conscious’ mentality which contains the ecological wisdom gained by our forbears during evolution and by ourselves from our lifetime experience.

This core thinking about mind is needed when we ask what Bateson means when he writes about ‘grace’. Grace, for him, is the gift of rediscovery of our total immersion in, and dependence on, the whole of the living world. We are inseparably part of what we call ‘nature’. Our separate ‘human world’ is a fictitious construct. In religious discourse, grace is the undeserved gift of the God – of divinity. When Bateson began to see the whole living world as “the sacred” – he realised that the ‘grace’ that is offered to us – even now in our ecological extremity – is the possibility of re-immersing ourselves in the wider living world of ‘nature’. The key to doing that, he says, lies in our capacity for recognising and engaging with beauty. Both natural beauty and human art offer to us the grace of ecological ‘salvation’ – of becoming once more part of the living mental system that is Earth. When we spend time with non-human animals, walking in woodland or just lying in the grass, when we engage in making poetry or music, painting, gardening, dancing - we renew our access to the systemic wisdom that, if we learn to use it, may permit our survival on Earth as members of its living community.

Bateson’s ultimate insight is that the total ‘mind’ or mental system of the living Earth is the great power that we have personified as ‘God’. Mary Catherine wrote in Angels Fear that Gregory had realised that “the integrated fabric of mental process” (the totality of the systemic minds that comprise the living world) is, itself, ‘the sacred’ ”.

She continued:
“.... And the principle way he knows that has allowed men and women to approach this...has been through religious traditions, vast, interconnected, metaphorical systems. Without such metaphors for meditation, as correctives for the errors of human; language and recent science, it seems that we have the capacity to be wrong... so wrong that this world we cannot understand may become one in which we cannot live.”¹

In a 1967 letter to Warren McCulloch, Bateson had written “I suggest that one of the things man has done through the ages to correct for his short-sighted purposiveness is to imagine personified entities with various sorts of supernatural power, i.e., gods. These entities, being fictitious persons, are more or less endowed with cybernetic and circuit characteristics.

... I suggest that the supernatural entities of religion are, in some sort, cybernetic models built into the larger cybernetic system in order to correct for noncybernetic computation in a part of that system.”

In A Recursive Vision, Peter Harries-Jones notes that, in the unedited manuscript of Angels Fear, Bateson had written: “It is my thesis that... religion consists in recognizing not little bits of miracles... but vast aggregates of organization having immanent mental characteristics.”²

These Batesonian insights can be made more available to scientific and religious thought by linking them with the work some current thinkers.

James Lovelock and Gaia theory.
James Lovelock, to his own surprise, found himself linking science and religion as reverence for ‘Gaia’ – the entire living system of our planet. Shortly before Bateson died, he read of Lovelock’s ‘Gaia hypothesis’: that the living systems of the planet act so as to keep conditions suitable for life. In Angels Fear, Catherine scripts her father as reacting adversely to Lovelock’s ideas as “based in the physical reality of the planet.... Pleromatic, thingish...”, although he agrees that “... the condition of the planet can only be explained by the processes of life”³. Catherine tells me that her father’s view was, indeed: “a rejection (fairly casual, but it did occur) derived from his distinction between Creatura and Pleroma” - between the world of living beings and systems, responsive to information - and the inanimate world where only forces and impacts cause change. Catherine pointed out to me that Bateson did include non-living components within his mental systems – instancing the blind man and his stick in The Cybernetics of Self: a Theory of Alcoholism.⁴ She suggests that because the critical characteristics of Earth's surface and atmosphere are created and maintained by life processes, the distinction between Pleroma and Creatura may be meaningful in small systems but does not apply to the whole planetary system.

Whatever Bateson’s own view was, Lovelock’s theory claims that the whole living Earth behaves like a single being, preserving the conditions in which life can flourish. This fits with Bateson’s view of all the organisms and ecosystems of Earth as minds, nested within larger minds to comprise the total mind of the world, acting so as to transfer information and thus cause sustainable change.

Lovelock (though he never met Bateson) has read his books and I think it possible that Batesonian holism had influenced him by the time he developed the Gaia hypothesis. He records his own moment of insight in Gaia: the Practical Science of Planetary Medicine.⁵ Working for NASA in 1965, preparing the Viking space missions to Mars, Lovelock, discussing the contrast between the atmospheres of Earth and Mars with philosopher Diane Hitchcock, realized that Earth’s atmosphere, composed mainly of reactive gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and methane, must (to remain stable) depend on constant replenishment of these by living organisms. In contrast, the atmosphere of Mars, mostly carbon dioxide, close to chemical equilibrium, suggests absence of life. Later, he realized that the biological processes of Earth were controlling further planetary states: ocean salinity, temperature, humidity, rock weathering, the transfer of elements between oceans and land, and cloud formation – so that life may continue.

Lovelock was surprised that two-thirds of the letters he received after publication of his first book Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth⁶ were about the implications for religion or spiritual thinking. He confirms, in The Ages of Gaia⁷, that his feelings about Gaia are spiritual. He writes: “Thinking of the Earth as alive makes it seem, on happy days, in the right places, as if the whole planet were celebrating a sacred ceremony”. He accepts that the Universe has properties which make the emergence of life and Gaia inevitable, though he will not credit it with purpose. Maybe, he says, but the question is ineffable. He feels more comfortable comparing the way we understand Gaia to the beliefs of (I quote): “...those millions of Christians who make a special place in their hearts for the Virgin Mary.... Mary is close and can be talked to. She is believable and manageable... but...What if Mary were another name for Gaia? Then her capacity for virgin birth is no miracle or parthenogenetic aberration, it is a role of Gaia since life began… She is of this Universe and conceivably a part of God. On Earth she is the source of life everlasting and is alive now; she gave birth to humankind and we are part of her.”⁸

It is for these reasons that Lovelock finds Gaia to be “a religious as well as a scientific concept”. In both contexts it is, he says, “manageable”. He does not “see Gaia as a sentient being, a surrogate God”. Belief in God, he says, is an act of faith and he maintains what he calls “a positive agnosticism” but Gaia is a way to view the living Earth, ourselves and our relationships with other living things. ⁹

He writes that Gaia Theory is often misinterpreted to mean that, whatever we do, Gaia will sort out the mess. Nothing, he says, could be more wrong:

“Gaia... is no doting mother... nor... some fragile and delicate damsel in danger from brutal mankind. She is stern and tough, always keeping the world warm and comfortable for those who obey the rules, but ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress. Her unconscious goal is a planet fit for life. If humans stand in the way of this, we shall be eliminated with as little pity as would be shown by the micro-brain of an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile in full flight to its target”¹⁰.

Mary Midgley
An important philosophical voice in the discussion of Gaia Theory is Mary Midgley. In her ‘pamphlet’ Gaia: the Next Big Idea (2001) she suggests that Gaia theory is an intellectual and conceptual advance comparable, in its potential effects, to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Midgley notes that Lovelock’s theory denies Cartesian separation of thought from feeling and the isolation of individuals from each other. Sociobiology, Christian and humanist moralities give limited intrinsic value to humans, making it difficult to think about cooperation and relationships – and this makes Gaia theory difficult to accept. However, observes Midgley, we are not separate, the melting ice is flooding all the oceans, Bangladesh and Mauritius may soon be under water, the Gulf Stream may fail - changing the climate of western Europe to that of Labrador. But all is not lost. Concern about the damaging of the natural world is still something we feel, and we have no reason to suppress such feelings. Gaian thinking enables us to relearn the basic truth that we are not living ‘on’ a planet, we are inseparably part of the earth. Thus, (I quote) “... politics becomes the domain of the group, the individual and the non-human...”.¹¹ Gaia theory only claims that all life on earth is a single self-sustaining natural system. We are still able to feel that we have a duty to our family, to our clan or country, and a duty to future generations. We do find intrinsic value in these relationships; we value them for what they are in themselves.¹² A general awareness and acceptance of the truth of Gaian thinking, claims Midgley, could compensate for our present fragmented view of the world. In Lovelock’s thinking the coupling between life and its environment is so tight that the evolution of rocks, the air and the biota cannot be separated. The benefit of the larger system rewards its component systems. Pro Gaian adaptations spread, anti-Gaian adaptations fail. There is intrinsic value in the larger system. Finally, Midgley asks “What can we do?”¹³ Common dangers are beginning to shake us out of complacency but we are in need of newer, non-competitive ideas if we are to change our perspective. Gaian thinking can serve that need. Human and Gaian needs are the same. We need to bring Gaian thinking into education, into our adult awareness. And we need to act, soon.

Gaia and theology
Gaian theory brings science and religion once again into creative dialogue. Though Lovelock tries to separate the scientific and religious implications of Gaia, some thinkers have begun to examine them as a unity. Roman Catholic theologian Diarmuid O’Murchu, in Evolutionary Faith¹⁴ draws on scientific and religious sources, claiming that we can rediscover God through a new understanding of evolution and of our membership of living creation. He writes:
“... It is only in the past five thousand years that we have seriously deviated from our intuitive sense that we inhabit a living organism....

We need a fresh approach to our theology of God… The divine is written all over creation: the quantum vacuum, the supernova explosions, the recurring cycle of birth-death-rebirth, the process of photosynthesis - these and many more are the chapters of our primary scriptures. Divinity abounds, in and around us”.¹⁵

Similarly, Anne Primavesi hopes that her book, Sacred Gaia: Holistic Theology and Earth System Science (2000) may build, within theology, a bridge between “...what we say we know about the nature of the world, what we say we know about God, and how we live”.

Basing her thinking on Gaia theory, she asks:

• What kind of God can be discernible in a planetary environment which has developed over billions of years?
• What kind of continuous relationship between planetary ecosystem and God can we posit?
• Can such a God be concerned with anything less than the entire field of interrelations?
• How does that affect our understanding of our place in the world?
• What lifestyle is appropriate?
• How does it fit with ideas of human dominance over nature or with claims that we are dependent solely on God?
• Can such a God sanction the disproportional suffering we inflict on other living beings?¹⁶

Primavesi develops the argument that the ecologically involved God is “a gift event within Gaia” She writes: “I am saying with Bateson... that the sacred... is always related to, unifies and dwells in mysterious fashion within, whatever event, experience or knowledge relates us to the whole”¹⁷. She claims that Lovelock’s work, and that of many other thinkers, points to the necessity and the possibility of developing a new and ecologically healing ethic. In Gaia’s Gift, Primavesi writes of “...the ultimate gift relationship in our lives: that between God and the whole community of life on earth.”¹⁸

All this supports Bateson’s idea of finding our unity in a religious process, based on science. He offers a unifying focus which is compatible with good science and with all the major religions. Recall his comment to Warren McCulloch (in the letter about the nature of ‘gods’) that these are “...cybernetic models built into the larger... system to compensate for non-cybernetic computation in a part of that system...” Bateson went on to indicate the importance he attached to these ideas: “If I am right my hypothesis will provide an almost totally new way of analysing religious ideas... I think that this idea is the biggest thing I have bumped into yet...” And that, for Gregory Bateson, was saying something!¹⁹

I believe that Bateson was right in seeing his last works as timely and worthy additions to what (in Angels Fear) he called “the vast and often beautiful mystical literature” of the world’s religions. He wrote: “I claim no originality, only a certain timeliness. It cannot now be wrong to contribute to this vast literature. I claim not uniqueness but membership of a small minority who believe that there are strong and clear arguments for the necessity of the sacred, and that these arguments have their base in improved science and in the obvious.²⁰

So – finally - I claim that Bateson’s understanding of mind, grace and aesthetics, feeding into the thought of Lovelock, Midgley, O’Murchu, Primavesi and others, offers to us the knowledge that we are held, in life and in death, within the universal Mind of God.

I hope that this contribution to our discussion will provide some links, for your own thinking, between Gregory Bateson and current discourse in both science and religion.

Are there responses?

Let us discuss!

References:

1. BATESON, G. and BATESON, M. C., Angels fear: towards an epistemology of the sacred. (British edition: Angels fear: an investigation into the nature and meaning of the sacred.) New York: Macmillan, 1987; London, Melbourne, Auckland and Bergvlei (South Africa): Rider (Century Hutchinson), 1988, p. 200.

2. See HARRIES-JONES, P. A Recursive Vision, 1995, 220. (From Gregory Bateson’s unedited text for Angels Fear, nos.13-15. Bateson Archive, University of California, Santa Cruz).

3. Angels Fear, 149.

4. Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 317-8

5. 1991. Gaia: The practical science of planetary medicine. London: Gaia Books Ltd. Published in the U.S. as Healing Gaia: Practical medicine for the planet. Collingdale, PA: Diane Publishing Co, 1991, 21-22.

6. Lovelock, J. 1991 1979. Reprint. Gaia: A new look at life on Earth. Oxford, New York, Toronto, etc.: Oxford University Press. Original edition 1979. Reprints, 1982, 1987 (new preface), 1988, 1989, 1991.

7. Lovelock, J. 1989 1988. Reprint. The ages of Gaia: A biography of our living Earth. Oxford, New York, Toronto, etc. Original edition, New York: W. W. Norton; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, 1989 (205-207)

8. Ibid, 206.

9. Ibid. 207, 217-218.

10. Ibid. 212

11. Midgley, M, 2001b. Gaia: The next big idea. London: Demos, 2001, 8.

12. Ibid. 30.

13. Ibid. 42-45.

14. O’Murchu, D. Evolutionary faith: Rediscovering God in our great story. New York: Orbis Books, 2002.

15. Ibid. 201,205

16. Primavesi, A.. Sacred Gaia: Holistic theology and earth system science. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, xvii.

17. Ibid. 171

18. Primavesi, A. Gaia’s Gift, Earth, ourselves and God after Copernicus, 2003, 6.

19. Bateson, G. They threw God out of the garden: letters from Gregory Bateson to Philip Wylie and Warren McCulloch, ed. Rodney E. Donaldson. CoEvolution Quarterly, 32 (Winter), 1982, 62-67. Can be found at http://www.oikos.org/batesleten.htm

20. Angels Fear, 10-11.