Phronema

This question of what it means to be a human person keeps circulating through my thoughts – especially in the early hours of the morning in the intervals between waking and returning to sleep. I am sure Whitehead’s  event metaphysics is a better way to approach this problem than the classical metaphysics of Plato or Aristotle. The dualist approach cannot be right – much as we would like it to be. It would so simplify things. For me the biggest problem is understanding what is meant by the soul. Is it the individual self-consciousness of being a person? I don’t think so. Self-consciousness only begins to emerge a year after birth. Is it the organising life-force which drives the process of being human? Both the egg and the sperm are separately alive. At the moment of conception they lose their individual identities and become one. There is a non-material force which drives the development of the embryo – perhaps something analogous to Sheldrake’s morphic resonance. Is this the soul? I think this was Polkinghorne’s mistake. He identified the soul with what he called the organising pattern and of course this comes to an end with death. But there is more to soul than being the form of the body. You only have to look at a child, for example, to see that there is more here than a living body. There is a person, a presence. Is this what the soul is? If so when does the person come into existence and what happens to the person on the death of the body?

You can see, looking at young children, how quickly a baby becomes a person. At one moment, it almost seems, there is a little baby, barely distinguishable from any other baby – mother excepted, the next there is a little person with unique characteristics and idiosyncrasies. We know from the studies by people like Bowlby that a loving environment is required if the person is to develop and where this is absent, development is inhibited and damaged people result. I am inclined to think that the soul is the person. The problem with the word ‘soul’ is that it is a static term. It does not allow for growth, development and change. It is something we have, whereas a person is something we are. The problem too with the classical position is that it holds that the soul is created by God and infused by him into the body. I think souls grow. This growth is initiated by the love of the parents. Then all the various relationships in the life of the individual have a part to play. A relationship is like a dance in which each partner affects the other, weaving and shaping a pattern of formation. The closer and more intimate the relationship the greater is its power to form and change the person. This is why sin is so terrible. Sin is a destructive relationship which damages each and sometimes destroys one or both. Jesus had it so right when he put the emphasis on the inner attitude which precedes the outer action. Refraining from actions is not enough. The inner attitude has to be right.

From all this it would seem that the soul, the person, is not a self-contained individual entity. Our being is not confined to the limits of the body but extends outward and is intermingled with that of others. ‘The centre of the self is not limited to the interior of the individual; the self of a mother is to be found in her child.’ [Nishida Kitaro; Zen no Kenkyu, 1921. Translated as ‘An Enquiry into the Good‘ by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. Newhaven CN: Yale University Press 1990]

 Donne was quite right. No man is an island entire of it self. I think also that Teilhard de Chardin has something in what he says about an evolution towards the Omega Point. The process is towards greater and greater unity – a merging of all the individual selves without the loss, but rather the enhancement, of individuality. This is similar to advaita non-dualism and to pantheism in general but with these individuality is lost. It begs the question, though, as to what individuality is, or rather, what the true self is. I agree with much that Buddhism has to say about anatta. 

I came across a marvellous story the other day in a talk given by Joseph Campbell on Hinduism. He was talking about the Indian concept of the spiritual value of performing ones duty, of acting in accordance with ones station in life. I would call it having integrity. During the time of the Emperor Ashoka the Ganges flooded and threatened the city.

Campbell goes on ‘Now there is an Indian notion that if you have fulfilled your life duty to perfection, you may perform what is known as an Act of Truth. You can say (and this is magic now): “If I have performed my duty without any trace of ego, but, like the sun rising and the sun setting, have done just what I should have done, every hour of my life, then let such and such happen!“ And such and such will happen. This is called an Act of Truth. For, since you are part of the organism of the universe, and perfectly so, you partake of the power of the universe. You have become a conduit of universal energy and can perform miracles.’ The Emperor asks whether there is anyone who can perform the Act of Truth and save the city by making the flood waters recede. Everyone shakes their heads – all the important people, the nobles, the priests, the merchants – not one has lived life with sufficient integrity. And then on the edge of the crowd an old prostitute says, ‘I can.’ And the waters begin to recede. The Emperor is astonished and he asks the woman how she, a wretched sinner, an outcast of society, could perform the Act of Truth. 

The woman replies,  “Whosoever gives me money, your Majesty, whether he be a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, or Shudra, I treat him as any other. I make no distinction in his favour if he is Kshatriya; and if a Shudra, I do not despise him. Free both from fawning and from contempt, I serve the owner of the money. And this your Majesty, is the Act of Truth by which I caused the mighty Ganges to flow back upstream.”

The remarks of Jesus about prostitutes immediately spring to mind. The moral of the story is that any way of life whatsoever is a way to God, if followed faithfully, selflessly, in perfect humility. Perhaps ‘any’ is a bit too sweeping and needs to be qualified. There are certain ways of life which, by their nature, cannot be reconciled with what it means to be human. Hindus, with their more liberal attitude to sex, would not have a problem with prostitution, though Christians would. Buddhists rule out any occupation which involves killing, animals or men. The early Christians did not see how being a soldier could be compatible with being a Christian. Times have changed, as has society. Possessive individualism reigns supreme as a worldview (though there are signs that this is slowly changing) leading to the apotheosis of the individual. Fidelity, selflessness and humility are not seen as appropriate virtues, not if you want to be competitive and, as they say, competition is what it’s all about. 

To me integrity seems to be the key virtue. Love gets overloaded with sentimentality and with the idea that you have to like someone in order to love them. The concept agape is not understood, or where it is understood, is seen as impractical. Integrity, being true to yourself, is much easier to understand and appreciate – or would be if we each had a clear idea of what it means to be a self, a human being.

I don’t think my mind is as good as it used to be. I find it difficult to take in what I am reading and I am very slow to see the implications and relate what I am reading to a wider context. This is disappointing because I so hoped to be able to write a book on what it means to be human. I keep doing the research, much more slowly now since my heart started playing up, but I am no nearer to putting it all together. I find it hard to grasp the wider picture. Part of the problem is a growing conviction that the answer is not something that can be put into words. It cannot be grasped intellectually but has to be experienced. I read an article evaluating the various theories of consciousness this morning. It was really beyond me and I struggled even to grasp the thread, never mind the distinctions within distinctions. The rational mind can be marvellously subtle when dealing with concepts and can weave the most elaborate tapestries with them. Nevertheless consciousness is simplicity itself, grasped in all its glorious immediacy without any intellection. I know what it is. I know many of its many states but I cannot explain it. No one can. Pascal was right when he said there were things only the heart can understand. 

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. 

Likewise what it means to be human is something I suspect can be grasped better by feeling and the emotions than intellectually.

I had never realised before how much time we spend on trivia. Elliot was right. We cannot bear too much reality. We flee from it and cultivate areas of interest which we invest with the utmost importance. ‘Oh, I couldn’t live without my….’ Or, ‘I must have my…’ I am no better than the next person. I do it just as much but I am also afflicted, if that is the right word, with the awareness that these preoccupations, in the greater scheme of things, count for nothing. They are pass-times – literally. 

This would not matter if Reality itself were not so elusive. At present it is a black hole, a yawning nothingness gaping open before me. At Mass the other day the priest spent long moments on a eulogy of a parishioner who had just died. He went on and on about how much he had done for the parish, how much he would be missed. I was wondering what this paragon had done when the priest went on to describe the hours the man had spent working on the drains in front. It was a moment of pure bathos and it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. Of course, drains are important, especially if they are not working properly. I suppose this should remind me that  am being too extreme. When it comes to human activity intention is all important. The intention of the doer can elevate the utterly trivial to the sublime. The reverse is also true. This is the incredible thing about being human. We have the power to turn the dross of humdrum activity into the pure gold of love. 

Solitude is not a natural state. We are, in our deepest essence, social beings, constituted by the relationships which make us what we are. Take these relationships away, as happens when one finds oneself all alone, and it is as though various aspects of self have been torn away leaving bleeding wounds. There is an overwhelming temptation to alleviate the pain these cause by drifting into a fantasy world, living vicariously, a fantasy self engaged in fantasy relationships. This escape is all the more tempting if it distracts from the nagging worries which thrust the stark reality of the three brute facts of existence into the forefront of consciousness. The quicksands of insecurity surround on all sides, far more real than the possibilities of success and a good outcome. But the fantasy self is a chimera and its insubstantiality only adds to unhappiness.

The irony is that the notion of solitude is itself a fantasy and not real. Oh, it is possible to be solitary, even in the midst of a city, but one is never alone. Being alone is a state of mind. Even weather beaten tramps in their incessant walking impinge on the consciousness of others and are themselves dependent. At a superficial level we may look like ants scurrying to and fro but at a deeper lever we are all engaged in a dance to a song we cannot hear but whose rhythms shape our lives. At a deeper level still we are one with the singer of the song. But we are not aware of the deeper levels. They exist in our minds, if they exist at all, only as a possibility and possibilities do not assuage hunger or keep out the cold, nor are they a shoulder to cry on, nor a friend to laugh with. The possibility has to become a reality. This is where religion and meditation come in.

Reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. What Sogyal Rinpoche has to say about Dzogchen has set ideas sparking in my mind. Dzogchen is the primordial state, our true nature. This is what we naturally are. The problem, however, is ignorance. Dzogchen is not part of our experience and we imagine ourselves to be other than we really are. People take many paths pursuing different goals. Enlightened ones take the path which leads to fruition.

This fundamental nature is buddha nature – a term that describes the ineffable. In Christian terms we could say the divine. I am reminded of Athanasius: ‘God became man so that man might become God.’ Cats and rabbits grow naturally to the fullness of their nature. They are biologically determined. We humans are far more complex. As persons we are multi-faceted with biological, conscious, social and volitional dimensions. Each of these is determining to an extent. Sometimes one is dominant, sometimes another. It is in the volitional element that our freedom lies. It has the ability to override the other determinants, the biological, the social and the rational. And there is something else – a spiritual element. We use words like soul and spirit but we do not know what they mean, or have only a vague idea.

If we were only biological, social and rational animals then the behaviourists would be correct and B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two could become a reality. But we are also free agents in that we have the power to stand back from ourselves, look at ourselves reflectively, and make a response not dictated by the stimuli we are exposed to. We do not always exercise this power. Very often it is not in our interest to do so. The biological impulses to eat and to reproduce are vital and are only denied at our peril. A perceived social demand to be slender rather than plump may lead to anorexia. An ideological imposition of celibacy may result various psychological problems. Yet at other times the witness of a hunger strike may change the mind of a whole nation, as Gandhi discovered, and celibacy provide the freedom to reach out to others.

There is also a very mysterious dimension to being a person – the fact that we can be aware of transcendence, of a spiritual dimension to reality. This, taken together with the ability to act freely, is the very essence of what it means to be human. We are animals, but not just animals. We are social beings, but not just social beings. We can also reason and act freely. And there is something else, something we cannot describe, explain or easily put into words – a feeling, but more than just a feeling, of infinite depth. People have described it in different ways at different times but the description I like best is from the Chhandogya Upanishad.

In this body, in this town of Spirit, there is a little house shaped like a lotus, and in that house there is a little space. One should know what is there.
What is there? Why is it so important?
There is as much in that little space within the heart as there is in the whole world outside. Heaven and earth, fire, wind, sun, moon, lightening, stars; whatever is and whatever is not, everything is there.
If everything is in man’s body, every being, every desire, what remains when old age comes, when decay begins, when the body falls?
What lies in that space does not decay when the body decays, nor does it fall when the body falls. That space is the home of Spirit. Every desire is there. Self is there, beyond decay and death, sin and sorrow; hunger and thirst; His aim truth; His will truth.

Our growing and becoming is not predetermined. We are songs woven by many voices. And yet, in a sense, we become what we have always been. The becoming is an awakening from a dark and claustrophobic dream.

Ireneus was not a Platonist and he represents a Christian worldview which quickly disappeared under the influence of Neo-Platonism. His emphasis on the materiality of the body is an important counterweight to the influence of dualism and the remains of Manichaism. I suddenly realised how little weight is given in spiritual writing, and in mysticism generally, to the fact that we are social beings. There is the ‘love your neighbour’ bit but this is seen as an interim ethic for this life, important, but a sort of second best to loving God. The more the religious life is directed towards contemplation the higher it is believed to be. Carthusians are held in awe – solitary lives dedicated solely to contemplation. There is the idea of the Communion of Saints but it does not loom large in the writing of the mystics and I began to wonder why not.

The fact that we are social beings is of fundamental importance in our ordinary lives. It is social interaction which makes us what we are, gives us our identity and provides meaning for our lives. True, possessive individualism is a modern phenomenon and pretty widespread in this country. I listened to a programme driving in the car yesterday on why more and more women were deciding not to have children. The basic reason seemed to be the desire to be free of commitments so that they could do their own thing. To me this leads to the impoverishment both of the individual and of society. Paradoxically, we are most fully ourselves when we are most fully involved in relationships with others. The loners, those who hold themselves aloof from demanding commitments, are one-dimensional.

Of course relationships can be, often are, difficult. The more we give, the more is expected of us and we can often feel more drained than filled. Perhaps one of the roots of romantic love is the hope of finding one individual who can encapsulate all that we need in loving and being loved. One relationship is so much easier to deal with than a multitude and the couple becomes a microcosm of society. But even a true love can never be enough and we remain a son/daughter, father/mother, uncle/aunt, friend, cousin, neighbour, whatever. All these are aspects of our personality and to abandon them for just one relationship, or deny them, or cut them off is to diminish ourselves. Donne had it right all those years ago when he said,

‘No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

All the more surprising then to find that in mystical experience generally there is very seldom the idea of union with others. There are experiences of union with nature, with the cosmos, with God but not, as far as I am aware, with other persons. The talk is of being oned with nature, of God dwelling in the depths of the soul, of the soul being caught up in God. It is all on an individual and one-to-one basis. This is understandable from a monistic worldview. The analogy of the individual drop falling into the ocean fits in with Hinduism but not with Christianity. Given that God is God, the transcendent, the absolute other, creator, origin of all that is – in comparison to whom the individual is less than a speck of dust, as Isaiah puts it – one can understand that the experience of union with him would be so overwhelming that all other relationships would fade to insignificance. God is love and all love is subsumed in him. If all individual love is subsumed in the love of God then so are the individuals. We are back to a sort of monism. This may be the reality of mystical experience but is it the reality of life after death?

If in loving one’s neighbour one loves God, the reverse must also be true. Love is self-giving. It is the giving of oneself to another. The strange thing about it is that the more one gives the more one has to give. It is an emptying of oneself but, like Elisha’s pot, the love does not run out. It is also a strange thing that one can love more than one person. In fact the more one loves the more one is able to love. Surely then in the utter transparency of life after death, when one encounters God face to face, is loved by him and loves in return, everyone else does not vanish from the picture. The experience of Heaven must also be an experience of a community of love. If then the communion of saints is a reality why does it not figure in mystical experience? People experience God, encounter Mary, sometimes individual saints, but never the community of love of all the blessed. Why? More on this later.

A thought struck me yesterday – a frustrating day because I was unable to get away to read and write and think. It suddenly struck me that so many of us most of the time spend our lives doing frivolous and unimportant things. The train of thought began with noticing the seriousness of football players. People approach the World Cup, the World Series, Wimbledon as though they were events of supreme importance. Around the world there are daily dramas of the struggle for survival, against famine and hunger, against political oppression and discrimination of all kinds, against poverty, sickness and death – yet for so many only sport matters at weekends. Is it for this that millions of years of evolution have produced a mind that can calculate the distances of the farthest galaxies, penetrate the interior of atoms, journey into space and transplant hearts? I wondered what, if anything, had meaning and significance, because we can’t all be astronauts or brain surgeons. What is the point of all those millions of years of evolution if the vast majority spend their time in trivial pursuits, slowly destroying the planet that gave us existence?

Viewed from above we seem no better than ants scurrying about on self-appointed tasks. There seems to be no concerted goal, no combined effort to use those wonderful minds, which can penetrate the secrets of the universe, for anything more than making money and having pleasure. When it comes to science, culture, medical research, money is the absolute criterion. If it will make money – do it, otherwise forget it, or leave it to enthusiastic amateurs. What gives significance to the lives of all the ordinary people who are unable to extricate themselves from this seething ant-heap, nor mentally rise above it? Surely, a mind that can comprehend the cosmos can only find meaning in something of cosmic significance. Anything less is a travesty. Is winning at Wimbledon of cosmic significance, or winning the lottery? What about hours spent gambling, or mindlessly watching television? Few would agree that these add much to human dignity. Perhaps some might disagree about prowess at sport. There is something noble about extending human achievement to the limits; climbing where no one has climbed before, running faster, jumping higher than anyone has previously. There is something noble too about sportsmanship, about selfless effort and losing gallantly. But a life dedicated solely to sport as a means of making money – that is another matter. Where is the dignity in becoming a millionaire, in becoming a connoisseur of fine food and wine, in being able to wear the finest clothes and the most exclusive designer labels, in living in luxury while every fourth person has to live in abject poverty?

If the human mind is the most complex organism in the cosmos, more complex than the cosmos itself, then surely the person who inhabits that mind is of cosmic significance. With the human mind the cosmos has become conscious of itself. The electro-chemical energy, which originated in the hearts of the stars, in the human brain gives rise to thought, affections and love. In every human being, however ordinary, or insignificant, the cosmos has become aware. A lifetime dedicated to making money is of less importance than hours spent comforting a sick child? The achievements of an Alexander the Great, or a Napoleon are of less significance than a lifetime looking after people mentally sick and disabled? We know this instinctively although we may not articulate it. Elitist ideologies may try to declare some people as inferior, or even sub-human, and for a while some may even believe this, but most of us, most of the time, whether we are religious or not, have a profound feeling for the sacredness of human life. Is it only enlightened self-interest that urges us to spend billions on the medical the emergency services, that scrambles helicopters and diverts ships to rescue just one person?

The question of poverty has, perhaps, best been explained in Gabriel Marcel’s and Erich Fromm’s books on Being and Having. Stripped of all possessions the individual is naked, defenceless and vulnerable. For an infant this does not matter because total dependence on another, in this case the mother, is appropriate. The infant is at the beginning of the process that will ultimately lead to individuation, independence and responsibility. But for an adult it is another matter and it would be irresponsible for an adult to make himself indigent. This is saying, ‘I refuse to be responsible for my own well-being. Others must take over responsibility for feeding, clothing and sheltering me otherwise I will die.’ Yet Jesus asked his disciples to do precisely this. They were told not to take any provisions with them, no extra clothing or money. They were to make themselves totally dependent on others. If the people in the villages they visited were not happy with this they were to move on, ‘shaking the dust of the town off their feet.’ What might this imply? For the disciples it required the absolute trust that the rich young man could not give – a blind trust because, as we know from other passages, that they did not fully understand what it was they were doing. We know also that while they may have abandoned their possessions they were still attached to them, and to their lives. For some of the people it implied that these men were fools, for others it implied that they had found something more valuable than gold.

There is much in the Gospels that reminds me of the story of the man who had a dream about finding diamonds.

There is an Indian story about a man on a journey through the forest. He came across an old man, a sannyasin, or holy man. I cannot remember the details now, but this old man had a collection of what looked like pebbles. The traveller recognised that they were in fact uncut diamonds. As he left the old man he asked if he could have one. ‘Of course’, said the old man and gestured for him to take one. The man took the largest and went on his way delighted at his good luck and the fact that he was now rich. As he walked he began to berate himself. ‘I should have asked for more. He had many. I should have taken several.’

For the rest of the day he could only think of the diamonds. Where had the old man found them? Were there more? That night as he tried to sleep a new thought surfaced. Why had the man given the diamond so easily? Why was he still in the forest instead of living a life of luxury? The next day he made his way back to the old man and returned the diamond. ‘Old man, tell me what you have that allows you to give away such wealth without a thought.’

I think Jesus had a similar affect on his disciples as the guru, who could so easily give away vast riches, had on the man. What had he found that was more precious than gold? We all search for the elusive secret of happiness. Jesus had found it and his disciples had blindly followed his instructions hoping that they too would discover it. I think that at Pentecost they did, not before. By Pentecost they had been emptied of their possessions. They had left everything, lost everything. As prisoners of fear in the Upper Room they no longer even had the freedom to roam the streets and the countryside. Only when they had been emptied could they be filled with the Holy Spirit.

It is noticeable that the New Testament begins from within the perspective of the Old and the Covenant. Although the Covenant is a two-sided arrangement between God and his people, the emphasis tends to be on what God has done, and will in the future do for them. This is especially true of those passages dealing with Messianic times. Then all will be gift. All will sit down to the Messianic banquet – provided by God. They will enjoy peace and prosperity – brought about by God. The sick will be healed; the blind will see; the lame walk and the poor will be blessed. It is only necessary to repent and to believe in order to accept.

But with Jesus a new note is heard – give. You have received, it is now your turn to give; to give of what you have – not even to ask back what is taken from you. Give of yourself, of your time and energy; above all, give witness to the Good News. The Good News is more than an announcement, or a proclamation. It is a new state of being. There is the feeling that here Jesus has similar advice to that of the Buddha. In practice his conception of what it means to be human is not very far from the Buddhist. For both self has to be lost. For Buddhists the pragmatic self is an illusion and it is necessary to see through this illusion. For Jesus the self is a hindrance, an obstacle in the way of salvation. The Parable of the Rich Young Man is very interesting here because it implies that there are different states of attainment. The young man asks what he has to do in order to be saved. He is told – keep the commandments, an answer straight from the OT. Keep the rules and you will receive. But the young man wants to do more than that. Why? He must have glimpsed something. He must have seen that being good in the sense of keeping the Law did not really change anything existentially. The Jews were not philosophers. They did not agonise over the nature of being, or the meaning of existence. In their most profound exploration of the mystery of suffering and evil (the book of Job) they could not arrive at any answers, or rather they found that all their answers were inadequate. They could only fall back on the inexplicable actions of an all-powerful and transcendent God. And this is where the OT perspective fails. The rich young man has found that neither wealth, nor living a good life is ultimately satisfying. There is an emptiness within him that neither of these can fill. So he asks Jesus, who tells him to give everything he has away to the poor and follow him. This the man cannot bring himself to do.

There are a number of interesting points here. Why does Jesus stress the importance of poverty? What does he mean by ‘losing one’s self’? And why could this good, well-meaning young man, who had glimpsed something of the transcendent, not let go of his possessions? To take the last point – it is not enough to say that the young man was possessed by his possessions. It goes deeper than that. He identified himself with his possessions. His existence depended on them. Without them he would not be himself. He would be destitute and utterly dependent on others. As a wealthy man he had never been dependent on anyone. He was being asked to let go of everything that sustained him and made him what he was and make a sustained act of trust in a person who had no visible means of support. Ultimately he was being asked to trust in God, but God was an item of belief, not a dimension of his existence. It was too much. Only by entering into a state of poverty would he be able to transcend the limitations of his wealth.