When push comes to shove, I define myself as a “hard,” top-down spiritualist. By that I mean that reality comes from a single conscious agency. From this vantage reality appears to me as hierarchically arranged. If that word jars, I suggest a glance at this recent post. This viewpoint clashes with materialism but is yet entirely compatible with a scientific approach to reality. Science can and should be viewed as a discipline, one of the disciplines of thought. Its focus is the observation and explanation of observable reality based on the rules of reason. The western world has excelled in this discipline and has vastly enlarged our understanding of organic and inorganic nature. This is a marvel and a triumph—and all of humanity has benefited. The determination of how things work and how they are arranged is subject to objective determination and, in very large regions of reality, even to experimental verification. In this sense I’m also a “hard” scientist.
Science is said to have emerged from “natural philosophy”—and said to have displaced the latter. I rather think that speculative or contemplative thought about Nature remains alive and well to this day; science hasn’t displaced it at all. The more disciplined approach to observation, augmented by experimental and statistical methods of verification has, instead, greatly empowered philosophical thought about the observable and measurable world. The task of natural philosophy, indeed of all philosophy, is to work with why rather than with how or what questions. And those questions remain perennially new. They remain—and shall remain—open. We may gain much better and firmer answers to those questions—but not in our current state of existence.
Materialism, in effect, is one school of natural philosophy. It interprets and makes assertions about the meaning of scientific discoveries. Its conclusions, much like those of any philosophy, natural or metaphysical, must be assessed comprehensively in view of our total understanding of all facts and values available to us. And no philosophy produces a “final solution” to the questions that we pose. All of them have a tentative character. They’re all approximations.
I emphasize this distinction because there is a distinction. The very definition of science suggests that, with appropriate study, qualifications, effort, and (often) sufficient funds, anybody should be able to replicate the findings of science to his or her own satisfaction. Problems arise at the edges of genuine science—where science gradually slips away into the speculative mode. Examples of such regions are those where “hard” data are impossible to obtain. Not that these regions are off limits to investigation (the very deep past, the very tiny, the very large, the origin of life); but in these areas a certain kind of humility is necessary—not least the open admission that the investigator, if he or she offers conclusions that cannot be replicated by experiment, may be practicing natural philosophy rather than science. But, as I say, conclusions of that philosophy may also be examined. It’s simply that the rules to be applied to that kind of result are not scientific but—philosophical.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Theorizing: The Transition to Sleep
It seems to me that we may live our lives close to another kind of world, a more subtle one; but that world feels and looks much like our own. It may well be that we visit that realm in sleep—in deep rather than in REM sleep. Here is the speculation. We don’t remember our time in deep sleep because, while we are in bodies, what we remember must be stored using the brain’s intermediation. When the brain falls asleep, it stops storing experiences. At the same time, when the brain is awake, its noisy functioning prevents our linking to the more subtle memories in the state we inhabit during deep sleep. This view requires the idea that memories are not stored in tissue but in something like Sheldrake’s morphic fields.
The simple rule here is that we must be at least half-awake to form reliably retrievable memories while we’re in bodies. We are therefore half-awake when we dream; rapid eye movements (REM) attest to this fact. In transition to sleep, when hypnagogic vision sometimes briefly occur, the brain is still active enough to make a record the experience; but it is then in the process of shutting down its memory-storing activity. Therefore we only remember the beginnings of these visions. Those who remember them in toto have found the trick of keeping the brain minimally awake—minimally because, otherwise, the visions would be inaccessible. I’ll try to say more about this point.
I imagine the mechanics of this process as follows. Even to glimpse the subtle realm, the physical state must be in neutral; it cannot be very active. Under normal circumstances, thus ignoring special practices like meditation, we reach this quiet state only at the time when we’re going to sleep. I’ve noticed the following sequence.
All of this leads me to conclude that physical existence, including ordinary mentation, causes a great deal of noise. It comes from the body itself and from the brain’s activity as it perceives physical reality. As this noise diminishes, awareness of a subtler world emerges. But so long as the brain is still active enough to store memories, it will record what I perceive. And, I would emphasize, it also reacts to the appearance of these phenomena. If these are incongruous—like the startling appearance of a stunningly real landscape—they surprise the brain. In response it activates the body to a higher state of alertness. And that very alertness then breaks (interrupts, interferes with) the subtle perception.
All of the above illustrates that to make sense of this sequence of events requires various theoretical underpinnings which cannot be independently checked by third parties. I’m well aware of the fact that most people don’t experience this sort of thing frequently enough (if at all) to build what might be called a data base. I’ve had this experience many times before; therefore it makes me curious, indeed it all this fascinates me.
Now as for dreams, I’ve discussed those at various points in this blog at length. To provide a summary, I think dreams are the equivalent of waking-thought but experienced in half-awake states; and because those states are more primitive, as it were, the thoughts are rendered into animal forms: they’re translated into images. As the body comes awake, the first thoughts might, indeed, be about the visions the soul sees in the other world; or they may simply be memories last stored before going to sleep.
The simple rule here is that we must be at least half-awake to form reliably retrievable memories while we’re in bodies. We are therefore half-awake when we dream; rapid eye movements (REM) attest to this fact. In transition to sleep, when hypnagogic vision sometimes briefly occur, the brain is still active enough to make a record the experience; but it is then in the process of shutting down its memory-storing activity. Therefore we only remember the beginnings of these visions. Those who remember them in toto have found the trick of keeping the brain minimally awake—minimally because, otherwise, the visions would be inaccessible. I’ll try to say more about this point.
I imagine the mechanics of this process as follows. Even to glimpse the subtle realm, the physical state must be in neutral; it cannot be very active. Under normal circumstances, thus ignoring special practices like meditation, we reach this quiet state only at the time when we’re going to sleep. I’ve noticed the following sequence.
- I close my eyes and see a sort of darkness. It is not a uniform black totality; rather, it is darkness with patterns. In nine cases out of ten, after a brief period in this state sleep takes me away. Most instances of falling asleep never proceed past this stage.
- If I maintain a kind of observant alertness during the first phase of darkness, I begin to perceive more and different patters. The new patterns are only minimally visual but they will have mental shapes. I signal that by putting the word “see” in quotes. Something suggests faces or figures, motions or moving patterns. The faces “seen” are not really made of light; they are more felt—but they’re also quite distinct. The same holds for whatever else I “see.” The darkness appears to be “populated.” Sometimes these patterns produce quite unpleasant visions, minimally vulgar, sometimes funny, sometimes violent. Ignoring these—sometimes willfully ignoring them—brings about the next phase.
- In this, the third phase, I perceive dim light. It appears as a graying out of the darkness on the periphery of what we would call vision; sometimes it is ahead. A dim sense of light grey will then develop more luminosity. These patches may also have shapes, but not of any object—just bits of cloud or a circular shape.
- Finally, and invariably startling me, the blackness abruptly vanishes. It is replaced by a panorama of vivid reality—usually outdoor scenes, landscapes, skyscapes, trees. This vision may also feature built-up structures, animals, people. The startling nature of this vision invariably, in my case, brings me awake. But as I’m shocked, as I’m surprised into awareness, the vision instantly disappears. And it is precisely this “awakening” that makes me realize that, a moment before, I was almost entirely detached from my physical surroundings, thus my awareness lying in bed with my eyes closed. That feeling had retreated far into the background, the attention entirely on the vision—be it of darkness, patterns, or dim light.
- Now, curiously, this brief last stage of awakening also rapidly disappears. Vivid images return but, this time, more dimly defined, almost as if behind a thin veil; and, my attention being drawn by them, they are the last thing I hazily remember.
All of this leads me to conclude that physical existence, including ordinary mentation, causes a great deal of noise. It comes from the body itself and from the brain’s activity as it perceives physical reality. As this noise diminishes, awareness of a subtler world emerges. But so long as the brain is still active enough to store memories, it will record what I perceive. And, I would emphasize, it also reacts to the appearance of these phenomena. If these are incongruous—like the startling appearance of a stunningly real landscape—they surprise the brain. In response it activates the body to a higher state of alertness. And that very alertness then breaks (interrupts, interferes with) the subtle perception.
All of the above illustrates that to make sense of this sequence of events requires various theoretical underpinnings which cannot be independently checked by third parties. I’m well aware of the fact that most people don’t experience this sort of thing frequently enough (if at all) to build what might be called a data base. I’ve had this experience many times before; therefore it makes me curious, indeed it all this fascinates me.
Now as for dreams, I’ve discussed those at various points in this blog at length. To provide a summary, I think dreams are the equivalent of waking-thought but experienced in half-awake states; and because those states are more primitive, as it were, the thoughts are rendered into animal forms: they’re translated into images. As the body comes awake, the first thoughts might, indeed, be about the visions the soul sees in the other world; or they may simply be memories last stored before going to sleep.
Monday, April 19, 2010
On Fields and Energy
Throughout time people have used concepts drawn from what these days is called science and have then applied to the spiritual ranges of experience (or vice versa). Our time is no different from others except in the flavor of the thing. The “spiritual” is below the salt these days, disparaged, and held to be naïve and superstitious. And use of such concepts as “field” and “energy,” consequently, are used by writers on the spiritual or the psychic not because they actually communicate anything tangible or graspable—but because these words enjoy a kind of authority, the authority of Science writ large. The question arises. Is it legitimate to borrow scientific terms to describe psychic experiences? Let’s take a look.
My Dictionary of Physics defines “field” as “A region under the influence of some physical agency.” Interesting definition, when you think about it: a field is a chunk of space. A football field is therefore aptly named; it’s a piece of ground under the influence of football. But the word is actually used in another way when people write it. They use it to mean electric, magnetic, or gravitational force. Its use in New Age or “metaphysical” parlance, therefore, is simply an assertion that some kind of psychic force exists of such a nature that its influence extends over space. Telepathy or remote viewing are thus legitimately described as field phenomena in that some force conveys information between points not capable of explanation using the medium of light, sound, electrical transmission, or chemical signaling.
Let me next turn to the concept of “energy.” Here is the dictionary definition. It is “the quantity that is the measure of the capacity of a body or a system for doing work.” Work (W) turns out to be any kind of force that causes change in something else. By definition, when body A exerts force on body B, A loses W and B gains what A loses.
What I find fascinating here is that the terminology of science is pure abstraction; it is conceptual. Space may be huge (earth moon enclosure) or small (the region my little magnet affects). Force or work may be of all kinds of different kinds—my lifting of a heavy grocery sack or lightning striking a tree. These are mental constructs of generic applicability—but narrowly applied to three known physical forces by science when a field is mentioned. But they can be legitimately used anywhere else as well—wherever we perceive action, work or force exerted over any kind of space. The chief difference in using such terminology in physical science and in so-called metaphysical studies lies in the instrument used.
In studying psychic experiences, the only suitable instruments are minds. And there’s the rub. Their powers of perception are enormous, but their chief drawback is their singularity. We cannot check an individual mind from within. We cannot precisely confirm what it is perceiving. The individual may lie. The individual may misinterpret what he or she experiences. Objective knowledge is therefore very difficult to obtain. Minds are fantastic instruments but very difficult to calibrate precisely.
This difficulty—of supervision, of confirmation—has some odd side-effects. It causes us to limit the application of science to what we call the material level. But the matter-mind duality, as usually applied, may be a fiction. One way to put this may be by saying that we’re incapable of detecting mind in matter or matter in mind—and in both directions because our instruments are too coarse. What I’ve seen of reality—the patterns of things in general—persuade me that this is so. We’re drawing artificial lines based on our ability—or lack thereof—to produce hard evidence, capable of confirmation by third parties, for perhaps the most important range of reality we experience, namely the psychic. But there is really nothing wrong with using concepts like field or energy—much in the same way as science uses these for magnetic, electrical, and gravitational forces—for other forces that we can observe. What is wrong in “metaphysical” discussions is the sloppy and casual use of such concepts—or the attempt to snatch a certain phony legitimacy for our claims by appealing to authority. Scientists no more understand what an electromagnetic field is than I understand what a soul is. But we are both attempting to grasp the operation of invisible forces by some of the phenomena that they leave behind.
My Dictionary of Physics defines “field” as “A region under the influence of some physical agency.” Interesting definition, when you think about it: a field is a chunk of space. A football field is therefore aptly named; it’s a piece of ground under the influence of football. But the word is actually used in another way when people write it. They use it to mean electric, magnetic, or gravitational force. Its use in New Age or “metaphysical” parlance, therefore, is simply an assertion that some kind of psychic force exists of such a nature that its influence extends over space. Telepathy or remote viewing are thus legitimately described as field phenomena in that some force conveys information between points not capable of explanation using the medium of light, sound, electrical transmission, or chemical signaling.
Let me next turn to the concept of “energy.” Here is the dictionary definition. It is “the quantity that is the measure of the capacity of a body or a system for doing work.” Work (W) turns out to be any kind of force that causes change in something else. By definition, when body A exerts force on body B, A loses W and B gains what A loses.
What I find fascinating here is that the terminology of science is pure abstraction; it is conceptual. Space may be huge (earth moon enclosure) or small (the region my little magnet affects). Force or work may be of all kinds of different kinds—my lifting of a heavy grocery sack or lightning striking a tree. These are mental constructs of generic applicability—but narrowly applied to three known physical forces by science when a field is mentioned. But they can be legitimately used anywhere else as well—wherever we perceive action, work or force exerted over any kind of space. The chief difference in using such terminology in physical science and in so-called metaphysical studies lies in the instrument used.
In studying psychic experiences, the only suitable instruments are minds. And there’s the rub. Their powers of perception are enormous, but their chief drawback is their singularity. We cannot check an individual mind from within. We cannot precisely confirm what it is perceiving. The individual may lie. The individual may misinterpret what he or she experiences. Objective knowledge is therefore very difficult to obtain. Minds are fantastic instruments but very difficult to calibrate precisely.
This difficulty—of supervision, of confirmation—has some odd side-effects. It causes us to limit the application of science to what we call the material level. But the matter-mind duality, as usually applied, may be a fiction. One way to put this may be by saying that we’re incapable of detecting mind in matter or matter in mind—and in both directions because our instruments are too coarse. What I’ve seen of reality—the patterns of things in general—persuade me that this is so. We’re drawing artificial lines based on our ability—or lack thereof—to produce hard evidence, capable of confirmation by third parties, for perhaps the most important range of reality we experience, namely the psychic. But there is really nothing wrong with using concepts like field or energy—much in the same way as science uses these for magnetic, electrical, and gravitational forces—for other forces that we can observe. What is wrong in “metaphysical” discussions is the sloppy and casual use of such concepts—or the attempt to snatch a certain phony legitimacy for our claims by appealing to authority. Scientists no more understand what an electromagnetic field is than I understand what a soul is. But we are both attempting to grasp the operation of invisible forces by some of the phenomena that they leave behind.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Notes on the Prophetic Mission
These notes are occasioned by reading again Henry Corbin’s essay titled A Theory of Visionary Knowledge. It’s part of a collection of his essays or speeches published as The Voyage and the Messenger, North Atlantic Books, 1998. There Corbin lays out the Shi’ite view of the prophetic mission. Pondering a passage there, it occurred to me that the eastern world lacks a corresponding conceptualization—although holy figures are found in that realm too.
The prophetic mission is solely associated with the Judeo-Christian-Muslim cultural continuum. Why is that? My own conclusion is that ours is the only one (large and powerful although it is), in which God is conceived anthropomorphically and, in one sense, a step removed from the creation. Anthropomorphically how? The human characteristics of this figure are evident in its interactions with humanity as an external lawgiver. God is envisioned as intervening in history, in choosing people to be its own, and in sending heralds to make his will known. The interventions become even more complex when we reach the Christian interpretation. A step removed? Yes. In our most elevated scholastic philosophy, we learn that God maintains the world in existence continuously; yet God also sends emissaries to guide us. The need for emissaries suggests a distance to me.
And, for me, this is a problem. If God maintains the world in existence, if God is the source of all existence and of all the laws that organize it (no problem there), not least the gift of free will to conscious entities like us, why is there need for periodic interventions, messages from on high, chosen people, and the like.
The East evidently never entertained a concept of God as an active, intervening ruler correcting his own arrangements at intervals; hence prophets are conspicuous by absence. The East also produces seers, mystics, and holy people—and others who travel in the Borderzone. But their interpretation of these experience has always had a quite different flavor. The Tao Te Ching is a theological work, no doubt about it. In it the Tao is the all-transcending Reality which need not correct its own creation.
The Eastern view fits the facts much better than the Western, in my view. It’s simply more sophisticated. It fits my observation that mystics, seers, psychics, and prophets will invariably interpret their visions and experiences based on the culture they bring to the experience. And if, indeed, reformist messages come from the Beyond and rouse the often reluctant prophet to act in the social realm, I for one assume that the source of these messages may be well-meaning—but it is certainly not God.
The prophetic mission is solely associated with the Judeo-Christian-Muslim cultural continuum. Why is that? My own conclusion is that ours is the only one (large and powerful although it is), in which God is conceived anthropomorphically and, in one sense, a step removed from the creation. Anthropomorphically how? The human characteristics of this figure are evident in its interactions with humanity as an external lawgiver. God is envisioned as intervening in history, in choosing people to be its own, and in sending heralds to make his will known. The interventions become even more complex when we reach the Christian interpretation. A step removed? Yes. In our most elevated scholastic philosophy, we learn that God maintains the world in existence continuously; yet God also sends emissaries to guide us. The need for emissaries suggests a distance to me.
And, for me, this is a problem. If God maintains the world in existence, if God is the source of all existence and of all the laws that organize it (no problem there), not least the gift of free will to conscious entities like us, why is there need for periodic interventions, messages from on high, chosen people, and the like.
The East evidently never entertained a concept of God as an active, intervening ruler correcting his own arrangements at intervals; hence prophets are conspicuous by absence. The East also produces seers, mystics, and holy people—and others who travel in the Borderzone. But their interpretation of these experience has always had a quite different flavor. The Tao Te Ching is a theological work, no doubt about it. In it the Tao is the all-transcending Reality which need not correct its own creation.
The Eastern view fits the facts much better than the Western, in my view. It’s simply more sophisticated. It fits my observation that mystics, seers, psychics, and prophets will invariably interpret their visions and experiences based on the culture they bring to the experience. And if, indeed, reformist messages come from the Beyond and rouse the often reluctant prophet to act in the social realm, I for one assume that the source of these messages may be well-meaning—but it is certainly not God.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Dream Puzzle Revisited
My fascination with dreams never ends, but it has a wave-like pattern. The subject fades from view for a while until some dream snippet reminds me of the mystery again. One such snipped came this morning. Nothing dramatic is about to be unfolded. In the dream I was simply sitting on a concrete ledge idly playing with little balls made of soot or ashes, playing in a kind of mindless way. In the dream the very mindlessness of that activity surfaced into awareness; but with awareness suddenly present, I promptly woke up. Ninety times out of a hundred this sort of thing fades by the time I’m halfway down the stairs. Today it was still there—they were still there, those little balls of soot. Sometimes I just stand in the still dark kitchen waiting for the water to boil, the only light coming from above the stove; I’m in what is technically known as a “brown study.” (Where did that phrase originate?) And sometimes then I break that state and force the mind to concentrate.
Doing that this morning, and pondering that snipped with a stern frown on my face, it occurred to me that dreams produce splendid samples of consciousness without self-consciousness. What actually happens, I propose, is this:
As it is gradually aroused from deep and entirely unconscious sleep, the sleeping brain begins to process memories. The memories processed tend to be those of recent experiences—quite frequently thoughts of the night before. In this process the brain arranges what it finds lying about into the best possible patterns—almost as if it were trying to orient itself. The brain lacks visual inputs at this moment; the eyes are closed. Consequently it arranges whatever happens to be present into visual images. This arranging is, of course, a sequential process. And that sequence, that movement in time, is presented as a dynamism, as the “action,” of the dream. Whatever materials the brain thus arranges—remembered objects, actions, or thoughts—were accompanied by a mix of feelings when they happened in reality. The brain also integrates those feelings into the dream pattern. And those feelings then become the consciousness of the dream self.
Now the dream itself, of course, is stored in memory too. And when the self actually returns, when we wake up genuinely, we also become aware of that dream. And then it seems to us as a sequence of lived experience. When we tell the dream, we describe ourselves doing this, doing that, going here, driving a car, etc. — indeed much as above I described myself playing with balls of soot.
But what we do not notice in recalling dreams is the absence of self-consciousness in dreams. Or that, if self-consciousness is present, it is almost immediately followed by awakening.
Today’s dream snippet was as instructive as it was precisely because my brain wove a ridiculous picture. I don’t usually sit around for extended periods playing with marbles—much less marbles made of soot. The real self—wherever it might be during sleep—glimpsed this picture. Its incompatibility with my normal state of mind—and actions—aroused it. But when it becomes a presence, then dreams depart.
The real puzzle of dreams, I think, is focused right there. The puzzle is the absence of the self. Materialism has a very simple explanation—which fits the facts very nicely. There isn’t such a thing. The self is simply the top-most layer of the brain. During dreams it’s still inactive; the dream comes from the lower, the more primitive stem. That region can, if not with great precision, detect anomalies in experience—and when it does, it rouses the higher functions so that they can deal with the “emergency.” My cerebellum was thus smart enough to see that playing with soot-balls was not appropriate behavior; therefore it called the frontal lobe to report this misbehavior—and I promptly awoke.
What you see is what you get. All this makes pretty good sense. But I also see something else—experience something else. It is that the waking self is something quite distinctly and sharply different from any other physical experience I have. Consciousness has a unique quality that I simply cannot with any genuine conviction reduce to the same phenomenological basics as being hungry, thirsty, sleepy, sexy, scared, eager, hot, or cold. I’m also intellectually persuaded that all that I experience must in some way be capable of rational integration—thus that consciousness and meaning must have their own adequate explanation—much as biological or inorganic mechanisms do. Therefore the puzzle for me is where the self is when I dream or sleep. Monistic approaches (e.g., body and soul are sides of the same coin) don’t produce in me, as in so many others, a feeling of closure at all. Concerning where we might go in sleep, that subject I've at least tentatively explored here.
Doing that this morning, and pondering that snipped with a stern frown on my face, it occurred to me that dreams produce splendid samples of consciousness without self-consciousness. What actually happens, I propose, is this:
As it is gradually aroused from deep and entirely unconscious sleep, the sleeping brain begins to process memories. The memories processed tend to be those of recent experiences—quite frequently thoughts of the night before. In this process the brain arranges what it finds lying about into the best possible patterns—almost as if it were trying to orient itself. The brain lacks visual inputs at this moment; the eyes are closed. Consequently it arranges whatever happens to be present into visual images. This arranging is, of course, a sequential process. And that sequence, that movement in time, is presented as a dynamism, as the “action,” of the dream. Whatever materials the brain thus arranges—remembered objects, actions, or thoughts—were accompanied by a mix of feelings when they happened in reality. The brain also integrates those feelings into the dream pattern. And those feelings then become the consciousness of the dream self.
Now the dream itself, of course, is stored in memory too. And when the self actually returns, when we wake up genuinely, we also become aware of that dream. And then it seems to us as a sequence of lived experience. When we tell the dream, we describe ourselves doing this, doing that, going here, driving a car, etc. — indeed much as above I described myself playing with balls of soot.
But what we do not notice in recalling dreams is the absence of self-consciousness in dreams. Or that, if self-consciousness is present, it is almost immediately followed by awakening.
Today’s dream snippet was as instructive as it was precisely because my brain wove a ridiculous picture. I don’t usually sit around for extended periods playing with marbles—much less marbles made of soot. The real self—wherever it might be during sleep—glimpsed this picture. Its incompatibility with my normal state of mind—and actions—aroused it. But when it becomes a presence, then dreams depart.
The real puzzle of dreams, I think, is focused right there. The puzzle is the absence of the self. Materialism has a very simple explanation—which fits the facts very nicely. There isn’t such a thing. The self is simply the top-most layer of the brain. During dreams it’s still inactive; the dream comes from the lower, the more primitive stem. That region can, if not with great precision, detect anomalies in experience—and when it does, it rouses the higher functions so that they can deal with the “emergency.” My cerebellum was thus smart enough to see that playing with soot-balls was not appropriate behavior; therefore it called the frontal lobe to report this misbehavior—and I promptly awoke.
What you see is what you get. All this makes pretty good sense. But I also see something else—experience something else. It is that the waking self is something quite distinctly and sharply different from any other physical experience I have. Consciousness has a unique quality that I simply cannot with any genuine conviction reduce to the same phenomenological basics as being hungry, thirsty, sleepy, sexy, scared, eager, hot, or cold. I’m also intellectually persuaded that all that I experience must in some way be capable of rational integration—thus that consciousness and meaning must have their own adequate explanation—much as biological or inorganic mechanisms do. Therefore the puzzle for me is where the self is when I dream or sleep. Monistic approaches (e.g., body and soul are sides of the same coin) don’t produce in me, as in so many others, a feeling of closure at all. Concerning where we might go in sleep, that subject I've at least tentatively explored here.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Borderzone Within
There is a borderzone right inside us too—as there is one out there in the macrocosm—but we don’t think of it in mumbo-jumbo or in mystical terms because it is a matter of direct experience. Humanity has treated this matter in countless ways, but it is summed up by that all-too-familiar phrase, body and soul. If we use that duality as the whole, then the “borderzone” in question is really the point where body and soul meet and interact. But that interaction is so puzzling and mysterious, that we’ve dismissed it altogether, conceived of it as a point, have ignored it, have formed all kinds of fantastic theories about it, and have often simply thrown up our hands.
The modern way is to deny it. There is no soul. Enough already. We’re strictly chemistry arranged in a certain dynamic pattern—and that pattern has a kind of tenacious tendency to maintain itself, like a whirlpool does—but no more mysteriously than a whirlpool does; we call that tenacity survival. End of story.
Aristotle proposed that everything has body and soul if only we call the one matter and the other form. The combination of the two is the only real thing. He called it substance, and to this day, if we mean that something’s real, we say that it’s substantial. A consequence of this, of course, is that after our bodies fall apart, what we call “we” disappears. But Aristotle was not quite sure that intellect disappeared; he cut himself some slack, as it were. Almost to a man—and it usually is a man—our deep thinkers imagine the “high” element within us as intellectual. My explanation is that they expend most of their lives in thought; they get to know that faculty genuinely well; but, perhaps, they fail to experience other facets of their beings equally as fully—or observe them with the same care. There are other ways of being—there are other paths: action, art, and love come to mind. Thomas Aquinas, among the greatest thinkers of the medieval era, had a mystical experience shortly before he died. He stopped writing abruptly. Asked why, he answered that all that he had written until then (and it was a monumental opus, still avidly studied today) was “mere straw.” (1) I’ve always valued Aquinas’ thought—but I have valued this story as its crown. Paradoxically, perhaps, it holds a practical as well as a deeper truth.
Descartes, who, in a way, gave modern philosophical thought its original shape, carried simplification to a great height. He proposed two realities, the extended thing (call that the body) and the thinking thing (call that the soul). They were radically different; they communicated and met at one point in the body, in the pineal gland. No, this is not a tongue-in-cheek dismissal; but to get into the complexities of Descartes’ thought on the subject you have to look elsewhere (2). My point is that humanity has struggled with this subject. The borderzone within is a very mysterious aspect of reality—and this despite the fact that it is, for us, the most familiar.
It is our inability to pinpoint precisely where higher and lower meet, to describe in mechanical (or even electromechanical) terms how spirit moves matter, our inability to capture and hold the spirit that has led to the materialistic theories of life. But modern thought had its ancient analogues too—and functionally quite similar. Lucretius was one of these theorists: everything is atoms, he said. They move deterministically, but at unpredictable times they suddenly “swerve.” This accounts for what we would call mental events and the illusion of volition. But atoms that form into bodies by law and swerves, dissolve back into free atoms, ranging from coarse to superfine. All is a dance of occasionally swerving atoms. (3) Modern theories of physics are now approaching the Lucretian level. Statistical explanations of everything real are beginning to eat away even at the claim that laws of nature exist (which, of course, suggests a law-giver) to make everything a product of chance. This is what I call throwing up the hands.
I’m of a mind to see value in all of these approaches. All of them produce raw materials, all of them spin twine useful for making a meaningful cosmology—or an understanding of the self. What we need is the right loom to weave it into fabric. (4) That loom is projected, I think, by emanationist conceptions of reality. I’ve discussed these recently under the heading of “Angels: Heavenly Schematics.” There I have suggested that reality is indeed a creation of two distinct fundamentals; they interact at every level and dynamically—thus either rising toward complexity or moving away from it. Within this dynamic spiral are regions of relative equilibrium. Borderzones are spatially conceived areas where a transition is taking place— from one region to the other. They are spatially conceived because, for us, living where we live, space is a decent concept for locating activity. But let me put this projection into more visual or linear terms.
God created two kinds of realities. One of these are agents, that which we call “we”: persons; selves. The other is what we call matter—but this matter may manifest in a vast range of subtlety—thus more than just what we call matter. We live our lives in a borderzone. What do I mean by that? I mean that both a higher and subtler and a lower and coarser kind are both present in it, mixed, as it were. We are keenly aware of the lower. And, being lower, it has a greater grip on us; why that is so I’ll try to explain in a moment. But we’re also aware of the higher. It charms and draws us. The matter of that world, however is more subtle. It is invisible to us because we are still more aware of the lower region than the higher. The higher is an imaginal (but not an imaginary) world. We sometimes dismissively label it “mental,” signaling that such worlds are unreal. Yet mental creations and realities are very real for us: great myths, great music, great works of art, great structures of thought, grand tales, personal and collective memories. And also personifications like the United States of America or the Red Menace. Lady Macbeth, meet Don Quixote. There’s also our honor—produce it for me to touch if you can—and our shame. With only the slightest of careful observation, we can easily discover that most of the things that really move us, in our daily lives, are structures of the insubstantial kind—impossible to touch although, of course, they have tangible manifestations as print on paper, images on screens, or the bodies of people whose intangible attitudes, thoughts, intentions, benevolence (or lack thereof) are the source of our pleasures and our pains. The lower order, the material aspect, sometimes touches us most irritatingly too. And their disarray, as in Haiti these days, is a great source of pain.
We live our lives in tension here because we’ve entered a developmental region, a borderzone. We come from the lower and are headed upward. But because the lower is more familiar to us, has long been our home, it has more claim on us. Hence we are more aware of it. But, at the same time, we hear the call (but cannot see) a higher region. We interact with both. But after we are freed of bodies, which way shall we go? That is the question. If in some greater scheme we are on a vector, we are lucky to be in a borderzone; we’re also at risk. If we don’t develop, we won’t be able to resist the downward pull of the lower region after death; to be sure, it is the one we already inhabit now. But if we do manage to acquire new powers sufficient to continue in the higher direction, then, at the end of life, awakening to that ability, and finally seeing the higher dimension directly, without the interference of this level’s coarser materiality, we shall look back on all our works, and like Thomas Aquinas, declare them all as “mere straw.”
The modern way is to deny it. There is no soul. Enough already. We’re strictly chemistry arranged in a certain dynamic pattern—and that pattern has a kind of tenacious tendency to maintain itself, like a whirlpool does—but no more mysteriously than a whirlpool does; we call that tenacity survival. End of story.
Aristotle proposed that everything has body and soul if only we call the one matter and the other form. The combination of the two is the only real thing. He called it substance, and to this day, if we mean that something’s real, we say that it’s substantial. A consequence of this, of course, is that after our bodies fall apart, what we call “we” disappears. But Aristotle was not quite sure that intellect disappeared; he cut himself some slack, as it were. Almost to a man—and it usually is a man—our deep thinkers imagine the “high” element within us as intellectual. My explanation is that they expend most of their lives in thought; they get to know that faculty genuinely well; but, perhaps, they fail to experience other facets of their beings equally as fully—or observe them with the same care. There are other ways of being—there are other paths: action, art, and love come to mind. Thomas Aquinas, among the greatest thinkers of the medieval era, had a mystical experience shortly before he died. He stopped writing abruptly. Asked why, he answered that all that he had written until then (and it was a monumental opus, still avidly studied today) was “mere straw.” (1) I’ve always valued Aquinas’ thought—but I have valued this story as its crown. Paradoxically, perhaps, it holds a practical as well as a deeper truth.
Descartes, who, in a way, gave modern philosophical thought its original shape, carried simplification to a great height. He proposed two realities, the extended thing (call that the body) and the thinking thing (call that the soul). They were radically different; they communicated and met at one point in the body, in the pineal gland. No, this is not a tongue-in-cheek dismissal; but to get into the complexities of Descartes’ thought on the subject you have to look elsewhere (2). My point is that humanity has struggled with this subject. The borderzone within is a very mysterious aspect of reality—and this despite the fact that it is, for us, the most familiar.
It is our inability to pinpoint precisely where higher and lower meet, to describe in mechanical (or even electromechanical) terms how spirit moves matter, our inability to capture and hold the spirit that has led to the materialistic theories of life. But modern thought had its ancient analogues too—and functionally quite similar. Lucretius was one of these theorists: everything is atoms, he said. They move deterministically, but at unpredictable times they suddenly “swerve.” This accounts for what we would call mental events and the illusion of volition. But atoms that form into bodies by law and swerves, dissolve back into free atoms, ranging from coarse to superfine. All is a dance of occasionally swerving atoms. (3) Modern theories of physics are now approaching the Lucretian level. Statistical explanations of everything real are beginning to eat away even at the claim that laws of nature exist (which, of course, suggests a law-giver) to make everything a product of chance. This is what I call throwing up the hands.
I’m of a mind to see value in all of these approaches. All of them produce raw materials, all of them spin twine useful for making a meaningful cosmology—or an understanding of the self. What we need is the right loom to weave it into fabric. (4) That loom is projected, I think, by emanationist conceptions of reality. I’ve discussed these recently under the heading of “Angels: Heavenly Schematics.” There I have suggested that reality is indeed a creation of two distinct fundamentals; they interact at every level and dynamically—thus either rising toward complexity or moving away from it. Within this dynamic spiral are regions of relative equilibrium. Borderzones are spatially conceived areas where a transition is taking place— from one region to the other. They are spatially conceived because, for us, living where we live, space is a decent concept for locating activity. But let me put this projection into more visual or linear terms.
God created two kinds of realities. One of these are agents, that which we call “we”: persons; selves. The other is what we call matter—but this matter may manifest in a vast range of subtlety—thus more than just what we call matter. We live our lives in a borderzone. What do I mean by that? I mean that both a higher and subtler and a lower and coarser kind are both present in it, mixed, as it were. We are keenly aware of the lower. And, being lower, it has a greater grip on us; why that is so I’ll try to explain in a moment. But we’re also aware of the higher. It charms and draws us. The matter of that world, however is more subtle. It is invisible to us because we are still more aware of the lower region than the higher. The higher is an imaginal (but not an imaginary) world. We sometimes dismissively label it “mental,” signaling that such worlds are unreal. Yet mental creations and realities are very real for us: great myths, great music, great works of art, great structures of thought, grand tales, personal and collective memories. And also personifications like the United States of America or the Red Menace. Lady Macbeth, meet Don Quixote. There’s also our honor—produce it for me to touch if you can—and our shame. With only the slightest of careful observation, we can easily discover that most of the things that really move us, in our daily lives, are structures of the insubstantial kind—impossible to touch although, of course, they have tangible manifestations as print on paper, images on screens, or the bodies of people whose intangible attitudes, thoughts, intentions, benevolence (or lack thereof) are the source of our pleasures and our pains. The lower order, the material aspect, sometimes touches us most irritatingly too. And their disarray, as in Haiti these days, is a great source of pain.
We live our lives in tension here because we’ve entered a developmental region, a borderzone. We come from the lower and are headed upward. But because the lower is more familiar to us, has long been our home, it has more claim on us. Hence we are more aware of it. But, at the same time, we hear the call (but cannot see) a higher region. We interact with both. But after we are freed of bodies, which way shall we go? That is the question. If in some greater scheme we are on a vector, we are lucky to be in a borderzone; we’re also at risk. If we don’t develop, we won’t be able to resist the downward pull of the lower region after death; to be sure, it is the one we already inhabit now. But if we do manage to acquire new powers sufficient to continue in the higher direction, then, at the end of life, awakening to that ability, and finally seeing the higher dimension directly, without the interference of this level’s coarser materiality, we shall look back on all our works, and like Thomas Aquinas, declare them all as “mere straw.”
Thursday, April 8, 2010
The Low and the High
Perhaps the most important concept in sorting out the problems and opportunities of life is that of hierarchy—but the word is repugnant to many. It suggests authority or dominance. Images of ranks appear, prelates in robes and pointed hats, generals bristling with stars and decorations. And the word itself is ambiguous. It comes from two Greek roots of which one is “sacred” (hieros), the other is “ruler” (archon)—so the meaning of holiness is present in it but deformed by the concept of compulsion—because a ruler never stops at leading by example but will have masses of cops and soldiers to carry out his will, whether we like it or not. Thus hierarchy is all tangled up with one level of experience for most—the social. Once it was more closely associated with social mind control, thus with religious ideology. In a secular era the word itself has been secularized to mean any kind of authority. A non-starter for people.
In my personal lexicon the word has lost these connotations long ago. I tend to use the word simply to mean “a structure of values”—and more precisely the notion that all experience manifests itself in layers, from coarse to fine, from gross to subtle, for simple to the complex. And this layered arrangement behaves, in actuality, in a fashion which is precisely the opposite of a human, social, power structure.
What I mean by this is that the highest of values are the least compelling and the lowest the most authoritarian. We disobey our body’s demands at our peril—and often obey involuntarily—whereas we follow our highest callings only ever voluntarily. Similarly, in ordinary experience, the lowest has the most noticeable positive and negative feedback; the highest demands a high level of cultivation even to perceive—and ignoring it carries no sanctions whatsoever—beyond leaving us at a lower level where we’re evidently quite content to be—just keep the beer coming.
I myself think that this arrangement works with the same lawful force as gravity’s. One of its consequences is that no one goes to heaven unless he or she chooses; no one is sent to hell; he or she prefers it. At the same time—and here a subtle distinction also appears—souls may want to go to heaven, but when they arrive, they don’t like it there.
Compulsion rules the world, but freedom rules the spirit. Religion represents a transitional ground. When compulsion is present in it to any degree, it is still merely a social phenomenon no matter what concepts it deploys in its persuasion. When it begins attracting the individual soul by its subtle force and more or less veiled message, it becomes a personal quest and the mechanics of the religion itself will become less and less relevant and, indeed, unimportant. Separating the social compulsion in religion from its inner life is the most difficult task of all—the more so because those who succeed in doing so will be, without fail, expelled from the reservation. But if they are genuinely qualified, they won’t mind this in the least. Threats and seductions will repel the adequate—but may shape and purify those as yet stuck in the world of compulsion. And therein lies the positive work of religion.
The secret also hides itself effectively. What I say here will resonate with some, will cause others to feel opposition—as if I were attacking something holy. The holy is beyond attack. It also can’t be bought and sold.
The principles I have just sketched also work with the same precision in every corner, including the most hidden, of ordinary life as well. There too the coarse will only beget the coarse, force will only ever generate a counterforce, and only dedication will produce rewards that those on a lower level won’t even envy—because they can’t perceive them.
In my personal lexicon the word has lost these connotations long ago. I tend to use the word simply to mean “a structure of values”—and more precisely the notion that all experience manifests itself in layers, from coarse to fine, from gross to subtle, for simple to the complex. And this layered arrangement behaves, in actuality, in a fashion which is precisely the opposite of a human, social, power structure.
What I mean by this is that the highest of values are the least compelling and the lowest the most authoritarian. We disobey our body’s demands at our peril—and often obey involuntarily—whereas we follow our highest callings only ever voluntarily. Similarly, in ordinary experience, the lowest has the most noticeable positive and negative feedback; the highest demands a high level of cultivation even to perceive—and ignoring it carries no sanctions whatsoever—beyond leaving us at a lower level where we’re evidently quite content to be—just keep the beer coming.
I myself think that this arrangement works with the same lawful force as gravity’s. One of its consequences is that no one goes to heaven unless he or she chooses; no one is sent to hell; he or she prefers it. At the same time—and here a subtle distinction also appears—souls may want to go to heaven, but when they arrive, they don’t like it there.
Compulsion rules the world, but freedom rules the spirit. Religion represents a transitional ground. When compulsion is present in it to any degree, it is still merely a social phenomenon no matter what concepts it deploys in its persuasion. When it begins attracting the individual soul by its subtle force and more or less veiled message, it becomes a personal quest and the mechanics of the religion itself will become less and less relevant and, indeed, unimportant. Separating the social compulsion in religion from its inner life is the most difficult task of all—the more so because those who succeed in doing so will be, without fail, expelled from the reservation. But if they are genuinely qualified, they won’t mind this in the least. Threats and seductions will repel the adequate—but may shape and purify those as yet stuck in the world of compulsion. And therein lies the positive work of religion.
The secret also hides itself effectively. What I say here will resonate with some, will cause others to feel opposition—as if I were attacking something holy. The holy is beyond attack. It also can’t be bought and sold.
The principles I have just sketched also work with the same precision in every corner, including the most hidden, of ordinary life as well. There too the coarse will only beget the coarse, force will only ever generate a counterforce, and only dedication will produce rewards that those on a lower level won’t even envy—because they can’t perceive them.
Monday, April 5, 2010
On Awe
Readers of this blog who find it obscure and difficult should turn to the Zohar, the Sefer ha-Zohar, to give it its full name, The Book of Radiance, one of the great books of the Kabbalah. Now there is something really difficult. Thanks to my wife’s thoughtful generosity, I have one volume of this work masterfully translated by Daniel C. Matt, himself a Master, indeed the foremost master in our language on these wonders. Here is a sampling—in which I omit at least as much text in annotations and commentaries as I produce for view—and in this strange world commentaries, and commentaries on commentaries, and so on, layered ad infinitum, are very much part of the tradition:
Rabbi Shim’on opened with the commandments of Torah, saying, “The commandments of Torah given by the Blessed Holy One to Israel are all written in Torah in general terms.
“In the beginning God created (Genesis 1:1). This is the first commandment of all, called awe of YHVH, which is called beginning, as is written: The beginning of wisdom is awe of YHVH (Psalms 111:10), Awe of YHVH is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). For this entity is named beginning; it is the gate through which one enters faith. The entire world is based upon this commandment.
“Awe branches in three directions, two of which are not fittingly rooted, one of which is essence of awe. There is the person who fears the blessed Holy One so that his children may live and not die, or who fears physical or material punishment. Because of this he fears Him constantly, but his awe is not focused on the blessed Holy One.
“Then there is the person who fears the blessed Holy One because he is afraid of punishment of the other world and the punishment of Hell. Neither of these is the essential root of awe.
“The essence of awe is that a person be in awe of his Lord because He is immense and sovereign—essence and root of all worlds—before whom everything is considered as nothing, as is said: All the inhabitants of the earth are considered as nothing (Daniel 4:32). One should direct his desire to the site called Awe.”
The “site called Awe,” Daniel C. Matte’s footnote tells us, is Shekinah, the focus of genuine devotion, the tenth Sephirah or emanation of the Kabbalah, a feminine word meaning the Divine Presence, alternatively rendered as the masculine Malkut, The Kingdom.
Rabbi Shim’on opened with the commandments of Torah, saying, “The commandments of Torah given by the Blessed Holy One to Israel are all written in Torah in general terms.
“In the beginning God created (Genesis 1:1). This is the first commandment of all, called awe of YHVH, which is called beginning, as is written: The beginning of wisdom is awe of YHVH (Psalms 111:10), Awe of YHVH is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). For this entity is named beginning; it is the gate through which one enters faith. The entire world is based upon this commandment.
“Awe branches in three directions, two of which are not fittingly rooted, one of which is essence of awe. There is the person who fears the blessed Holy One so that his children may live and not die, or who fears physical or material punishment. Because of this he fears Him constantly, but his awe is not focused on the blessed Holy One.
“Then there is the person who fears the blessed Holy One because he is afraid of punishment of the other world and the punishment of Hell. Neither of these is the essential root of awe.
“The essence of awe is that a person be in awe of his Lord because He is immense and sovereign—essence and root of all worlds—before whom everything is considered as nothing, as is said: All the inhabitants of the earth are considered as nothing (Daniel 4:32). One should direct his desire to the site called Awe.”
The “site called Awe,” Daniel C. Matte’s footnote tells us, is Shekinah, the focus of genuine devotion, the tenth Sephirah or emanation of the Kabbalah, a feminine word meaning the Divine Presence, alternatively rendered as the masculine Malkut, The Kingdom.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Angels: Heavenly Schematics
I am still circling the subject of angels but now would like to enlarged upon the concepts I first outlined in the last post on this subject (“Angels: A Short Overview”). There I proposed two sharply distinct views of angels. We could call these Western and Eastern. The Western view represents a highly-developed cluster of philosophical conceptions; the Eastern provides a very sophisticated image but much less developed in philosophical terminology—perhaps of necessity; the Eastern is much more dynamically complex.
The western view is dominated by the concept of Creation. In that conception God creates a universe. It has a hierarchical structure. Seen from above God is the summit, the angels are a lower order; they are creatures of pure spirit. Beneath that level are humans, composed of spirit and of matter—indeed these two components are considered permanently fused by God’s choice so that the strictly human must always be both. Hence, after the Judgment at the End of Time, we shall have resurrection bodies. Beneath that level come animals, plants, and non-living matter. We can also see this hierarchy from below. To do so we can turn to the poetic formulations of Genesis. There matter is made first; heaven and earth are created, the darkness illuminated. God next makes lower forms, finally man. Angels are missing in this view, but the presumption might be that the creation of “heaven” also includes the creation of angels. The angels then later appear as messengers of God. Here, of course, I’m tracing the Aristotelian, Thomistic formulations in which the two fundamental realities are unformed prime matter and immaterial form.
While the hierarchy is pleasing, the cosmology altogether lacks any kind of justification for matter, as such, except as the wax in which lower orders (not the higher) may be made visible by the impress of form. Matter-form duality admirably fits Aristotle’s concept of substance, but Aquinas has problems maintaining a rationally pleasing hierarchy as he moves on up to the angelic level. If substance is matter-form (hylomorphic), are angels then insubstantial? To get around this problem, Aquinas introduces the notion that angels are also marked by a dual composition; their essence is “substantiated,” as it were, by existence. Aquinas separates essence from existence. God, finally, in Aquinas’ view, is a Being whose essence and existence are one and the same. All I can do here is confess to the opacity of my own intellect. My intuition will not follow me into this thicket. Nothing resonates.
An emanationist schematic of reality pleases me much more—although it has its own challenges. To express that model in static terms—just to make it visible—we might say that reality manifests in degrees of subtlety, from the most gross to the most subtle. But at every level a duality exits—call it matter-form, passive-active, receptive-creative, body-soul, what have you. We might picture each being, substance, or entity as a temporary fusion of two distinct aspects of reality that, in the Ultimate, are one. These two core realities cohere less and less as we descend (or move away) from the Source (God) and appear more and more complexly fused as we ascend to (move toward) the Ultimate. Within the Ultimate the duality disappears into Pure Act. At the other extreme the duality also fuses, but in the sense of “locking up,” thus losing actuality and becoming, at the extreme, the closest imaginable something to non-existence. Here images of Satan, as depicted by Dante in the deepest pit of hell, produce an interesting picture to contemplate.
Still holding the static view, in this schematic angels may be seen as higher entities, thus more complex and unified beings. Humans as simpler and more fragmented entities—but on a much higher level than animals or inorganic matter. But everywhere, at every level, the dualism holds. At every point, from tiniest to greatest, there are analogues to body and to soul. Thus even the minutest subatomic particles of matter have a “pilot wave,” to cite Louis de Broglie and the elaboration of his notion by David Bohm. As above, so below.
The emanationist schematic, which is more akin to the Eastern philosophical traditions, is, however, a dynamic system. That is where, viewed from a Western perspective, problems appear. What we call creation is, in this view, a continuous outflow of divine substance. It “descends” in a way. It becomes ever more coarse as its “distance” from God increases. The problem? The problem is that spatial concepts are required to understand this model. But so does, of course, the Western notion of creation, but we are just more used to that one and rarely bother wondering if God first had to create a “space” for his creation. The Kabbalists (Isaac Luria, for instance) did actually wonder—and proposed that God’s first act was to create a vacuum. The scheme also appears to be a species of pantheism—but that need not be so. We need only make two assumptions to redeem it. One is that this outflow is a circulation. The other is that, on it ascent back to the One, the creation has achieved a higher degree of perfection. A third assumption might be that the creation itself, in the persons of the souls God has created at the outset of the downward flow, participate in the creation by using their free will—or don’t. This freedom, of course, only resides in one of the two core “elements” that make up creation, not in the other. That one is what we call soul, the entity. The other, by contrast, always follows strict laws—which even the free soul cannot suspend. Thus what we call a miracle consists of the lifting of matter from a lower to a higher level, not the violation or suspension of God’s law at all.
In this dynamic model, beings are perpetually descending and ascending, some outward bound to learn or to experience limitation, some inward bound to realize a higher form. Both the down and upward trajectories are spiraling structures—away from unity and back toward it. In this view separate creation of angelic orders, of humans, of animals, of plants becomes unnecessary—which would please Occam. The creation begins to take on a vastly more elegant form. And, pleasingly, what we see through the narrow lens of science appears in harmonious concordance with what our intuitions of the great whole whisper to us in the silence.
The western view is dominated by the concept of Creation. In that conception God creates a universe. It has a hierarchical structure. Seen from above God is the summit, the angels are a lower order; they are creatures of pure spirit. Beneath that level are humans, composed of spirit and of matter—indeed these two components are considered permanently fused by God’s choice so that the strictly human must always be both. Hence, after the Judgment at the End of Time, we shall have resurrection bodies. Beneath that level come animals, plants, and non-living matter. We can also see this hierarchy from below. To do so we can turn to the poetic formulations of Genesis. There matter is made first; heaven and earth are created, the darkness illuminated. God next makes lower forms, finally man. Angels are missing in this view, but the presumption might be that the creation of “heaven” also includes the creation of angels. The angels then later appear as messengers of God. Here, of course, I’m tracing the Aristotelian, Thomistic formulations in which the two fundamental realities are unformed prime matter and immaterial form.
While the hierarchy is pleasing, the cosmology altogether lacks any kind of justification for matter, as such, except as the wax in which lower orders (not the higher) may be made visible by the impress of form. Matter-form duality admirably fits Aristotle’s concept of substance, but Aquinas has problems maintaining a rationally pleasing hierarchy as he moves on up to the angelic level. If substance is matter-form (hylomorphic), are angels then insubstantial? To get around this problem, Aquinas introduces the notion that angels are also marked by a dual composition; their essence is “substantiated,” as it were, by existence. Aquinas separates essence from existence. God, finally, in Aquinas’ view, is a Being whose essence and existence are one and the same. All I can do here is confess to the opacity of my own intellect. My intuition will not follow me into this thicket. Nothing resonates.
An emanationist schematic of reality pleases me much more—although it has its own challenges. To express that model in static terms—just to make it visible—we might say that reality manifests in degrees of subtlety, from the most gross to the most subtle. But at every level a duality exits—call it matter-form, passive-active, receptive-creative, body-soul, what have you. We might picture each being, substance, or entity as a temporary fusion of two distinct aspects of reality that, in the Ultimate, are one. These two core realities cohere less and less as we descend (or move away) from the Source (God) and appear more and more complexly fused as we ascend to (move toward) the Ultimate. Within the Ultimate the duality disappears into Pure Act. At the other extreme the duality also fuses, but in the sense of “locking up,” thus losing actuality and becoming, at the extreme, the closest imaginable something to non-existence. Here images of Satan, as depicted by Dante in the deepest pit of hell, produce an interesting picture to contemplate.
Still holding the static view, in this schematic angels may be seen as higher entities, thus more complex and unified beings. Humans as simpler and more fragmented entities—but on a much higher level than animals or inorganic matter. But everywhere, at every level, the dualism holds. At every point, from tiniest to greatest, there are analogues to body and to soul. Thus even the minutest subatomic particles of matter have a “pilot wave,” to cite Louis de Broglie and the elaboration of his notion by David Bohm. As above, so below.
The emanationist schematic, which is more akin to the Eastern philosophical traditions, is, however, a dynamic system. That is where, viewed from a Western perspective, problems appear. What we call creation is, in this view, a continuous outflow of divine substance. It “descends” in a way. It becomes ever more coarse as its “distance” from God increases. The problem? The problem is that spatial concepts are required to understand this model. But so does, of course, the Western notion of creation, but we are just more used to that one and rarely bother wondering if God first had to create a “space” for his creation. The Kabbalists (Isaac Luria, for instance) did actually wonder—and proposed that God’s first act was to create a vacuum. The scheme also appears to be a species of pantheism—but that need not be so. We need only make two assumptions to redeem it. One is that this outflow is a circulation. The other is that, on it ascent back to the One, the creation has achieved a higher degree of perfection. A third assumption might be that the creation itself, in the persons of the souls God has created at the outset of the downward flow, participate in the creation by using their free will—or don’t. This freedom, of course, only resides in one of the two core “elements” that make up creation, not in the other. That one is what we call soul, the entity. The other, by contrast, always follows strict laws—which even the free soul cannot suspend. Thus what we call a miracle consists of the lifting of matter from a lower to a higher level, not the violation or suspension of God’s law at all.
In this dynamic model, beings are perpetually descending and ascending, some outward bound to learn or to experience limitation, some inward bound to realize a higher form. Both the down and upward trajectories are spiraling structures—away from unity and back toward it. In this view separate creation of angelic orders, of humans, of animals, of plants becomes unnecessary—which would please Occam. The creation begins to take on a vastly more elegant form. And, pleasingly, what we see through the narrow lens of science appears in harmonious concordance with what our intuitions of the great whole whisper to us in the silence.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Distraction
Several people in my circle have recently expressed intentions to rid themselves of stuff, to find again the source of inspiration, to simplify their lives, to get back to the basics, to minimize distractions. Hearing this, images rise in my head. One is that of swimming against a powerful current in a raging torrent. That, you might say, is a good image of life. We are engaged in a passage, and it is difficult. We don’t want to be encumbered. We don’t want our strokes to be impeded by heavy clothing, clunky shoes. We don’t want to carry stuff that turns our arms and legs to lead. We don’t want a vestibule filled with soaked clothing strapped to our back. Swimming against this current, we want to see strong branches where we can pause, firm places where we can rest. We want to reach that blessed yonder shore and not be swept away, away, away.
Our view of reality might be inverted. This came to mind the other day when I saw a poem quoted on Siris (here) by Christina Rossetti. It has two stanzas. One begins with “Man’s life is death.” The other with “Man’s death is life.” The context is Christ’s redemptive work—which is, of course, centrally relevant. Every religious and spiritual system counsels a kind of minimalism. We must do what we must do—but we must never do more than we must. The urge to simplify, the call of the Silence (wherein the still small voice is heard), that is the real call of Life. The vast turbulence of modern life—but ancient life was not really different—is the sound of fragmentation, the raw gravitational pull of the lower dimensions of darkness—however loud they shout, however bright they glitter.
Me, too, as it were. I too intend it more than I manage to do it. There is an old Jewish phrase: “The master of return.” The master or mistress of return is the person who, endlessly failing in the chosen task nevertheless, after each failure, returns to the effort once again. Not the last time that we make strong resolutions to clean up our act. We’re journeying through the valley of the shadow of death; we long for still waters and green pastures. Even in the midst of this turbulence of endless…distraction.
Our view of reality might be inverted. This came to mind the other day when I saw a poem quoted on Siris (here) by Christina Rossetti. It has two stanzas. One begins with “Man’s life is death.” The other with “Man’s death is life.” The context is Christ’s redemptive work—which is, of course, centrally relevant. Every religious and spiritual system counsels a kind of minimalism. We must do what we must do—but we must never do more than we must. The urge to simplify, the call of the Silence (wherein the still small voice is heard), that is the real call of Life. The vast turbulence of modern life—but ancient life was not really different—is the sound of fragmentation, the raw gravitational pull of the lower dimensions of darkness—however loud they shout, however bright they glitter.
Me, too, as it were. I too intend it more than I manage to do it. There is an old Jewish phrase: “The master of return.” The master or mistress of return is the person who, endlessly failing in the chosen task nevertheless, after each failure, returns to the effort once again. Not the last time that we make strong resolutions to clean up our act. We’re journeying through the valley of the shadow of death; we long for still waters and green pastures. Even in the midst of this turbulence of endless…distraction.
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