Abstract

Because Nature creates mathematical patterns within which humans function and evolve, the action of evolutionary signs should delineate universal mechanisms of adaptation, that is, complex systems of mental and physical processes that generate evolutionary survival information. Supporting this idea, this study draws together threads of Navajo eschatology similar to that of ancient Egypt and early China, illuminating a coherent system of human thought defining evolution to cosmic mind-energy in three diverse cultures. This realist process metaphysics centers on human afterlife transformation via ritual, suggesting that observer-participancy builds a bridge between humans and the quantum, giving rise to information about the elementary quantum phenomenon with its pure yes-no character. Grounded in the observer-participancy principle of physicist John Wheeler and the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, this paper is part of a continuing inductive argument, testing predictions based on the thesis that the semiotic phenomenology of the Egyptian pharaonic priesthood harbors an eschatological survival message for humans, viz., horizontal gene transfer mediated by the complex bacteriophage Lambda. To distinguish a complex Navajo information system for possible transformation or evolution to cosmic mind-energy, transdisciplinary research is reviewed, as well as the publications of Leland C. Wyman on Navajo eschatological ritual and sandpaintings, which are based on carefully recorded and translated documents by Father Berard Haile, a Franciscan missionary and anthropological field researcher for the University of Chicago. Wyman’s synthesis and analysis of Navajo literature provides a firm semiotic foundation for a comparison with ancient Egyptian and Chinese eschatological literature.