As a result, a certain psychological scheme comes into view. Man’s consciousness is driven to an extreme state full of sharp negative affects (disorientation, despair, anxiety, helplessness…); it is excited to its very limits: it knows that it is in the deadlock, and knows that it is not able to break it.
In this state of maximal and unbearable inner strain the consciousness is ripe for any radical change – and at this moment some outer factor interferes suddenly: some action of the master or simply an unexpected disturbance, sound and so on. And the action of this outer force provokes the sudden breakthrough in the consciousness that is the long-awaited satori. This is the psychological mechanism or the pattern of satori, and we easily recognize its synergetic nature. Evidently, in the described practice the consciousness can be considered as an open system driven far from its equilibrium regimes by means of the “deadlock paradigm”, and under the conditions of this paradigm outer energy induces a radical restructuring of it. Hence we can assert that the “synergetic paradigm of synergy” is represented here. The specific feature of this representation is that outer energy acts as a momentary impulse; but similar variations of the basic synergetic mechanism are known in physical and chemical systems as well. However, like in the case of conversion and repentance in Christian practice, the event of the restructuring is not followed by the generation of the hierarchy of new structures, and we conclude that in the phenomenon of satori the synergetic dynamics is also present not in its fully developed form. In our terms, it means that it is only “synergetic pre-synergy” that is represented here. This conclusion is in accordance with the parallel between satori and the Christian conversion that has been drawn by many authors. And what matters for us, the accordance or coherence between the anthropological and synergetic paradigms of synergy is preserved too.
Now our map of the territory of synergy is outlined fully. Let us add just a few concluding remarks. First of all, one must go a bit deeper into the relation of the synergetic and anthropological domains of the territory. Synergetic and anthropological (personological, philosophical, theological) discourses are very different and distant from each other, and it was important for us to disclose the areas of their mutual closeness and accordance: it made it possible to demonstrate essential unity and universality of the paradigm of synergy. However, it is equally important not to lose sight of the fundamental difference of their epistemological nature. In no way numerous applications of synergetic discourse in the sphere of the humanities withdraw the fact that this discourse can play only an auxiliary part in this sphere. Its concepts and methods belong to natural sciences and general theory of open systems. Indisputably, they form a rich conceptual and epistemological fund, but all this fund cannot describe constitutive properties of anthropological phenomena or philosophical subjects because all phenomena and subjects related to personal being possess specific dimensions and aspects absent on other levels of reality and irreducible to the characteristics of these levels. For this reason, synergetic mechanisms can express and explain only some particular and secondary aspects of anthropological and spiritual reality, but not its constitution. The constitution of a human person cannot be described by the synergetic paradigm, and so are all phenomena which express this constitution directly. In contrast to the anthropological paradigm of synergy, the synergetic paradigm is not a personological paradigm. It means that anthropological phenomena (and, indeed, phenomena from any sphere of the humanities) can have only some not constitutive properties or aspects describable adequately by means of synergetics. For no field in the sphere of the humanities synergetic discourse can serve as the basic discourse, it can only be used as a supporting discourse, and the limits of its validity must be determined on the basis of its relation to the basic humanistic discourse. (In our examples from anthropology, synergetic elements are present exactly in this supporting and auxiliary role.) Thus any statements that some or other anthropological, religious, etc. phenomena “can be described on the basis of synergetics” are essentially incorrect. They express reductionist and scientistic bias or trend that ignores specific and irreducible nature of personal being and always accompanies the attempts to introduce new achievements of natural sciences into the sphere of the humanities. Manifestations of such trend abound in synergetic literature, and we hope that our map of the territory of synergy with clear borders between its domains may help to keep the proper relationship of synergetic, anthropological and theological discourses.
On the other hand, our map did not include some fields of lesser scale where synergy is also present. The most important of them is the field of biology. The phenomenon of life as such is based entirely on the fundamental principle of the energy and matter exchange between the living organism and surrounding milieu. Evidently, this principle presupposes the meeting and the concerted action of two energies, inner and outer, of different type and source, and so it represents a certain version of the paradigm of synergy; because of its central role in all living systems, one can even say that biology is the sphere of synergy par excellence. But what is the “biological paradigm of synergy”? It is equally evident that it should be close to the synergetic paradigm of synergy, but it has also many special features of its own: they are reflected, e.g., in such mechanisms as the diaphragms and such theories as the autopoiesis. So does it go entirely in the synergetic paradigm of synergy? This is a priori not known; and the analysis of the biological paradigm of synergy is today an interesting open problem.
Another open problem is the study of the phenomenon of so called violent synergy. It is a specific modification of synergy used in ideological/anthropological practices of totalitarian regimes. In this case outer energy is represented by the totalitarian terror machine that inculcates on man’s consciousness the basic contents of the totalitarian dogma embracing all the principal aspects of man’s existence, ideological standings, emotional reactions, behavioral patterns and so on.
Exerting all means of extreme, unbearable pressure on the consciousness, the totalitarian message performs a kind of the breaking-open the consciousness, it enters deeply into it and acts incessantly; so that eventually the consciousness starts involuntarily to respond to this message. It starts to convince itself that the message is acceptable, is good after all, and so it develops gradually the collaboration with the outer energy of the terror machine. The final result is unmistakable synergy, the coherence and collaboration of the two energies, but the way to it was the breaking-in and violence. So in what domain of the territory of synergy are we here? There is no answer yet since the phenomenon was just briefly described so far in my recent works.