Phronema

Reading John Hick – Religious awareness –

Hick’s thesis is that awareness of the transcendent is not easily apparent but has to be cultivated. This stems from the fact that we are free to make choices. I agree that personal freedom is a factor but it is not the whole story. Being human means that we are not determined from birth by instincts and environment in the way that a mouse or a lobster is. Our genetic endowment and social environment, though vitally important, are not wholly determinative, not even, once a certain level of development has been achieved, in extreme situations such as famine or war, cf. the countless stories of altruism, self-sacrifice, heroism and the ability of many individuals to transcend a destructive environment. Self-consciousness gives us the ability to step back from the physical, moral and social inputs and cancel instinctive reactions. This allows us to be creative in our responses, to be proactive, taking into consideration other factors than those immediately apparent.

Some, relatively few, are born with a profound sense of religious awareness, cf. Bernadette Roberts and examples in the findings of The Religious Experience Research Unit at Lampeter. Some seem to have little or none. For the majority it is something that needs to be cultivated. Sooner or later we all encounter limit situations where existential questions are thrust on us.

The meaning one attaches to life, to being human, has to take into account our present situation. The meaning/purpose of life is not clear because we do not possess the whole picture. Hick is not rigorous enough (p. 50). True, our dispositional structure affects the way we live, but equally, the way we live, the worldview in which we are immersed, affects our dispositional structure. It may be almost impossible for an individual in an antipathetic social milieu to ‘experience as’ in a religious sense even though all the clues may be there. Marx’s insight that the social being of man determines his consciousness is apposite here. That said, finding oneself in a limit situation which brings into question the belief structures and hidden assumptions, hitherto unexamined, and shows them up as relative can be the stimulus which brings about a new way of seeing/experiencing.

The question of meaning cannot be answered in spatio-temporal terms. This is why the question is often seen to be meaningless, or unanswerable. Any possible answer must be relative and conditional. ‘What is the meaning of life?’ without any qualifying words such as ‘now’, or ‘for me’ demands a definitive answer. Since the human situation is always provisional and in process such an answer cannot be given. One has to get beyond the conditional and the relative to the essence of humanity. And this is the problem – what is the essence of humanity? Some would say we are simply intelligent animals. If this is all we are the question of meaning can be answered in material terms. Others, perhaps the majority, would say that there is something in us which transcends our psychosomatic limitations. What is this ‘something’ and in what way does it transcend the spatio-temporal dimensions of experience? It could be said that this transcendence consists in the fact that as self-conscious and self-determining beings we have the power to transcend many of the physical and social constraints of our environment. This is why we have been able to progress from a primitive existence to our form of life today, able, at least in prospect, to manipulate the genes that determine our bodily existence – a fact that fills many with horror because we are tinkering with our humanity, a humanity we do not fully understand. 

Others would say that the transcendent element in us is the fact that our being opens out into the being of God. What does that mean? We are not self-sufficient. Physically we need food, clothing and shelter to survive. Socially we need others in order to become persons and, having become persons, to achieve a certain level of happiness and fulfilment in loving and being loved. Intellectually we need others to learn language, not only to communicate with them, but also to think, process ideas, arrive at conclusions and make decisions planning for the future. When all our physical, social, emotional and intellectual needs are met we still find that life is not satisfactory. Something in us remains unsatisfied. On the one hand the three brute facts of existence, powerlessness, contingency and scarcity gnaw at the mind’s complacency. On the other hand there comes from time to time the feeling that the walls of our existence are translucent and behind them we catch glimpses of a Presence.

[John Hick; The Fifth Dimension, One world, Oxford, 1999]

I have been doing very little of this writing. My mind does not seem to be as sharp, or as able to hold a range of ideas and develop them. Whereas before I used to be able to devour books now I find them heavy going. Holding concentration is more and more difficult and I battle with drowsiness. So I may have missed the moment and age is threatening to put a stop to my efforts. It also occurs to me that all this may be part of a gradual process of stripping away the egoistic self. Meditation too has almost become a thing of the past. Gone are the days when forty minutes passed effortlessly. Now I struggle to manage fifteen. Yesterday I was digging round a tree. It was blowing half a gale and the air was filled with the sound of the wind. At one time this would have filled me with a sort of ecstasy. To be immersed in the sound and feel of rushing wind, or the waves of the sea, was to feel at one with Nature, with the Spirit. Yesterday it was just a pleasant noise. It is as though my senses – those that filled me with awe and a sense of presence – have been dulled. No longer do I feel. I came across a passage this morning in Raymond Bailey’s, Thomas Merton on Mysticism – 

God does not intend that he should have a place reserved for him to work in since true poverty of spirit requires that man shall be emptied of god and all his works so that if God wants to act in the soul he himself must be the place in which he acts…[God takes then] responsibility for his own action and is himself the scene of the action, for God is the one who acts within himself. (Meister Eckhart, Sermon, ‘Blessed are the Poor’.)

One has read all this sort of thing before, especially in St. John of the Cross. You can see the logic of it. In another quotation from the same book Aelred Graham says – 

The earnest seeker after truth has usually decided in advance what kind of truth he is looking for… His views are dictated in advance by the needs of the illusory image he has constructed of himself.

And so all the false concepts and illusions have to be stripped away if one is to arrive at the truth. It is tempting to think that there are no false conceptions, that one’s ideas about God (partial and inadequate though they may be) reflect the reality. This is especially the case when one has had mystical experiences. God is love. God is Subject, not an object. 

But the moments of high emotion engendered by such experiences do not last. In time they become a fading memory. Meanwhile life continues to be lived at full thrust, fuelled by various feelings and emotions – love, longing, loneliness, anger, frustration, alienation, suffering and, sometimes, joy. Each of these induces a pragmatic response with physiological as well as psychological affects. All this is entirely natural and easy to understand, but the point is the responses also build up a pragmatic self. It is this self which is the problem. The pragmatic self is self-centred – however much it may think itself other-centred and want to be so, nevertheless when its comfort and well-being are threatened it can think only of its own predicament. The pragmatic self is grasping. It may pride itself on being warm-hearted and generous but its underlying concern is always about its own advantage – if only that IT may go on being loving and generous. The pragmatic self is an isolated individual. It may be surrounded by loved ones and friends and have a rich social life but in the dark hours its sense of being different, of isolation and alienation, rises and haunts its waking dreams. The pragmatic self knows that death will bring about its end and so it fears death. There may be a resurrection and an after life, but it will not rise. It will die, perhaps even before the death of the body should it get Alzheimer’s disease or something similar. 

This was the Buddha’s insight. As long as we are the prisoners of this individual, grasping self we are condemned to suffer. As long as the narrow, egotistical self is the centre about which our life revolves we shall not be able to discover the true centre, the still point, from which everything emerges and to which everything returns.

Egoism consists in this: absolute opposition, an impassable gulf is fixed between one’s own self and other beings.  I am everything to myself and must be everything to others, but others are nothing in themselves and become something only as a means for me.  My life and welfare is an end in itself, the life and welfare of others are only a means for my ends, the necessary environment for my self assertion.  I am the centre and the world only a circumference.  (Soloviev, V., The Justification of the Good, Constable, London 1918)

 That self is the towering, windowless keep within which cowers the fragile worm that is the ego. The keep must be destroyed so that the worm might shrivel and die in the consuming fire of unconditional love. Then the self will die so that the soul may live. It will die anyway at death, but better that it should die before death. Better it should discover the consuming fire so that it can tell others and draw them out from the cold walls of their prisons. 

This is why monasteries are so structured. The common life which forbids the ownership, even of one’s clothes, gnaws at the root of avarice and possessiveness. The prohibition of particular friendships disallows the consolation of an exclusive love. The abdication of individual personal advancement, the poverty, austerity, the lack of sleep, the lack of privacy, the plain food, all deprive the self of the relationships,
the emotions and situations which originally formed it. The pragmatic self is aware of its insubstantiality. This is why it needs to clothe itself with possessions and surround itself with relationships which support it. These must be stripped away. Only then, as Eckhart says, when the ego and all its supporting trappings have been emptied out, can God find a place to work.

Thinking about relationship again in the shower. For some reason this morning it would not get hot and I had to fiddle with the controls a bit before it finally worked properly. What a difference between a cold and a hot shower! Only a minute difference in degrees but what a difference in comfort and a feeling of well being. A few microscopic organisms have just given me a week of suffering and discomfort with a very bad sore throat and a cold. They were responsible for sapping my energy and zest for reading and research. I felt that I wanted only to withdraw from others and cosset myself in my misery. Yesterday I awoke feeling better and feeling, literally, a different person from the one I had been the week before.

We are what we are only in the context of our physical, biological, social, psychological, philosophical and perceptual relationships. If I want to understand ‘me’ I must be aware, not only of each of them, but also that I transcend them. This transcendence is the most mysterious thing of all. The biological ‘me’ can be understood but don’t forget to take into account the influence on it of the psychological ‘me’. The psychological and the gregarious ‘me’s’ are so intertwined that they cannot really be separated. Then there is the egoistic ‘me’, that private person that no one, not even I, I sometimes think, know fully. And then, there is the ‘I’ who transcends all of these. As often as not the ‘I’ is not on stage. His role has been usurped by one of the ‘me’s’. But who is this ‘I’? Is he more fundamental than the ‘me’s’, or is he simply the agent of the currently dominant ‘me’? Are the ‘me’s’ ephemeral psychosocial constructs educed at different times by different environments? Or is the ‘I’ the centre of conscious awareness capable of transcending the empirical ‘me’s’ and the physical sensorium? Just as the ‘me’ as agent is evoked by a specific psychosocial environment and particular physical needs, so too, perhaps is the ‘I’ evoked by an awareness of transcendence.

“I shall never forget what I have never revealed to anyone, the phenomenon which accompanied the birth of my consciousness of self and of which I can specify both the place and the time.  One morning, as a very young child, I was standing in our front door and was looking over the wood pile on the left, when suddenly the inner vision ‘I am me’ shot down before me like a flash of lightening from the sky, and ever since it has remained with me luminously: at that moment my ego had seen itself for the first time and for ever.“

(Jean Paul Richter, quoted in Glover J., I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity, (1989) Penguin, London p59)

This is a (rare?) example of what Karl Jaspers called a ‘limiting situation’.  In the awareness of limits one is aware of the transcendent as the negatively comprehended complement of limits.  In other words one is not aware of a limit as limit if one has not somehow seen beyond it.  We are not normally aware of the limits of consciousness just as we are not normally aware of the limits of our vision (this is why the figure of eight sideways, to depict vision through binoculars, on the screen jars our sensibilities.  This is not how we normally see, through binoculars or otherwise.)  Yet we know that both are limited.  It is from this that our difficulty in grasping consciousness arises – and hence the difficulty in defining it, describing it.  We cannot, from within our subjective perspective, perceive our awareness objectively, no more than the eye can see itself seeing.  By reflection the eye can see itself and the consciousness can grasp itself; but just as the eye (through the mirror) sees no more than the outer surface of the organ of sight, so too, analogously, reflective awareness is no more than the surface of the stream of consciousness and sees neither the banks, nor the depths beneath, much less the origin.

Thinking again about integrity – the shower in the morning is a great place for thinking. The mind is fresh after the night’s sleep and ideas that have been percolating in the unconscious begin to emerge. To love requires a beloved. In theory everyone we encounter, in fact everyone, should be the beloved. In practice this is not so easy. Being unselfish and putting the other person first comes easily when there are feelings and emotions as a driving force. When this is not the case, especially today in our crowded, impersonal urban society, it is almost impossible to make every encounter of the hundreds each day a personal encounter. Even if it were possible it would not be tolerated by the hurrying crowds who regard their impersonal anonymity as a shield, or defence. And so we, inevitably, slip into the prevailing mode of blind unconcern. Caught in the rush of traffic it would be impractical to stop for the stranded motorist. That is the job of the police. Hurrying to catch the train there is no time to help the harassed mother manoeuvre her pushchair and three toddlers  down the escalator. Apart from those with whom we have a personal relationship we have little or no time for the others we meet.

This is why integrity might be something more easily put into practice. It begins by being ‘about me’ and self interest always has a flying start. But who am I and what does it mean to have integrity? ‘Who am I?’ is the $64,000 question. One of the reasons why there is no easy answer to it is because as humans we operate on many different levels, often on more than one level at a time. (I am not sure that level is the right word. Mode, or dimension might be better.)

There is a physical-biological dimension of being a body. Much time is devoted to feeding this body, moving it from place to place, washing and grooming it, tending to its wounds and hurts and, finally, just relaxing and resting. Much of this is automatic and does not involve specific mental effort.

There is a feeling-emotional dimension. Here the reciprocity between the physical and mental states is very marked. Physical well-being can produce an emotional high. Illness can cause depression. Mental stress can produce physical effects such as headaches and ulcers. Hormones and psychoactive chemicals can determine mood and mental states. These in turn have a profound effect on the personality. Emotions authenticate meaning. Einstein’s formula E=mc² may determine the shape of the cosmos but as an abstract concept its meaning is negligible compared to that of a child holding its mother’s hand. Emotions and feelings shape our sense of morality, of what is right and wrong. Traditional Christian spirituality, influenced by Platonic dualism, saw the body as, if not evil, at least an obstacle to spiritual development. Physical urges, feelings and emotions were to be kept in check and, as much as possible, denied. Agere contra was the Jesuit watchword. The body would die eventually but the soul would ascend to heaven. At the general resurrection it would be united with a transformed body, a risen body. More about the spiritual later.

There is a social dimension. We become persons as a result of social interaction. We learn language from others. Language is the major factor in our mental development. We discover our sense of self and of self-worth as a result of being loved. It is in this social dimension where most people find their life has meaning. Life is about loving and being loved, raising a family, enjoying friendships, engaging in interactions with others in work and in projects. Existential  questions such as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is the meaning of life?’ only present themselves here in what Jaspers called ‘limit situations’ – times of birth, marriage and death.

There is a mental dimension. This is the dimension of stories, ideas and concepts, of maths, logic and philosophy. It is also the dimension of poetry, music and drama. These last  have strong emotional content but all have some feeling attached. Even the most abstract branches of mathematics have beauty and the feeling of knowing truth. 

There is a spiritual dimension. This exists at all levels. What spiritual means is not easy to explain. Generally it is defined as opposing matter, or the body; to do with the mind and with religion. Etymologically it comes from the Greek pneuma,  breath, and from nous, mind – the principle of order in things. For St. Augustine it was the apex of the mind, the personal and dynamic point of contact and encounter between God and man. St. Thomas Aquinas, taking his ideas from Aristotle, saw the soul as the form of the body, that which gives it individual substance. Descartes held that reality was twofold, matter and mind – res cogitans. This dividing of reality into two, matter and spirit, or matter and mind, is at the root of our difficulty of trying to understand what it means to be human. While mentally I can distinguish myself from my body, this is a mental abstraction. I am not two, a body and a soul. What I am is a living body, yet at the same time I transcend my body. Spirit is a ‘presence’. I am present to myself.*

 I am present to others, as they are to me. I am present to nature, as it is to me. Finally, I am present to the Transcendent (I say Transcendent because He does not have a name. ‘Tell them ‘I am’ sent you.’) – not all the time (though I believe that it is always present to me) but on those luminous occasions when the fabric of reality becomes translucent and I become aware of the infinite depths of being. According to Karl Rahner – ‘Spirit is ‘greater’ than man, as Pascal says, “l’homme passe infiniment l’homme”, not in the sense that it is alien or extrinsic to man, but in the sense that man is only what he is by being thus ‘greater’ than himself. The most essential thing in man is not a self-sufficient subjectivity, but a constant opening out beyond himself, which we call his being ‘there’, the presence of being disclosing itself as mystery.’

This is integrity – being open to the mystery within and to the mystery within the others we encounter and responding accordingly; being present to others as we are present to ourselves.

*[There is the presence of the object to the subject, of the spectacle to the spectator; there is also the presence of the subject to himself, and this is not the presence of another object dividing his attention, of another spectacle distracting the spectator; it is presence in, as it were, another dimension, presence concomitant and correlative and opposite to the presence of the object. Objects are present by being attended to but subjects are present as subjects, not by being attended to, but by attending. As the parade of objects marches by, spectators do not have to slip into the parade to be present to themselves; they have to be present to themselves for anything to be present to them (Lonergan, 1967, p. 226, quoted in McCarthy, Michael H. (1990), The Crisis in Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press). , 1990, p. 234).]

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.