Сергей Хоружий - Что такое Synergia?

What matters for us is that in all of them we catch the same key properties, structural and dynamic ones, that can be summed up into a definite dynamical paradigm. This “paradigm of dissipative self-organization” is essentially the same as the “laser paradigm” by Haken; and we conclude that synergy is, indeed, present in synergetics as a certain dynamical paradigm, which can be called the “synergetic paradigm of synergy” and can be summarized briefly as follows: in a system driven far from its usual equilibrium regimes the flow of outer energy can cause the emergence of new self-organizing dynamics that generates more coherent and differentiated dynamical structures and brings about the radical restructuring of the system.

This paradigm can be found not in all, but in most of basic phenomena and processes studied in synergetics.

Evidently, the “synergetic paradigm of synergy” can easily be related to the Greek word, but it has a priori no connection with the Byzantine theological concept and its anthropological development. The conceptual elaboration of this paradigm must produce a different concept and constitute a separate and independent line in the study of synergy. However, a posteriori we discover many links between this line and the theological-anthropological mainstream. First of all, in all its domains synergy keeps the same core, the basic structure of two energies, “inner” and “outer”, that come from different sources and have their meeting and contact characterized by coherence between them and leading to cardinal changes in the “inner” field. In the domain of theology, this structure is represented by the Divine and human energies, and their contact opens the way to the theosis, the actual ontological transcension of the human being. In the domain of anthropology, the meeting of the two energies is interpreted as the anthropological unlocking and the basic structure has a series of representations corresponding to different paradigms of human constitution; in this domain, the contact of the two energies opens the way to the formation of structures of human personality and identity. As distinct from these domains, in the domain of synergetics the dynamical mechanism of the action of outer energy is concretized as the mechanism of self-organization generating definite dynamical structures. It means that the “synergetic paradigm of synergy” is more technical and less general than both the theological and anthropological paradigms, which do not prescribe the exact mechanism of the interaction of energies of different nature (especially in such case as ontological transcension).

However, in order to understand the relations between the different domains of synergy comprehensively, we must also take into account that one can find numerous examples of the “synergetic paradigm of synergy” in anthropology. Presenting synergy as an anthropological paradigm, we did not describe the practices implementing this paradigm in detail. Now, if we consider these practices in a more detailed way, we discover in many cases synergetic mechanisms at work. Let us come back to the hesychast practice at its higher steps when synergy is achieved. In our brief description of these steps in Section 1, we have already noticed their resemblance to processes of self-organization. Now we shall characterize this resemblance more precisely. In the presence of synergy, all the process of hesychast self-transformation acquires another type of dynamics. Of course, in all its parts it is always the stepwise ascent to the theosis by the hesychast Ladder; but now the ascent becomes spontaneous to a considerable extent, and the steps are energetic configurations of a new type: they represent specific dynamic forms emerging from each other in a strictly ordered succession and they cannot be produced separately from spiritual practice, in usual regimes and practices of empiric existence. I describe briefly the principal of them. The first one is the structure “mind plus heart” obtained by means of the procedure of “bringing the mind down into the heart” and representing a certain inseparable conjugation of intellectual and emotional energies that can be established and maintained due to synergy only. As hesychasts discovered, such conjugation provides “the helm for navigating the ship of the soul”: now the ascetic can rearrange his consciousness forming up the centre called “mind-bishop” that “sets up the laws for every activity of the soul and every limb of the body” (st. Gregory Palamas). Evidently, such united controlling centre makes all man’s energetic configurations incomparably more ordered and coherent. This structure serves as a dynamical basis for all the next steps. For the most part, they are related to new forms of prayer, in which the action of outer energy becomes more and more explicit. The main hesychast term for them is “pure prayer”. In such prayer “the mind is illuminated by heavenly light” (the Light of Tabor, i.e. Divine energy) and “pours forth the prayer effortlessly as if out of some inexhaustible source”, and this prayer “can be expressed neither by sounds of a human voice nor by movements of lips nor by any combinations of words” [12] St. John Cassian. Works. Sergiev Posad, 1993. P. 340. (In Russian.) . There are obvious elements of the synergetic paradigm in this energetic configuration: the human being is driven far from its equilibrium states (it is so for all the steps of spiritual practice); the configuration is formed-up due to outer energy (“heavenly light”); and it represents a dynamical form of a new type corresponding to spontaneous dynamics with new mechanisms of mental activity. In the further steps such elements are multiplied and enhanced. One of the highest steps that can be called the “step of the open book” is described as follows: “The highest prayer of those who are perfect is some ascension of mind that approaches God, and God sees all the arrangement of heart open like a book filled up with writing and expressing its will in wordless images” [13] St. Nilus of Ancyra. To Magna, the deaconissa of Ancyra. On inacquisitiveness. // Dobrotolyubie. Vol.2. Sergiev Posad, 1992. P.229. (The text is here attributed to st. Nilus of Sinai, as many texts by st. Nilus of Ancyra were till recent time.) . In this configuration man’s consciousness or, to be more precise, the structure “mind plus heart” is transformed into the “state of an open book” which means that it is all, up to the smallest parts, open to such contact and meeting with outer energy (God’s sight, i.e. Divine energy) that does not need gradual temporal development, but is instantaneous and complete; in other words, the meeting turns into the union. In terms of theological synergy, it means that the practice advances here from synergy to theosis; in anthropological terms, the configuration in question represents a maximally articulated noetic structure; while in terms of synergetics, it means that this configuration represents a maximally ordered and differentiated dynamical structure. Finally, if we look at all the series of the higher steps we notice more of synergetic patterns.

Energetic configurations of all these steps have the same basic structural elements: the dominating orientation of the energies (towards the communion with Christ), the formation out of the two conjugated activities, attention and prayer (“ontological mover”) and so on. It means that the practice in this higher block is the spontaneous step-by-step ascent, in which the basic structural elements remain invariant and every next energetic configuration represents more differentiated and ordered dynamical form. Clearly, this description corresponds to the dynamics of self-similarity (though the dynamical structures are not spatial formations now, and the formal definition of self- similarity through scale invariance cannot be applied to them). Thus the block of the higher steps of hesychast practice reproduces closely one of principal synergetic patterns (represented, in particular, in deterministic chaos): spontaneous generation of a hierarchy of self-similar dynamical structures. It is obvious that the “synergetic paradigm of synergy” is present here.