10.05.08
The eonic effect and the evolution of religion
After the discussion of religion (previous post today), it is appropriate to consider how the evolution of religion is treated in light of the discovery of the eonic effect: we find that the ‘eonic evolution’ (as defined in the text of World History And The Eonic Effect) of religion is clearly tied up with the eonic sequence so-called. This creates the need to distinguish several varieties of religion, or several perspectives to look at the question.
In any case, we can see that religion is something much different from what biologists would like to reduce it to. It is bound up in some of its manifestations with a ‘macroevolutionary’ process.
Below is a short selection on this from WHEE, which might not quite make sense out of context, but it should give some idea.
The Eonic Evolution Of Religion
In the wake of the modern transition, right on schedule, we find a resurgence of religious traditionalism, indeed, fundamentalism, endangering the fragile achievement of secularism, and giving us a sense of déjà vu as we note the fate of the Greek Axial and its birth of rationalism (next to the Indic). Quite apart from this consideration, we suddenly inherit a better sense of the nature of religious development over the course of world history, the eonic evolution of religion. But the (eonic) evolution of religion is one of the most complex problems of history. Perhaps now we have a key: with the idea of relative transforms, and stream and sequence overlays. The material in this section can seem baffling, but keep in mind that our only method is that of periodization. There is hardly any mystery to the method. What it points to is the problem of categorizing ‘religion’ at all, at a time when dogmas of historized divinity are seen increasingly to be mythological.
In a nutshell, the issue is simple. Anyone can found a religion at any time, but, as an empirical observation, those emerging in the Axial interval, or any part of the eonic sequence, show a coherence and amplification that gives them a momentum, and a seminal character overshadowing the rest. Thus, our method is simple: we have to separate the general course of religion in general from the result of its intersection with the eonic effect, or eonic sequence, as we will call it. Once we do that the puzzle evaporates. We have spoken of the ‘eonic evolution of civilization’, and can also extend this to the ‘eonic evolution of religion (or science)’. These are formal terms, less profound than they look, cut from the mould of our periodization. The point is that the stream of religious history intersects with the eonic sequence, and a new potential for religion is created. In fact, all we can do is describe a phenomenon we don’t understand. If an intermittent long sequence is overlaid on a series of continuous streams the result would be about what we see historically, in a limited range. The gist is simple, two great religions arise in the mainline of the eonic sequence. Note the distinction of macro-action and micro-action: the creation of a religion is a freely open possibility at any time. The results, however, that occur in the eonic sequence are deeper, or, at least, have greater momentum.