A Vast Network of Souls

     Twenty-year-old Willis had been away from his Pennsylvania home for several years, but he returned for frequent visits, especially after his grandfather’s stroke. The two had always been close…. One night, soon after his return from a visit, Willis struggled awake at his grandfather’s call. “Willis, Willis.” The room, ordinarily very dark, was lit up brightly and, momentarily, he saw his grandfather smiling at him. Startled, uncomprehending at first, Willis lay motionless for a bit, but he then put on the light. It was 1:10 A.M. He could sleep no more. At 6:00 A.M. a phone call from his brother came, but Willis spoke first: “Grand-pop died last night!”
     “Yes, but how did you know?”
     “He came to see me—it was about one-ten.”
     “Yes, that was when he died.”
[L.E. Rhine, The Invisible Picture: Experiences. McFarland. 1981, p. 20, quoted in Rupert Sheldrake’s The Sense of Being Stared At, Three Rivers Press, 2003.]

This quote by way of introducing Rupert Sheldrake’s fascinating book, The Sense of Being Stared At. You will find five other posts on Borderzone where Sheldrake is being mentioned, principally for his theories of morphic fields. Those theories are presented in The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988) and A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance (2005). I strongly recommend these works to any serious student of the paranormal. In Sheldrake’s hands, the paranormal becomes normal, and many puzzling phenomena receive a theoretical foundation. You will find summary of this theory on this blog here. I don’t want to repeat it. Suffice it to say, the theory suggests that all life-forms are able to communicate. And Sense of Being Stared At is a narrower and, in many ways much more accessible analysis of this contention, relating to humans as well as animals (and presumably plants), in ways that link to our everyday experience. A very succinct summation of the content of this book is presented by Sheldrake in two sentences on page 9. It runs as follows:

If the seventh sense is real, it points to a wider view of minds—a literally wider view, in which minds stretch out into the world around bodies. And not just human bodies, but bodies of nonhuman animals, too.

Worth reading. The book is available on Amazon here.

A Minimalist Orientation

The spiritual life—at least in the context of this blog—needs something more than the usual definition. The phrase is usually understood as life within a religious framework and, specifically, those aspects of such a life that relate to prayer, worship, and personal morality. Using that definition, the believer—the practitioner—already has a firm belief. A well-formed cosmology is part of that belief.

But what about the person who starts from disbelief? Such a condition or view may be inherited (as religious belief usually are too); alternatively the person arrives at disbelief because he or she honestly cannot accept the teachings on offer in the culture. In the West that usually means Christianity. I emphasize honestly to brush aside shallow, juvenile, or self-pleasing motives: rebellion, restraints on sexuality, or thoughtless imitation of supposedly superior, cynical scoffers. People can arrive at disbelief for serious reasons too; and those who do may well discover the spiritual life as well. It will begin in the same way, namely by an examination of the alternative.

Every alternative to any system of beliefs is ultimately a different cosmology. It is for that reason that I talk about that subject on Borderzone. Every cosmology is a description of reality in the large frame, a map of reality. It explains the whole, it tells us where things are, it tells us where we are. It provides a narrative in two parts. One tells us how we came to be here. The other shows us where we might be going. And there are only two kinds: materialistic or transcendental. In the materialistic the individual progresses to death and total disappearance in death. In the transcendental the projection forward offers alternatives. To put it in simplest terms, one outcome is up, the other down. Different transcendental systems have different narratives for what the words up and down mean. In any case, in these systems death is a transition, not an absolute termination. And since up is better than down, life takes on a meaning beyond itself. In the materialistic frame, only this life has any meaning, and that meaning always refers to here and now.

In the Buddhist and Hindu systems down means rebirth in this world. The individual continues to go around and round. Up means escape from the wheel of karma, thus the wheel of suffering. In the Judaic family of religions, down is hell and up is heaven, the union with God. Hell is eternal except in Kabbalistic beliefs; these hold that at the very end even hell is emptied of its inhabitants.

With this extremely compressed summary, a more generalized definition of the spiritual life is possible. It begins with the acceptance of a transcendental cosmology. It is a personal decision to believe in a greater order—or a conviction reached in some way that a greater order actually exists beyond this realm, beyond personal death, and that the way we live our life may literally—not just figuratively—determine which path we’ll individually follow after our breath finally stops: up or down.

Some may say that such a decision is impossible to make on current evidence. Hence agnosticism is the only rational course. It is to these people that Pascal proposed his famous wager. For more, check here. To adapt the wager to this context: if on the one hand you have absolute personal death, no matter what you do, and on the other limitless life beyond the border in an upper realm (with effort) or a lower realm (with negligence), you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by acting on the probability that the transcendental model is correct.

This minimalist framing assumes that there is only one real quest, one real goal and that all sincere beliefs, regardless of the details into which they elaborate the cosmology, are equivalent. But this framing, simple that it is, doesn’t even begin to delineate the spiritual life as it is actually lived. Such a life may be religious—or not. What the frame defines is the minimum orientation that such a life requires.

How Far is the Next Choir?

As a general rule we can’t see into the borderzone. Sometimes individuals penetrate that region, but this almost always happens spontaneously: they aren’t trying. Some few travel deeply into the interior, others remain in the border region but on that side. We gain some knowledge from the experiences of such people. As a general rule, ordinary people credit such stories up to a point—especially if they hear them from trusted friends and family. The sophisticated classes in secular cultures laugh them off, dismiss them, and label those who report such things as mad or delusional. In religious times the sophisticated classes reserve the right to examine such people and either to approve of what they say or to lock them away.

The best known figure to claim such knowledge, himself of the sophisticated classes, was Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the man who conversed with angels and claimed to have visited both heaven and hell. His best known work, Heaven & Hell, is somewhat tedious reading (my complaints are here), but hard work will extract some interesting facts, not least how far it might be to the next choir of angels.

People associate with those they like—and, according to Swedenborg, this continues in the other world as well. In our realm we find this obvious. We spend our leisure with those who please and avoid those who annoy us. If it weren’t so, divorce would not exist, for instance. But in this realm we often have to deal with all kinds of people in order to earn a living and to develop.

But let us now suppose that certain necessities fall away after we die. Without bodies we wouldn’t need physical goods to sustain us. In subtle bodies we might be able to move without walking, driving, or catching flights. To reproduce Swedenborg’s claims, let’s make some assumptions. One is that in the beyond we’d still have perceptions and could orient ourselves in the subtle environment. Let’s assume next that we could move toward those places where we perceive pleasing experiences and away from those where we do not. And let’s add two more. One is that our speed of motion would depend on the strength of our desire (speed toward) or our revulsion (speed away from). Under this assumption, we would move rapidly if we felt strong attraction and slowly if the attraction were only mild. Finally, let’s assume that the source of pleasure or annoyance would come from other spirits in that realm—as here it comes from other people.

Swedenborg’s writings assert that what we here merely assume is actually a fact on the other side.

Now speed and distance are intimately linked. If I can get there rapidly, it’s near, if it takes a long time, it is far. Swedenborg thus projects what might be called a relativistic geography in the Beyond. How far or near certain kinds of communities are from us (that next choir of angels) is determined subjectively. It all depends on whether we are drawn to them or not. The old sage claims that people choose their own places in the afterlife—and do so by affinity. Those who seek hellish regions are drawn to them, enter them because they feel at home with those who are like them; those moving toward one of the multiple heavens that Swedenborg claims exist are also drawn in their direction. And many remain in the world of spirits, a kind of intermediate place, if place is the right word, because they are intimidated by the higher spheres and repelled by the lower.

How far to the next choir? If you like the music, it is near.

Are Spirits in Another Place?

In the writings of famous mystics like Ibn el Arabi, Swedenborg, and others we encounter people who could see or hear spirits while fully awake—but these entities were not visible, audible to others. I’ve also encountered in the writings of other mystics claims that they saw spirits as points or shapes of colored light, the colors seen indicating the spirits’ variable levels of development. In more technical jargon these are labeled as “photisms,” and visions of photisms sometimes accompany certain deep states of meditation; they may also manifest spontaneously.

The question now arises: Where are these phenomena located? I myself think of them as being in another dimension, but all I mean by saying that is that they are ordinarily inaccessible to me. I know. This is a sloppy way of thinking. It’s equivalent to saying that the electromagnetic spectrum is also in another dimension because we can’t perceive it. Right now, sitting on this couch, multiple radio and television programs are passing right through my body, but I neither laugh at the jokes nor shiver at the prompting of the horror movie’s music because—well, I don’t see or hear a thing.

When I want to be more precise, I think of this “dimension” as present all around me but—like the electromagnetic—existing in a field of its own that interpenetrates matter because it is much more subtle. As conscious living beings we are also present in that field but unaware of it. Our bodies are too noisy and command our attention. To put this another way, we are simultaneously present in multiple worlds, but our attention is principally in one; in our current state we are most aware of the physical. But my thought is that our consciousness, intelligence, will, higher emotions, and intuitions are of the subtle kind—are not produced by our bodies. Rather, in many of our activities, we use the body to live a subtle life in the physical domain.

Some spirits and ghosts, in other words, are right here where we are. They come and go—as we come and go across the planet. They may live here or far away—and come here only on visits. Our physical world seems infinite in extent as is that other—and both have “many mansions.” There need not be a spatial difference between this world and the Beyond. Both may occupy the same space. When we speak of the Beyond, we may well be speaking of a state of density different from our current one. From this one we have the devil of a time seeing that one (unless specially endowed). From that one, similarly, the physical may be damnably difficult to see and to contact without the kind of space suit that we here call the body.

How to Judge Borderzone Posts

Those interested in the Beyond as a serious study are a minute fraction of humanity. But lest I be misunderstood, let me make some distinctions. Lots of people are into lots of peripheral or adjacent matters like channeling spirits by means of mediums, into psychic phenomena, the paranormal, UFOs, magic, serendipity, etc. And huge numbers are active in all manner of religious studies and participate in the social interactions of believers. But society has never produced—surprise!—a recognizable specialization in the study of the borderzone, the kind of study recognizable by name, e.g., a name like “astronomy” or “anthropology.” The nearest thing we have is mysticism, which is in part a theory of union with God; in common parlance the word is more analogous to a sport than to a science. It is applied to people who cultivate “states” rather than people who comprehensively study the reality—or possible reality—of a … well… a greater Reality. We have no mystonomy (thus a structure of laws) nor a mystology (a doctrine or theory). Such studies do take place, but they do so under other umbrellas, these days in fields like philosophy, theology, psychology, parapsychology, and paranormal investigations. In the past the same studies were hidden under early studies of chemistry, known to us today as alchemy.

Here is the interesting fact. In religious eras (or today in religious regions) studies of this sort are suppressed by militant, doctrinaire religious institutions. In secular times (like now, here) they are dismissed, marginalized, and explained away as unreal. They are deprived of any societal standing and hence somewhat starved of talent too. The very few who wander into these thickets are originals. People who visit this site very often click the About tab—and I can just feel what they feel. They are looking for credentials. But in this field, you’ll never get credentials in the field. There is no field. Here and there you’ll discover credentials or certifications in some other specialty (philosophy, anthropology, etc.). But on my site you’ll find what? A novelist, a man of affairs? Not exactly what people seek. The authority, such as it is, lies in the postings themselves and what meanings they contain—and the inner agreement they elicit or the negative emotions they trigger in the reader. But many a reader doesn’t trust his or her own reaction. He or she wants additional confirmation, reassurance. Sorry about that, folks. Believe it or not, in these zones on the border, you are on your own. You’ve got to go by your own light.

Intellectual Grasp, Absence of Knowledge

Someone reached this blog by using the following search phrase: “intellectually understand but don’t know.” He or she got my post titled Understanding and Intellectual Grasp. In that post I argue the exact opposite of that situation, namely that a kind of wordless understanding is frequently present before we understand a matter intellectually. So what is the situation my visitor had in mind? He or she had in mind, I think, those situations where someone has successfully explained something at the conceptual level—but after we have “got it” we still haven’t got it; we still don’t know a thing.

A good example of this might be the explanation by modern physics of the electron supposedly circling the atomic core. We are told that the electron is “everywhere but nowhere.” It is a wave of probability. At the same time, if we wish to locate the electron we can set up an experiment to do so, and when we do, we can detect the electron (say on a photosensitive film). And this detection is then explained as the “collapse of the probability wave.” This is the sort of explanation which is intellectual graspable, but it doesn’t produce the feeling of knowledge. All we can do is repeat it to others, but we don’t really understand what we are talking about. When we seek a deeper understanding, we will be given the wave equation for starters. It looks like this:

Much of physics is of this character. The experiential base consists of experimental instruments, dial readings, and points of light on photographic film. The explanation is mathematical, the math derived from instrument readings. There is here a major disconnect between intellectual grasp and knowledge as we experience it. Okay. It is useful knowledge. We can apply it in practice in the design of electronic circuits, etc. Those circuits, however, are no more knowable in the core, in the gut, than the probability wave.

Let me now present an equally arcane counterexample where experience is involved. Let us say that you were mad enough to read the entirety of Dante’s Divine Comedy—in a version yet where the Italian text is in one column, the English translation in the other. And you arrive, at last, on the point where Beatrice, Dante’s great love, dead these many years, reappears to Dante on the portals of Paradise. She wears a dress di fiamma viva (of living flame), a green mantle over it, veiled in white, crowned with olive branches. The image shocks Dante, and he says: E lo spirito mio…d’antico amor sentì la gran potenza—And my spirit…felt the great power of the old love.

Now in this case the reader—if ever that reader has experienced genuine love, the kind we fall into, the kind we cannot help but feel, the kind that makes us remember our first love with a kind of numb and inarticulate awe—a person like that will not be puzzled by this magical appearance, by the fantastical procession that comes first, nor by the seemingly inaccessible assertion that this takes place in earthly paradise. All those concepts were at least felt to a tiny degree in our own first encounter with the magic of love. This is understanding based on experience—and later translated into intellectual concepts. The story of the electron’s sudden flash-up as its probability wave collapses—why that is intellectual grasp without understanding—unless, by a little magical trickery, we imagine that the beautiful electron, perhaps, is alike to the beautiful Beatrice, and that the wave’s collapse is like love’s crashing arrival on our own arid, sandy beach.
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Wave equation courtesy of Wikipedia. Dante reference is to Purgatory, Canto XXX, 31-33 and 40-42, translation by Charles Williams.

The Wider Context of Prayer

The poem by Rumi presented in the last post holds the mystic’s view of reality in a grand context, not least cosmological: “For to-night the teeming world gives birth to the world everlasting.” It presents an upward-trending vector—from dust to spirit and on beyond—call it evolutionary, if you like. Rumi suggests that we are slumbering, asleep—and that this sleep is due to the nature of this dimension (“A heavy slumber fell upon thee from the circling spheres.”) To set out on the quest right here and now, we must awaken and stay watchful. And that, I propose, is the wider context of prayer. We find the same linkage in the New Testament: “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36); and “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). In these contexts prayer is not petition but something else—attention directed at something. But at what? Not the sensory environment but something beyond it. It is presented as a technique—in Matthew emphasizing the resistance (temptation, the weakness of the flesh) in Luke and in Rumi (“O soul, seek the Beloved, O friend, seek the Friend” “the Son of Man”) pointing to the goal.

Brought into the humdrum world of immediate experience, these teachings suggest that participation in the cosmic process laid down by the Creator involves an effort of attention to a reality that is not immediately perceived. Prayer, which is initially triggered in us by very ordinary if sharply felt needs, may with practice become a watchful consciousness, a contemplation of a range of reality we may only at first access by means of symbols. The practice of watchfulness, however, will persuade the determined person that the attention directed in one direction is also answered from there—but as with all experiential matters, you have to taste it before you know it.

Rumi speaks of this experience as we reach the end of the poem. “Mine eye,” he says, “is from that source and from another universe; here a world and there a world: I am seated on the threshold.” I like that word, threshold. In this blog I call it the borderzone.

From Rumi’s Divani Shamsi Tabriz (XXXVI)

O lovers, O lovers, it is time to abandon the world;
The drum of departure reaches my spiritual ear from Heaven.
Behold, the driver has risen and made ready the files of camels,
And begged us to acquit him of blame: why, O travelers, are you asleep ?
These sounds before and behind are the din of departure and of the camel-bells;
With each moment a soul and a spirit is setting off into the Void.
From these stars like inverted candles, from these blue awnings of the sky
There has come forth a wondrous people, that the mysteries may be revealed.
A heavy slumber fell upon thee from the circling spheres:
Alas for this life so light, beware of this slumber so heavy!
O soul, seek the Beloved, O friend, seek the Friend,
O watchman, be wakeful: it behooves not a watchman to sleep.
On every side is clamor and tumult, in every street are candles and torches,
For to-night the teeming world gives birth to the world everlasting.
Thou wert dust and art spirit, thou wert ignorant and art wise;
He who has led thee thus far will lead thee further also.
How pleasant are the pains he makes thee suffer while he gently draws thee to himself!
His flames are as water. Do not frown upon him.
To dwell in the soul is his task, to break vows of penitence is his task;
By his manifold artifice these atoms are trembling at their core.
O ridiculous puppet that leapest out of thy hole, as if to say, ‘I am the lord of the land,’
How long wilt thou leap? Abase thyself, or they will bend thee like a bow.
Thou didst sow the seed of deceit, thou didst indulge in derision,
Thou didst regard God as nothing: see now, O miscreant!
O ass, thou wert best with straw; thou art a caldron: thou wert best black;
Thou wert best at the bottom of a well, O disgrace of thy house and family!
In me there is Another by whom these eyes sparkle;
If water scalds, it is by fire; understand this.
I have no stone in my hand, I have no quarrel with anyone,
I deal harshly with none, because I am sweet as a garden of roses.
Mine eye, then, is from that source and from another universe;
Here a world and there a world: I am seated on the threshold.
On the threshold are they alone whose eloquence is mute;
It is enough to utter this intimation: say no more, draw back thy tongue.

Jalal’ud-Din Rumi (1207-1273) was a Sufi mystic from the region which is now Turkey. This poem was written in Farsi and the translation is by R.A. Nicholson.

Prayer and Worship

We engage in spontaneous prayer when we call to God in our distress—or when, in moments of sudden gladness or relief, we thank God without any thought or reservation in an overflow of gratitude.

It seems to me that worship belongs in another category. Our closest experience of worship is to fall in love—and the younger we are, the closest the approximation. Young love is still unaware of sexuality and the feeling is therefore pure. We adore the other in a mute and astonished state of veneration. If in our coarse adulthood we would become even vaguely aware of the Sublime, we would all sink to our knees in helpless worship—our freedom of will suspended. We get closer to this state, worship, when some aspect of the divine actually touches us—channeled, you might say, by some great work of art, usually music. But here as in all things a certain adequacy must be present.

Worship in the usual sense is a kind of mimesis of something we believe in but don’t actually feel—except on extraordinarily rare occasions, briefly. Great music, fine arts, colorful ceremonies, inspiring words: all these are harnessed to make our worship meaningful. But our worship is nevertheless—no matter how emotional—an imitation, an acting out. Worship is something above the emotions. I’m fairly sure that we are actually shielded from the great fire of the divine. If we saw it without any veiling, we would be consumed. What we do see is the veiling. Therefore it is right and proper to behold God behind the beautiful, the majestic, the glorious, and the sublime—when phenomena that support these words appear. They are reflections of something transcending mere mountains, oceans, spring meadows, newborn infants, vast clouds in the blue sky, sunsets, and subtle dawns.

If worship isn’t anchored in our inner core, it’s only a social drill. But I approve of social drill. I see ourselves, society, culture, in fact the whole cosmos as manifesting ascending layers. Social drill is an appropriate activity at a certain level. It reminds us, habituates us, it molds our behavior—and experience teaches. Formal worship tills the soil, you might say, so that something in that soil might sprout. Worship at the high level will come spontaneously—and will not be felt as an obligation in the least—when our inner being has gained the power to behold.

Prayer is closer to us. It springs up from personal need or the release of tension in gratitude. It is an almost instinctive reaching out to an impossible—because invisible—agency for help. We can label this motion of the self as an illusion or, alternatively, ponder whether, perhaps, it is a dim but innate knowledge that our current state is incomplete. Reduced to pure concept, prayer is an acknowledgement of a dimension higher and beyond ours. In prayer we attend to it. We think of attention as “looking at, listening to,” but I’ve come to think of it as a much more potent power, one that transcends the physical (eyes, ears). Here is an instance of the subtle power of attention on this side of the divide: Sometimes when we watch someone intently from behind, someone at quite some distance from us, that person may turn and looks at us. The distance may be quite extensive. Our attention, especially when it is intense (“fervent prayer”) may really open a channel by means of which grace flows our way. In this context the last three quotes of yesterday’s post are relevant. Each emphasizes our state—and what it must be to have our prayer answered.

Someone might object to my take here by saying that I’m playing with fields of energy (“channel opens,” “grace flows”—pure pantheism). They would insist that God is a person, not some electromagnetic field writ large. I agree, actually. The last thing I want to do is to reduce the high to the low. But those who picture God as Mom or Dad writ large are engaged in the same process of reduction. I have no idea how to picture God. What I do know is that in my prayers, I do address a person. But my own experience also bears out that “fervent” or “heartfelt” prayer has a certain quality—and one’s experience of some kind of response depends on this intensity, an intensity I don’t think can be faked. Alternatively, prayer may be deep, but on that subject in a future post. In either case, the model that occurs to me is that we face a shielding which our act of prayer penetrates, be it by intensity or deep inner silence. It is a genuine contact. I also think that all such prayers are always answered—although we may lack the capacity to understand the answer. It may simply be a very slight improvement of our powers of understanding; it may be the removal of one tiny grain of our thick stupidity. Prayer isn’t magic. If it were, the world would be on its knees day and night.

Prayer

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: “Great God, grant that twice two be not four.” [Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Prayer]

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed;
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
     [James Montgomery, What is Prayer?]

Prayer from a heart in grace; for who sets store
By other kinds, which are not heard above?
     [Dante, Purgatory, Canto IV:134]

It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core…
I know why the caged bird sings!
     [Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy]

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. [The General Epistle of James, 5:16]

Certainty, Sectarianism

People long for certainty in all possible contexts. He loves me, he loves me not. Sectarian loyalties are often anchored in this longing. Hence when someone appears to question or disparage a particular system of faith, the reaction of believers may be hostile—but precisely because they harbor secret doubts or don’t understand the essence. People who are really sure don’t flare up when their beliefs are questioned. Those who do either aren’t really sure or they mistake a tribal loyalty for a higher state: genuine understanding. It's not the finger that matters but the moon to which it points. All faith systems are fingers. Certainty is real, and indifferent to criticism, when it knows the Real directly and not just the veils that more or less let it shimmer through.

Institutionalization

An important aspect of Sufi teachings is that human structures do not last. Sufis here point at social, not at physical, structures, although physical structures also decay. The main point is that if a genuine spirit has departed a social arrangement (a spiritual community, a teaching group), it may survive for many centuries but only as fossilized imitation. Jesus expressed the same meaning in more poetical language. Matthew 5:13 brings us the words. “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” Now, of course, a structure may act as a channel for the spirit. The Sufis therefore say that “the channel doesn’t drink.” They mean that the preachers (and with them also congregations) no longer believe. Perceive. Feel. Are in any way tuned in. This applies to decadent phenomena in religion: it’s all ritual, habit—often, indeed careless habit. Nevertheless, to the “ears that hear” and the “eyes that see,” the spirit will be evident even when those who repeat the words and motions no longer themselves perceive a thing. The spiritual life absolutely requires live participation. The magic bird descends but will not alight on any branch. Today's thought was in part occasioned by news accounts of the American Freemasons will now, under new leadership, begin a “Masonic Renaissance,” not least opening their doors to the public more and incentivizing members to recruit new members. A very old structure, Freemasonry. Is this a sign of decadence or renewal? Or neither?

Games People Play

If we examine the complex way in which we behave (a sample of which is present in the last post), we become aware that we operate on multiple levels simultaneously. The psychological truth of this was popularized many years ago now by a book by Eric Berne entitled Games People Play. Berne called his method transactional analysis. It is based on a Freudian model which assumes that we have a Superego (call it social conditioning); an Id, call it our animal self, a child; and an Ego, meaning the realistic, rational self. The Ego was Freud’s favorite, of course. For him the religious sphere resided in the disreputable (because maladaptive) Superego or the childish (because undeveloped) Id. But never mind all that. According to Berne, if people communicate Superego-to-Superego, Id-to-Id, Ego-to-Ego, all is well. These are innocent ways for filling idle time. But if communications cross the boundaries—if you address me from your Superego and I respond from my Ego, trouble breaks out. The games turn nasty. My point here is that layers in the human are recognized even in pop psychology.

Berne’s analysis, however, is right on—whether you accept Freud’s materialism or not. Endless mischief is constantly caused in communications between people because they attack or criticize each other across the layers or, what is equally destructive, certainly of communications, denying the reality of all but one layer.

This categorization may be stated in other ways. Humans have a biological, organic existence, a rational layer above that, and a spiritual manifestation above the rational. All three have standing, as it were—not merely the layer in the middle, Freud’s Ego. Moreover, human understanding is hierarchical: the spiritual understanding is capable of, adequate for, understanding itself and the others those beneath it. The rational can understand the physical but is inadequate to understand the spiritual. Those who criticize religious phenomena on rational grounds are like some of the medieval geographers who never travelled anywhere but concocted their accounts from other’s tales and sheer say-so. They are just as deluded as the aggressively ignorant who despise all “book learning.” Every level is valuable, every art and science has its place—and its boundaries.

To illustrate, I’ll never forget the disaster that came about once when we hired a very nice contractor to redo our kitchen. I learned later that he and his laborers all had advanced degrees in English literature—but not finding jobs had decided to go into business on their own. Their sales pitch, of course, had been eloquent. I spent months after their premature departure fixing what they had messed up. And I managed it too—despite my education in history. I had to. Money had run out.

More on Statues

The last post is a bit obscure, so let me correct that by some comments on what I think really happens when people address artifacts in prayer or treat them with reverence. This sort of behavior in our culture may be observed especially among Catholics and sometimes Asians. Mine is a subjective view, of course, but that, I think is what is required, a look at the psychological aspects of this phenomenon. I can only offer mine. But I would assert with confidence that other people’s behavior arises from the same sort of understanding I have. Not in detail, to be sure, but in basic outline.

Here are some facts. First, when I go on my usual one-hour walk in my neighborhood, I can so arrange my path that I’ll see at least six Madonnas on the way. All of these are statues of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Two stand on the grounds of a church, one is in a cemetery, and three others (at least) are in private backyards but visible from the sidewalk. I no more think that these stone or plaster figures are the Virgin Mary than does any believer or atheist. The sheer numbers of them would make that obvious. The value of these figures lies in their function. They serve as a reminder of something else and in physically localizing that reminder in certain integrated acts.

Let me develop that. Many people who ignore religious statues still visit the cemetery. They are engaged in an integrated act of remembrance at minimum and often in an act of at least one-way communication. The hope is present, at least in the feelings, that the communication is two-sided. Now why bother to go to the cemetery? The reason for that is that this act is integrated. It involves both body and soul, it isn’t just a thought. It involves a ceremonial in which the whole person takes part. We often additionally, physically mark it by taking flowers. The grave site serves the same function as the statue. It localizes an integrated act.

Second, I am entirely persuaded that spiritual beings exist in another dimension. This means that I have what some call faith but I just view as a conviction. In my own personal case, in the course of all of my ritual behaviors—including sometimes mentally greeting a Madonna as I pass her, sometimes stopping to say a prayer—I am operating at several levels at once. At one level I’m fully aware of Mary as a person—but not of a particular historical woman who, once, required for bureaucratic reasons to travel, to Bethlehem, although she was pregnant, had trouble finding hotel accommodations. No. I’m aware of the spiritual being that that woman has, since then, become. At another level, I reject the notion that Mary is an intermediary—thus as someone closer to God than others and therefore more likely to “get results” for me from a God who is less likely to pay attention to me. I can understand that attitude on the part of others, but I know better. At that higher level, all of my ritual acts toward the higher dimension really only address the High. And Mary in that sense is one of the thinkable symbols for it.

Do I think that prayers work? Yes. But my conviction must be phrased in a specific way. I think that grace flows to us and helps us, but that this requires changes in us rather than arbitrary acts of individual higher beings tossing bits of bread to squawking ducks and favoring those that squawk loudest. The statues serve me as reminders of my general condition. They give me opportunities to mark the occasions by ritual acts which, involving me as a whole person serve to raise my entire being above the levels of constant distraction.

I’m not in any way tempted to imagine that speaking to the Virgin requires the presence of a statue—never mind that the stone image is the Virgin. Nor do I assume that anybody else does either. Some people are highly self-aware and analytical. Most are not. But even those who’re not can be awakened. And when they pay attention, they would say more or less what I do. They just don’t usually think about it.

What matters in these cases, I submit, is the nature of the intention involved. My intention is to acknowledge a higher realm and the possibility of communicating with it—as in touching it, coming in contact. The rest is detail. Statues are helpful focal points for carrying out this intention. They remind me.

Not surprisingly, the statues themselves are the product of intentions. They were commissioned or purchased—and then displayed—to mark physically some person’s or group’s intention to acknowledge a reality invisible to all of us. Those of us who stop before the statue join in that intention.

Now a word about the statue-breakers. Iconoclastic dogmas within religious communities are, in seems to me, elitist interventions by those who would correct the ignorant common people by beady-eyed command. They don’t like low-level displays of piety. They believe, quite ignorantly, it seems to me, that people really worship statues. I don’t think they do—not even the most primitive. And if some do, the act itself will eventually act to correct that view. If we wish to find people who really worship idols, we might look for them among those lavishing excessive time and wax on fancy cars or excessive time on their portfolios.

Scourging the Statues

For the committed believer in modern nihilism, there is no better whipping boy—or whipping girl, for that matter—than the religious statue. No really educated person can possibly believe that this stone thing, this rain-bleached Madonna on its pedestal here, is really there. But I see people standing there, head bowed, and I can see their lips moving in prayer. But, of course, people actually do that, so we must explain it. And we must also explain the wider context, Religion, the whole nine yards. It’s been around, why—forever it seems. So something must explain it. And we all know, we the knowledgeable few, that religion doesn’t work. That in turn means that Natural Selection couldn’t have produced it. But then what is the source of it? Because nothing exists if Natural Selection hasn’t selected it. Does it? No. You’ve got it. — Therefore? Therefore it must be some kind of misfiring, some kind of flaw, some kind of glitch, a kind of aberration in something genuinely useful, something that really has been selected by relentless nature for retention, something valued. Oh! I’ve got it. It’s a spandrel, a non-adaptive trait that happens to be the byproduct of an adaptive trait. Hhm... But why would that byproduct persist for endless ages? Wouldn’t Natural Selection eventually get rid of it? Especially if it doesn’t work? If it costs money? Those statues cost money. So does going on pilgrimages. Nature is efficient. All kinds of creatures other than humans enjoy the useful function of which religion is the byproduct—the agent detection subroutine in our blessed brain—and theirs. That came about by accident and it was selected for—because it’s useful. So why don’t squirrels worship, build temples and statues, go to church, and bow their little heads? Ah, problems. Science is long and time is short. Add it to the list of things to do. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

This brief meditation was inspired by a post on Siris dated January 3 of this year. I invite you to read it here.

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“Agent detection” is defined by Wikipedia here.

What Draws People to the Spiritual?

Here it may be best to start with a distinction—between “religious practice” and “personal spiritual endeavors.” The first may be a spiritual activity, but for most of us the practice began in the family; and later, possibly, especially for those educated in parochial schools, it was socially reinforced by the broader community. I want to focus on the voluntary and the personal spiritual quest—something we undertake on our own without any kind of social nudging.

I would propose three distinct motivations. In any one case, these may appear in mixed forms as well. They are pain, the attraction of magic, and curiosity. I’m not an authority, mind you; I don’t have statistics. I’m just an old man—but rich in experience. My guess is that most people are drawn by pain, frustration, suffering of some kind, even feelings of despair: the feeling that there must be a solution, there must be something better than this one-damned-thing-after-the-other. The sheer problems of ordinary life eventually move some people to wonder; they seek out groups and thus, gradually, develop their own spirituality. This kind of questing is almost always spontaneous, sincere, and motivated by an intuition that another range of reality is needed to complete the individual; albeit the intuition arises because of suffering. To be sure, such people wish to be rid of their pain as well.

The second motive is opportunistic. It springs from a hope of gaining dominance, power, wealth, attention by learning methods, formulae, or procedures. The dominant idea here is that the spiritual is a realm of magical power which might be harnessed to improve life here and now. There is a rather extensive industry on hand to satisfy this need; the Christian brand is usually called the Prosperity Gospel. It has a large footprint in the New Age movement as well. Many, many would be disciples of cults from other cultures are moved by the promise of magical powers. We might call this spiritual materialism because the spiritual is pursued to gain something here and now.

The last motive, curiosity, arises in a small number of usually advanced, thoughtful people who, in attempts to understand the world, encounter a wall and begin to explore alternatives to the dominant ideologies on offer. They are intellectuals and artists. Many well-known converts come from this community. They enter by the paths of philosophy or art (thus reason or a strong sense for patterns); then, having gained knowledge, the seekers deepen as people; eventually they experience stronger intuitions that begin to transform them.

Here I would emphasize three things. One is that some kind of ordinary, call it worldly, impulse sets things off. For this very reason, two, the process need not and often does not continue long enough to lead to real spiritual development. It all depends. It depends, for instance, on the nature of the pain. If a person is lonely and neglected, joining a group or church may assuage that pain; he or she may make new friends, enter into new relationships, and—with the pain now lessened—stabilize on a new level. The power-seeker may never achieve that magic touch, that telepathic power, but engaging in these things may give him or her the feelings of being above the herd. Once more, the process ends prematurely. And the intellectually or artistically motivated may also stop short of penetrating very deeply into the borderzone and sit back in satisfaction when they’ve gained enough to satisfy their curiosity.

The paradoxical feature of spiritual endeavors—and this is three in the aspect I’d like to emphasize—is that such endeavors always refuse to yield ordinary payoffs in the ways imagined by the would be seeker. At the same time, once a person’s spirituality begins to develop in earnest, his or her problems tend to be transformed. They look different. Different attitudes toward them develop. Coping mechanisms are learned. The net result is that the problems diminish; they may disappear entirely. These quests therefore do have a positive worldly result, but never in the ways initially pictured.

Six Factors

Until comprehensive modes of thought are developed, people react to words reflexively. We know this as the “sound-byte” phenomenon: the manipulators of public opinion are all too aware that some words will produce this and others that raw emotion in people who live on the surface.

Last night I was again reading Idries Shah’s A Perfumed Scorpion, in part an introduction to Sufi methods of teaching. Here Shah presents a page or two on six factors related to the Sufi teaching methods. Of the six points some are about the teacher and some about the prospective student. These are:

1. A teacher who isn’t moved to teach but is more drawn to learning.
2. Avoidance (by both) of outward show, arising from genuine sincerity and a healthy humility.
3. The ability to act or to avoid acting based entirely on the objective characteristics of situations. This implies avoiding actions to attract attention or simply to please.
4. The ability to switch attention at will, thus the power to bestow it or to withdraw it.
5. Ability to observe people and to read them accurately, especially needed in the teacher who must form groups in which individuals will help/complement each other.
6. The ability and inclination to be of service to others without seeking (or feeling the sensation of) a reward.

Shah makes this presentation in the context of technique, of method—and deliberately so. He is attempting to communicate with people who are into technology, systems, and so on and conditioned to react negatively if anyone mentions obeying the will of God or loving your neighbor. The modern reaction to that sort of thing is: “Where’s the exit?” But what Shah is actually laying out as a requirement for the student is a high state of maturity and of morality, omitting any religious references.

Also notable: Hidden in this listing is the fact that obeying such “factors” produces a movement inward—but without causing a neglect of the outer. It calls for a withdrawal to the inner sovereignty of the mature individual from the usual stimulus-response games on the surface of ordinary reality.

Qualia

Qualia do not exit!
Illusion—through and through.
To which I would append the fact,
To make this argument exact,
That in that case—neither do you.

In the present context, for those who may not be up-to-speed with current-day philosophy, qualia are subjective feelings like tastes, feelings of pain and pleasure, and even self-awareness. Thus they belong to the “private” realm like hypnagogic visions.

Phenomenon - More Notes

That word, phenomenon, has come to be associated with the purely physical in the eighteenth century when Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) made a sharp distinction between phenomena and noumena, the appearances of things (die Erscheinungen) and things-in-themselves (die Dinge-an-Sich). We only have access to phenomena, Kant taught, and that by means of the five physical senses. Noumena are inaccessible to us, utterly unknowable. He thus split reality in two. Nothing is accessible to us except by the senses, but what the senses tell us has a kind of mysterious and hard reality behind it.

This illustrates the way philosophers can influence perception—especially those philosophers who are lifted into prominence, a social process actually. The word he used for thing-in-itself, noumenon, in the Greek once meant either “thing perceived” or “what is known.” The linkage implied between perception and knowledge in this word is not emphasized in that other Greek word, phenomenon, “that which appears.” But that which is perceived is certainly that which appears. Hence Kant’s exploitation of the word had an intention: he used the second sense of noumenon and restricted the word phenomenon to the first meaning of noumenon. In the Greek they are equivalent, but one carries more emphasis on knowledge.

But is there any legitimacy in thinking that phenomena hide something utterly inaccessible? And how then do we deal with perceptions in which vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch are not genuinely present? Such is certainly the case in hypnagogic visions, for instance, of which I mentioned one the other day here and have discussed the subject at greater length here. Is vision with eyes closed some as yet undiscovered sixth sense?

This subject is important for a reason. Our current bias to narrow the meaning of the word phenomenon to the senses absolutely forces us to regard any other experience, however real it is, to the region of illusion. This served the spirit of the enlightenment and the succeeding era of materialism very well. A consequence of this has been that we’ve marked as Off Limits an extensive range of reality with possibly very serious consequences. I’ll expand on that as the New Year takes hold and starts to run.