Monday, June 21, 2010
Public Debate
The loud public debate on atheism, sounds of which occasionally reach me by way of posts on various philosophical sites, reminds me that the borderzone’s a region of solitude. And the sounds then, in turn, remind me: that word, hermit, comes from the Greek word eremites, which (as the Online Etymology Dictionary tells me) literally means a “person of the desert.” That word is fashioned from eremia, desert, solitude. The picture in my mind is of a great stadium packed with many thousands. A championship game is taking place. The crowds roar their joy or rage. But I’m in a little shaded park quite some distance from the stadium, sitting on a bench, reading a book—but close enough so that I can still occasionally hear the crowd. Now, of course, we don’t originate in deserts but issue from communities. It’s a slow, hard, gradual trip out into the deserts of understanding. Memories remain of time when our passions flared with heat; we had our favorites we desperately wished would win. But comes a time when we have learned enough to sooth that partisan impulse rising reflexively. Past that. Forget it. The sun shines. The trees above cause dappled patterns of shade and light to move over the pages of the open book as a breeze blows. Distantly the masses roar, subside…
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Things Must be Thought Through
I was reading some passages by Chuang Tzu, a third century (BC) Taoist philosopher, last night. Chuang Tzu left behind something like Confucius’ Analects, thus a collection of his own and his disciples’ writings. And, like the Analects, much of its content deals with governance—a preoccupation that Confucius impressed upon philosophical thought. Tzu was born about eighty years after Confucius died. The Tao Te Ching, the defining book of Taoism, has a very different flavor. Now here, in The Chuang Tzu, we encounter Taoist thought but applied to governance. While the Tao speaks to me, Tzu’s writings produce a kind of reluctant wonder. Tzu’s fairly consistent solutions to most problem of governance are a kind of do-nothing detachment, which might sound philosophical but would be disastrous in practice. When the kids are tearing up the living room, detached not-doing is not the right response. I fell asleep last night thinking that—and woke up this morning thinking, “Things must be thought through.” That slogan at first lacked all context, but the reference then came to me as I was brewing coffee. Eight hours of sleep later, my last thought of the night had been followed by this one.
In real life we often face this sort of situation. China’s is a distant culture I’ve not experienced directly; I’ve read some of its great classic works—and continue to re-read them. Impressions form—but not based on deep scholarship. One forms opinions nonetheless, but in what I’m about to say, I remind myself that it’s just a reaction…and from a pretty dark shade of general ignorance.
The impression I have is that Confucius had so tremendous an influence on Chinese philosophical culture that casting things in a Confucian pattern tempted all those who followed him. How else to get noticed? Hence we have Chuang Tzu writing in the anecdotal manner of the Analects about the ruler of this, the ruler of that. But my reaction to Tzu’s writings is not-quite-agreement. And here is why, I think. There is a difference in level between Confucian ethics and Taoist mysticism. Each is correct and appropriate within its own range—indeed admirably so—but Taoism applied to governance would be as discordant as the application of ethics to the highest levels of the spiritual life. This is merely to say that a single inspiration guides both, that Confucian and Taoist doctrines don’t really clash—as supposedly they did and do—provided that we think it through. When we do we realize that both arise from the same inspiration, one applied to the personal, the other to the social.
Which brings to mind a saying—from Japan I think. People are Shintoist in youth, Confucian in maturity, and Buddhist in old age. Right on…
In real life we often face this sort of situation. China’s is a distant culture I’ve not experienced directly; I’ve read some of its great classic works—and continue to re-read them. Impressions form—but not based on deep scholarship. One forms opinions nonetheless, but in what I’m about to say, I remind myself that it’s just a reaction…and from a pretty dark shade of general ignorance.
The impression I have is that Confucius had so tremendous an influence on Chinese philosophical culture that casting things in a Confucian pattern tempted all those who followed him. How else to get noticed? Hence we have Chuang Tzu writing in the anecdotal manner of the Analects about the ruler of this, the ruler of that. But my reaction to Tzu’s writings is not-quite-agreement. And here is why, I think. There is a difference in level between Confucian ethics and Taoist mysticism. Each is correct and appropriate within its own range—indeed admirably so—but Taoism applied to governance would be as discordant as the application of ethics to the highest levels of the spiritual life. This is merely to say that a single inspiration guides both, that Confucian and Taoist doctrines don’t really clash—as supposedly they did and do—provided that we think it through. When we do we realize that both arise from the same inspiration, one applied to the personal, the other to the social.
Which brings to mind a saying—from Japan I think. People are Shintoist in youth, Confucian in maturity, and Buddhist in old age. Right on…
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
On the Psychic
Turbulent Terminology
Humanity’s many experiences of the “psychic” are undoubtedly based on the same fundamental experience. Terminology obscures this fact. Let me give some examples. We almost never think that “psychics” and “saints” belong to the same category. Nor do we view insanity as a “species of psychism.” People we call “mystics” (Jacob Boehme comes to mind) are rarely designated psychics. We refer to Swedenborg as a philosopher or seer, never as a “medium”—although he also communicated with the dead, as mediums are supposed to do. In some circles a designation like “shaman” is more acceptable than a designation like “sensitive.” Healing phenomena occur but are explained in different ways all based on context. If the healer comes from what is viewed as a “backward” culture, he or she is practicing witch-craft, if from a religious, he or she manifests miraculous power, if from a secular modern, the healing comes from a “healing stream”; an example is the German healer, Bruno Gröning. Santaria is an interesting hybrid in which pagan and Christian derivations are synthesized.
Terminology obscures the underlying elements—because the “psychic,” generally speaking, lies below the salt and no theory to explain it dominates. But that the phenomena observed are closely related should be obvious to any alert observer. Sainthood is associated with the “miraculous,” hence processes of sanctification involve the documentation of such events. These phenomena occur in and around the holy. Padre Pio and Solanus Casey are figures in my own time—so is Therese Neumann, who, however, has not advanced as far as Casey in the process. But we discover precisely the same kinds of phenomena associated with figures outside religious cultures too—or in cultures where no institution designates such people “saints.”
Terminology is also confusing because some designations in common use are drawn from specific effects rather than from a structured explanation of what gives rise to the effect. “Psychic” and “sensitive” are generic labels applied to people with obvious gifts (or are these misfortunes?) manifesting at mild levels: they can see the future vaguely, hear people’s thoughts, discover the hidden, find the murdered, help the police, etc. Their gifts are assigned to paranormal “powers”; I take “paranormal” to be a secular concept. But note that when these phenomena manifest in people with religious vocations, at least believers view these gifts as divine interventions, thus as “supernormal.” Mediums are named after a single skill to communicate with the dead in passive trance states—hence that designation. They are not agents, they are media of communications. Some mediums have other powers as well, but these tend to be ignored. When psychics manifest multiple powers and at higher levels, more potent words are joined to the “psychic” designation. An example in my time was Edgar Cayce, “the sleeping prophet.” Cayce brought healing messages after periods of sleep; he was also labeled a “medical clairvoyant.”
Where the religious element is to the fore, the operant assumption is that the miraculous results are in the nature of a reward for superior virtue. Observers rarely contemplate an inverse process of causation, thus that the person is religious in the first place because he or she was first a psychic and, in dealing with that experience, found religion an appropriate outlet and expression of it and virtuous behavior a suitable adaptation for managing the strains and stresses of that experience. That last explanation, I think, is often the best.
Further problems also arise because the psychic phenomenon, as such, may not actually be present in people carrying certain labels. Some saints are psychic, but by no means all saints are. Pope John Paul II, advancing toward sainthood now, was certainly not a psychic, although a splendid human being. Some mediums are psychics—others are frauds or, to put it more mildly, clever entertainers. Some magicians cultivate the label to give their high gifts of trickery and bold illusion additional attractions. And so on. The consequence in all such cases is that the absence of a good theory produces gullibility on one side and acidy skepticism on the other, with the consequence that a long-known body of phenomena do not produce genuine knowledge, and therefore insight, into the human condition.
The above, I think, might be sufficient to present the problem by way of introducing some speculation about the underlying commonality between all of these experiences—ranging from insanity on up to the highest levels of psychic functioning at the level of the great saint or seer. My own working hypothesis follows.
A Hypothesis
As I hope I've demonstrated above, various kinds of phenomena, with all kinds of different labels, are all based on the same fundamental situation, thus that insanity, miraculous events, prophecies, sainthood, healings, mediumship, shamanism, paranormal powers, and much else all have their roots in a single phenomenon. My linking of insanity, say, and sainthood, my strike some reader as highly provocative, perhaps as incendiary—while striking others as so true. In what follows I hope to disappoint people who hold either view.
My working theory on his very difficult and elusive subject may best be presented by using a hypothesis—a description. I start with the notion that the human body is adapted to life in a material dimension and, to make it work effectively, it has a very effective filtering system, built up over uncountable eons precisely to aid us—meaning life—to operate efficiently in a lower dimension and thus to shield us from interference. But interference from what? From an equally complex psychic world. Why we may be in the material sphere rather than in that other one, I will leave untouched for the moment. It might be in order to develop—in order, therefore, to rise to a higher level than the one in which we naturally originate. That hypothetical explanation will serve my purpose here; humanity has suggested other reasons and I’ve mentioned them elsewhere, most recently here. The basics of this hypothesis are simply three. One is that we are here, for whatever reason. Another is that continuous awareness of the other world would interfere with our mission here—development, let us say. And third, that our brains act as selective filtering mechanisms. They keep out the noise of the psychic world, which, at it lowest levels, may be chaotic— while permitting beneficial higher energies to reach us, energies that are helpful in our task, thus grace or baraka. That is the hypothesis.
Now the filtering mechanism has evolved naturally; it is excellent but not fault-free. It manifests at all sorts of levels. If it is too effective, it blocks out not only the noise but also most of the helpful energies of inspiration and therefore renders us excessively insensitive. If it is weak, it might have mixed consequences ranging from favorable to deplorable. Favorable consequences may be high levels of inspiration beneficial to personal and social life; unfavorable might be situations that make people into nervous wrecks. When the filter is too weak, it may cause definite hardship and, at the extreme, insanity. The filtering powers of the brain don’t necessarily affect intelligence or will—nor the other way around. Thus we have an enormous gradient of possible reactions. Some people can deal effectively with a great deal of psychic noise and hardship because of the kind of people they are. Others are not so inclined and will take undesirable paths in consequence, either because they hear too much or too little. Similarly, the most insensitive people can be and often are very straight and virtuous—while others act in a contrary way. The moral power is no more affected by the behavior of the filtering system than it is by other bodily endowments. Some people can deal with beauty—or it may be their downfall; they may deal with handicaps or fail to do so.
Now it seems to me that psychic gifts, considered generically, are all of them instances of relatively weak filtering mechanism. When they fail, insanity is the consequence, and that’s simply a misfortune. Short of that unfortunate result, the kind of “openness” I have in mind may range from what we properly call “gifts” all the way to “challenges.” They are gifts if the openness enhances favorable inflow of higher energies like inspiration or grace. They are challenges when they open people to interference that adds nothing to knowledge and diverts from life’s tasks. Based on my studies, the majority of psychics experience their gifts as burdens. They tend to experience the lower regions of the psychic reality, not the highest. They hear “voices”; some of them call these voices “guides.” Swedenborg’s spiritual diaries contain many accounts of such voices; most of them are marked by a high level of stupidity. Swedenborg also spoke with angels, but most of his exchanges were with very low kinds of entities—not evil, but dumb. Similarly—at least based on my readings—most psychic messages from the beyond are on the same level of mediocrity. Reading them I’ve time and again remarked to myself: “If that’s the stuff that’s coming from the beyond, why bother listening?” But some people have no choice in the matter. For this reason I wonder above, parenthetically, whether some of these gifts are really gifts; they might be more accurately described as misfortunes.
Healing powers are one kind of energy that flows in strongly, in some people, when the filtering is weak. Bruno Gröning is a good example. These power brought him mostly conflict and grief and, it seems, eventually killed him when he could not put it to use. A post on that subject may be found here.
All of the above suggests that a combination of factors inherent in the hypothesis—of filtering, openness due to weak filtering, the variability of the weakness, and the exercise of moral powers by the agents who experience these phenomena—can adequately explain based on a single relationship phenomena as widely differing as mediumship, insanity, and miraculous phenomena surrounding sainthood. Worth some thought.
What the available materials suggest to me is that the psychic world has a certain hierarchical structure and that its coarsest energies (and agencies) are closest to us, its highest more removed. The higher the development of the individual who experiences the “opening” the more likely it is that he or she will become aware of the heavenly ranges. This suggests that development of psychic “organs” is part of our mission here. When these are still primitive, we will still communicate with the beyond when the filtering fails, but with rather slummy regions of it. And this may also be true after we die. If we’ve developed our inner organs, we shall have sight, orientation, and upward mobility; if not, we may remain below.
It occurs to me here worth mentioning chemical mysticism, as it were, and chemical ways of enhancing the filtering. The first had a run, for a while, some decades back when “dropping acid” was a fad, thus the ingestion of LSD. The drug evidently (under my theory) temporarily weakened the filtering system and made the psychic world partially visible to people. Their own developmental level seems to have had an influence on the quality of their experiences, hence the frequent references to “bad trips.” Drug use in religious practices long predates the twentieth century. Similarly, drugs used to treat mental diseases, like schizophrenia, probably in part restore the filtering functions of the brain.
All of this, of course, however long (especially for a blog entry), fails to exhaust the subject. Far from it. It may well be that a certain opening or, negatively put, a “weakening of the filters,” may be a natural consequence of normal development. And this may explain the higher ranges of psychic perception. Whereas organic kinds of weakening, be it as a consequence of genetic causes, disease, or drug use account for the more troublesome aspects of psychic experience. And I, for one, know of at least one case where schizophrenia, followed by grandiose, quasi-religious, but definitely mad visions, was caused by drug abuse.
Humanity’s many experiences of the “psychic” are undoubtedly based on the same fundamental experience. Terminology obscures this fact. Let me give some examples. We almost never think that “psychics” and “saints” belong to the same category. Nor do we view insanity as a “species of psychism.” People we call “mystics” (Jacob Boehme comes to mind) are rarely designated psychics. We refer to Swedenborg as a philosopher or seer, never as a “medium”—although he also communicated with the dead, as mediums are supposed to do. In some circles a designation like “shaman” is more acceptable than a designation like “sensitive.” Healing phenomena occur but are explained in different ways all based on context. If the healer comes from what is viewed as a “backward” culture, he or she is practicing witch-craft, if from a religious, he or she manifests miraculous power, if from a secular modern, the healing comes from a “healing stream”; an example is the German healer, Bruno Gröning. Santaria is an interesting hybrid in which pagan and Christian derivations are synthesized.
Terminology obscures the underlying elements—because the “psychic,” generally speaking, lies below the salt and no theory to explain it dominates. But that the phenomena observed are closely related should be obvious to any alert observer. Sainthood is associated with the “miraculous,” hence processes of sanctification involve the documentation of such events. These phenomena occur in and around the holy. Padre Pio and Solanus Casey are figures in my own time—so is Therese Neumann, who, however, has not advanced as far as Casey in the process. But we discover precisely the same kinds of phenomena associated with figures outside religious cultures too—or in cultures where no institution designates such people “saints.”
Terminology is also confusing because some designations in common use are drawn from specific effects rather than from a structured explanation of what gives rise to the effect. “Psychic” and “sensitive” are generic labels applied to people with obvious gifts (or are these misfortunes?) manifesting at mild levels: they can see the future vaguely, hear people’s thoughts, discover the hidden, find the murdered, help the police, etc. Their gifts are assigned to paranormal “powers”; I take “paranormal” to be a secular concept. But note that when these phenomena manifest in people with religious vocations, at least believers view these gifts as divine interventions, thus as “supernormal.” Mediums are named after a single skill to communicate with the dead in passive trance states—hence that designation. They are not agents, they are media of communications. Some mediums have other powers as well, but these tend to be ignored. When psychics manifest multiple powers and at higher levels, more potent words are joined to the “psychic” designation. An example in my time was Edgar Cayce, “the sleeping prophet.” Cayce brought healing messages after periods of sleep; he was also labeled a “medical clairvoyant.”
Where the religious element is to the fore, the operant assumption is that the miraculous results are in the nature of a reward for superior virtue. Observers rarely contemplate an inverse process of causation, thus that the person is religious in the first place because he or she was first a psychic and, in dealing with that experience, found religion an appropriate outlet and expression of it and virtuous behavior a suitable adaptation for managing the strains and stresses of that experience. That last explanation, I think, is often the best.
Further problems also arise because the psychic phenomenon, as such, may not actually be present in people carrying certain labels. Some saints are psychic, but by no means all saints are. Pope John Paul II, advancing toward sainthood now, was certainly not a psychic, although a splendid human being. Some mediums are psychics—others are frauds or, to put it more mildly, clever entertainers. Some magicians cultivate the label to give their high gifts of trickery and bold illusion additional attractions. And so on. The consequence in all such cases is that the absence of a good theory produces gullibility on one side and acidy skepticism on the other, with the consequence that a long-known body of phenomena do not produce genuine knowledge, and therefore insight, into the human condition.
The above, I think, might be sufficient to present the problem by way of introducing some speculation about the underlying commonality between all of these experiences—ranging from insanity on up to the highest levels of psychic functioning at the level of the great saint or seer. My own working hypothesis follows.
A Hypothesis
As I hope I've demonstrated above, various kinds of phenomena, with all kinds of different labels, are all based on the same fundamental situation, thus that insanity, miraculous events, prophecies, sainthood, healings, mediumship, shamanism, paranormal powers, and much else all have their roots in a single phenomenon. My linking of insanity, say, and sainthood, my strike some reader as highly provocative, perhaps as incendiary—while striking others as so true. In what follows I hope to disappoint people who hold either view.
My working theory on his very difficult and elusive subject may best be presented by using a hypothesis—a description. I start with the notion that the human body is adapted to life in a material dimension and, to make it work effectively, it has a very effective filtering system, built up over uncountable eons precisely to aid us—meaning life—to operate efficiently in a lower dimension and thus to shield us from interference. But interference from what? From an equally complex psychic world. Why we may be in the material sphere rather than in that other one, I will leave untouched for the moment. It might be in order to develop—in order, therefore, to rise to a higher level than the one in which we naturally originate. That hypothetical explanation will serve my purpose here; humanity has suggested other reasons and I’ve mentioned them elsewhere, most recently here. The basics of this hypothesis are simply three. One is that we are here, for whatever reason. Another is that continuous awareness of the other world would interfere with our mission here—development, let us say. And third, that our brains act as selective filtering mechanisms. They keep out the noise of the psychic world, which, at it lowest levels, may be chaotic— while permitting beneficial higher energies to reach us, energies that are helpful in our task, thus grace or baraka. That is the hypothesis.
Now the filtering mechanism has evolved naturally; it is excellent but not fault-free. It manifests at all sorts of levels. If it is too effective, it blocks out not only the noise but also most of the helpful energies of inspiration and therefore renders us excessively insensitive. If it is weak, it might have mixed consequences ranging from favorable to deplorable. Favorable consequences may be high levels of inspiration beneficial to personal and social life; unfavorable might be situations that make people into nervous wrecks. When the filter is too weak, it may cause definite hardship and, at the extreme, insanity. The filtering powers of the brain don’t necessarily affect intelligence or will—nor the other way around. Thus we have an enormous gradient of possible reactions. Some people can deal effectively with a great deal of psychic noise and hardship because of the kind of people they are. Others are not so inclined and will take undesirable paths in consequence, either because they hear too much or too little. Similarly, the most insensitive people can be and often are very straight and virtuous—while others act in a contrary way. The moral power is no more affected by the behavior of the filtering system than it is by other bodily endowments. Some people can deal with beauty—or it may be their downfall; they may deal with handicaps or fail to do so.
Now it seems to me that psychic gifts, considered generically, are all of them instances of relatively weak filtering mechanism. When they fail, insanity is the consequence, and that’s simply a misfortune. Short of that unfortunate result, the kind of “openness” I have in mind may range from what we properly call “gifts” all the way to “challenges.” They are gifts if the openness enhances favorable inflow of higher energies like inspiration or grace. They are challenges when they open people to interference that adds nothing to knowledge and diverts from life’s tasks. Based on my studies, the majority of psychics experience their gifts as burdens. They tend to experience the lower regions of the psychic reality, not the highest. They hear “voices”; some of them call these voices “guides.” Swedenborg’s spiritual diaries contain many accounts of such voices; most of them are marked by a high level of stupidity. Swedenborg also spoke with angels, but most of his exchanges were with very low kinds of entities—not evil, but dumb. Similarly—at least based on my readings—most psychic messages from the beyond are on the same level of mediocrity. Reading them I’ve time and again remarked to myself: “If that’s the stuff that’s coming from the beyond, why bother listening?” But some people have no choice in the matter. For this reason I wonder above, parenthetically, whether some of these gifts are really gifts; they might be more accurately described as misfortunes.
Healing powers are one kind of energy that flows in strongly, in some people, when the filtering is weak. Bruno Gröning is a good example. These power brought him mostly conflict and grief and, it seems, eventually killed him when he could not put it to use. A post on that subject may be found here.
All of the above suggests that a combination of factors inherent in the hypothesis—of filtering, openness due to weak filtering, the variability of the weakness, and the exercise of moral powers by the agents who experience these phenomena—can adequately explain based on a single relationship phenomena as widely differing as mediumship, insanity, and miraculous phenomena surrounding sainthood. Worth some thought.
What the available materials suggest to me is that the psychic world has a certain hierarchical structure and that its coarsest energies (and agencies) are closest to us, its highest more removed. The higher the development of the individual who experiences the “opening” the more likely it is that he or she will become aware of the heavenly ranges. This suggests that development of psychic “organs” is part of our mission here. When these are still primitive, we will still communicate with the beyond when the filtering fails, but with rather slummy regions of it. And this may also be true after we die. If we’ve developed our inner organs, we shall have sight, orientation, and upward mobility; if not, we may remain below.
It occurs to me here worth mentioning chemical mysticism, as it were, and chemical ways of enhancing the filtering. The first had a run, for a while, some decades back when “dropping acid” was a fad, thus the ingestion of LSD. The drug evidently (under my theory) temporarily weakened the filtering system and made the psychic world partially visible to people. Their own developmental level seems to have had an influence on the quality of their experiences, hence the frequent references to “bad trips.” Drug use in religious practices long predates the twentieth century. Similarly, drugs used to treat mental diseases, like schizophrenia, probably in part restore the filtering functions of the brain.
All of this, of course, however long (especially for a blog entry), fails to exhaust the subject. Far from it. It may well be that a certain opening or, negatively put, a “weakening of the filters,” may be a natural consequence of normal development. And this may explain the higher ranges of psychic perception. Whereas organic kinds of weakening, be it as a consequence of genetic causes, disease, or drug use account for the more troublesome aspects of psychic experience. And I, for one, know of at least one case where schizophrenia, followed by grandiose, quasi-religious, but definitely mad visions, was caused by drug abuse.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Naming of the “Inward Parts”
In the traditional view of the human being, the person is the “inward parts.” This post concerns the naming of this most familiar but also most elusive something. Elusive, yes, but as a Sufi phrase would have it, “nearer to you than your jugular vein.” Nearer than the jugular vein because we’re not the body—although, to be sure, even at this fairly basic level views diverge even within the confines of traditional thought. In the tradition influenced by Aristotle the soul-body duality is of the essence of the human; in other indeed in most spiritual traditions the body is secondary, a vehicle, in relation to the soul it is as the garment is in relation to the body itself; at death we’re off, like a dirty shirt...
In my own language I always contrast traditional with modern, and by modern I mean materialistic, thus a view that denies any reality to what we might call a “detachable” soul. Yet the inward parts have their own designations even in the modern scheme of things—and, furthermore, not just using single words like ego, self, or personality but more complicated schemes. The Freudian comes to mind: Id, Superego, and Ego. Here the inward parts form a triad, reflecting the primitive child-like id, the sum of social conditionings called the superego (the parent within), and then the ideal Freudian ego which faces reality as it is, refuses to project any of its wishes upon it, and simply calls a spade a spade.
Now the world in which we find ourselves may be a “school” in which we are expected to develop; it may be a state of degradation into which we’ve fallen because of our collective sin (as in “the Fall”); it may also be a realm in which we find ourselves captured, seduced to enter it by rash curiosity; or it may be a temporary but necessary adaptation in response to cosmic events long since forgotten. Human cosmologies have all sorts of explanations, but these have certain elements in common and others that diverge. The divergent elements have to do with responsibility. The responsibility for being here may be ours. Or it may be caused by the failure or the arrangement of higher levels of being; and these may be superior and benevolent or inferior and rebellious. The elements that cosmologies agree on are that we must develop while we’re here, as persons not as collectives; we must develop either to escape this realm at all or, once freed from it by death, to reach the proper place “over there” rather than end up in a place much worse than this one. The development required of us is that of our inward parts. No amount of body-building or acquisition of wealth, power, or mere knowledge will do us the least bit of good if our inner core, that permanent something, does not undergo a favorable change.
I find it interesting to contemplate the terminology used in different cultures to deal with this situation. In virtually all of them at least two states are recognized. One is the ordinary, unreformed, undeveloped self, the old Adam, the “mortal mind,” the unenlightened self. The other is the product of successful development. In Catholicism, minimally, this is the soul in a state of grace, thus purged of sin even if, before it reaches heaven it must still abide in purgatory for a while to burn away, manner of speaking, residual errors that in a Hindu system of belief would be called remaining karma. In Buddhism there are two states, the basic and as yet unreformed and the enlightened; once illumination has burned away all karma, liberation, and with it certain escape, has been achieved. No intermediate stages and ranks are stipulated, although the bodhisattva, equivalent to a high saint, is a person who, liberated, is still here or has returned to help others achieve escape. In the inner circles of spirituality, a hierarchy of development is always detectable. Thus we find in Catholicism a hierarchy of sinners, the virtuous, and the saints.
I’ve encountered the most extensive system of classification in Sufism. Here we learn of seven levels of developments. These are states of consciousness, or of souls. The word used is nafs, meaning breath or soul. Sufism unfolds a very sophisticated psychology that developed long before our own twentieth century forays into Freudian, Jungian, and other sophisticated psychologies. Seven, of course, is an arbitrary number we frequently encounter in these realms. I read that “seven” simply to mean a gradient from which seven points have been singled out for description. In this scheme we have the following selves or “breaths”:
Commanding
Accusing
Inspired
Serene
Fulfilled
Fulfilling
Purified and complete
Let me give some feel for the first three. The Commanding Self is the unreformed, ordinary self that develops naturally in society. It is what we’d call the ego or the personality, a structure of conditioned or acquired behaviors with only superficial consciousness. The Accusing Self is a soul that has developed enough to have a conscience; it is accusing—but accusing itself for failure and for heedlessness. It is the first level of actual development. All of these levels have their problems. In Catholicism, for instance, where soul-development is job one, this state of the self can sometimes slip into what is called a “scrupulous conscience,” which is a problem at this stage of development. The Inspired Self has developed sufficiently so that it is capable of perceiving the inflow of grace. The Accusing Self, having removed the barriers produced by this dimension sufficiently so that an inflow is possible, grace begins to work on the person and, as it participates in the development of the self, the self then ascends to even higher levels. Humble of necessity, I’ve never looked very far beyond the Accusing Self, but we do encounter instances of the higher levels in the flesh as well as in the lore.
Interesting, really, how systems of naming the inward parts develop—and how extensive the descriptions become when actual development proceeds beyond the first step or two. The absence of such concepts in ordinary discourse testifies to the general absence of interest in soul-development in the current culture. This then brings me to the “inspiration” for this posting. It was a program I heard on NPR’s Science Friday yesterday. There I learned that multi-tasking is not good for people. It causes the brain to focus rapidly on different tasks, and, in making these quick shifts, the brain experiences losses. Thinking of this as I was driving, I had to chuckle. Our culture’s problem is that it can’t even concentrate on one ordinary task at a time, I thought. And Job One, in this dimension, seems to be to concentrate with some real vigor on another world we cannot even see...
In my own language I always contrast traditional with modern, and by modern I mean materialistic, thus a view that denies any reality to what we might call a “detachable” soul. Yet the inward parts have their own designations even in the modern scheme of things—and, furthermore, not just using single words like ego, self, or personality but more complicated schemes. The Freudian comes to mind: Id, Superego, and Ego. Here the inward parts form a triad, reflecting the primitive child-like id, the sum of social conditionings called the superego (the parent within), and then the ideal Freudian ego which faces reality as it is, refuses to project any of its wishes upon it, and simply calls a spade a spade.
Now the world in which we find ourselves may be a “school” in which we are expected to develop; it may be a state of degradation into which we’ve fallen because of our collective sin (as in “the Fall”); it may also be a realm in which we find ourselves captured, seduced to enter it by rash curiosity; or it may be a temporary but necessary adaptation in response to cosmic events long since forgotten. Human cosmologies have all sorts of explanations, but these have certain elements in common and others that diverge. The divergent elements have to do with responsibility. The responsibility for being here may be ours. Or it may be caused by the failure or the arrangement of higher levels of being; and these may be superior and benevolent or inferior and rebellious. The elements that cosmologies agree on are that we must develop while we’re here, as persons not as collectives; we must develop either to escape this realm at all or, once freed from it by death, to reach the proper place “over there” rather than end up in a place much worse than this one. The development required of us is that of our inward parts. No amount of body-building or acquisition of wealth, power, or mere knowledge will do us the least bit of good if our inner core, that permanent something, does not undergo a favorable change.
I find it interesting to contemplate the terminology used in different cultures to deal with this situation. In virtually all of them at least two states are recognized. One is the ordinary, unreformed, undeveloped self, the old Adam, the “mortal mind,” the unenlightened self. The other is the product of successful development. In Catholicism, minimally, this is the soul in a state of grace, thus purged of sin even if, before it reaches heaven it must still abide in purgatory for a while to burn away, manner of speaking, residual errors that in a Hindu system of belief would be called remaining karma. In Buddhism there are two states, the basic and as yet unreformed and the enlightened; once illumination has burned away all karma, liberation, and with it certain escape, has been achieved. No intermediate stages and ranks are stipulated, although the bodhisattva, equivalent to a high saint, is a person who, liberated, is still here or has returned to help others achieve escape. In the inner circles of spirituality, a hierarchy of development is always detectable. Thus we find in Catholicism a hierarchy of sinners, the virtuous, and the saints.
I’ve encountered the most extensive system of classification in Sufism. Here we learn of seven levels of developments. These are states of consciousness, or of souls. The word used is nafs, meaning breath or soul. Sufism unfolds a very sophisticated psychology that developed long before our own twentieth century forays into Freudian, Jungian, and other sophisticated psychologies. Seven, of course, is an arbitrary number we frequently encounter in these realms. I read that “seven” simply to mean a gradient from which seven points have been singled out for description. In this scheme we have the following selves or “breaths”:
Commanding
Accusing
Inspired
Serene
Fulfilled
Fulfilling
Purified and complete
Let me give some feel for the first three. The Commanding Self is the unreformed, ordinary self that develops naturally in society. It is what we’d call the ego or the personality, a structure of conditioned or acquired behaviors with only superficial consciousness. The Accusing Self is a soul that has developed enough to have a conscience; it is accusing—but accusing itself for failure and for heedlessness. It is the first level of actual development. All of these levels have their problems. In Catholicism, for instance, where soul-development is job one, this state of the self can sometimes slip into what is called a “scrupulous conscience,” which is a problem at this stage of development. The Inspired Self has developed sufficiently so that it is capable of perceiving the inflow of grace. The Accusing Self, having removed the barriers produced by this dimension sufficiently so that an inflow is possible, grace begins to work on the person and, as it participates in the development of the self, the self then ascends to even higher levels. Humble of necessity, I’ve never looked very far beyond the Accusing Self, but we do encounter instances of the higher levels in the flesh as well as in the lore.
Interesting, really, how systems of naming the inward parts develop—and how extensive the descriptions become when actual development proceeds beyond the first step or two. The absence of such concepts in ordinary discourse testifies to the general absence of interest in soul-development in the current culture. This then brings me to the “inspiration” for this posting. It was a program I heard on NPR’s Science Friday yesterday. There I learned that multi-tasking is not good for people. It causes the brain to focus rapidly on different tasks, and, in making these quick shifts, the brain experiences losses. Thinking of this as I was driving, I had to chuckle. Our culture’s problem is that it can’t even concentrate on one ordinary task at a time, I thought. And Job One, in this dimension, seems to be to concentrate with some real vigor on another world we cannot even see...
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Is Confucianism a Religion?
Its usual description as an ethical system seems to suggest that it is not. It lacks a clergy, a theology, and seems entirely concentrated on behavior in the here and now. But if we spend even a brief period of time browsing through Confucius’ collected sayings, the Analects (an accessible version in English with helpful annotations is available here), the impression rapidly changes. A humble example (Verse 8, Chapter 15):
Confucius said:To see that Confucianism is a religion, one has to understand both the limitations and the potentials of words. One must appreciate what a word like ethics holds within it. As for the rest it is instructive actually to take verses from the Analects—there are plenty of them and therefore why not choose those that seem interesting—and to think about them for a while. A simplistic definition of religion excludes Confucius. An enlightened definition includes the old sage.
“Men with aspiration and men with benevolence do not sacrifice benevolence to stay alive, but would sacrifice themselves for benevolence.”
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Tao: Two Other Translations
Two posts back I gave the first section of Book I of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu. The original, of course, was written in Chinese characters, and quite diverse translations exist. I thought I’d show two others. The first is translated by Lin Yutang, the novelist and at one time the foremost introducer of Asian culture to the West. I read him in my teens. Here is Lin Yutang’s version; it is found in The Wisdom of China and India, Modern Library, p. 583; my version appeared in 1942:
The Tao that can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that can be given
Are not Absolute Names.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of All Things.
Therefore:
Oftentimes, one strips oneself of passion
In order to see the Secret of Life;
Oftentimes, one regards life with passion,
In order to see its manifest results.
These two (the Secret and its manifestations)
Are (in their nature) the same;
They are given different names
When they become manifest.
They may both be called the Cosmic Mystery:
Reaching from the Mystery into the Deeper Mystery
Is the Gate to the Secret of All Life.
This next version is a translation by Chang Chung-yuan and available in Tao: A New Way of Thinking, Harper Colophon, 1975, p. 3:
The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao itself.
The name that can be given is not the name itself.
The unnameable is the source of the univers.
The nameable is the originator of all things.
Therefore, oftentimes without intention I see the wonder of Tao.
Oftentimes with intention I see its manifestations.
Its wonder and its manifestations are one and the same.
Since their emergence, they have been called by different names.
Their identity is called the mystery.
From mystery to further mystery:
The entry of all wonders!
Now, with specific reference to the lines that begin with “therefore” in either translation, I would add this relevant quote from Idries Shah’s The Sufis (p. 26):
The Sufi is an individual who believes that by practicing alternate detachment and identification with life, he becomes free. He is a mystic because he believes that he can become attuned to the purpose of all life. He is a practical man because he believes that this process must take place within normal society.
The Tao that can be told of
Is not the Absolute Tao;
The Names that can be given
Are not Absolute Names.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the Mother of All Things.
Therefore:
Oftentimes, one strips oneself of passion
In order to see the Secret of Life;
Oftentimes, one regards life with passion,
In order to see its manifest results.
These two (the Secret and its manifestations)
Are (in their nature) the same;
They are given different names
When they become manifest.
They may both be called the Cosmic Mystery:
Reaching from the Mystery into the Deeper Mystery
Is the Gate to the Secret of All Life.
This next version is a translation by Chang Chung-yuan and available in Tao: A New Way of Thinking, Harper Colophon, 1975, p. 3:
The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao itself.
The name that can be given is not the name itself.
The unnameable is the source of the univers.
The nameable is the originator of all things.
Therefore, oftentimes without intention I see the wonder of Tao.
Oftentimes with intention I see its manifestations.
Its wonder and its manifestations are one and the same.
Since their emergence, they have been called by different names.
Their identity is called the mystery.
From mystery to further mystery:
The entry of all wonders!
Now, with specific reference to the lines that begin with “therefore” in either translation, I would add this relevant quote from Idries Shah’s The Sufis (p. 26):
The Sufi is an individual who believes that by practicing alternate detachment and identification with life, he becomes free. He is a mystic because he believes that he can become attuned to the purpose of all life. He is a practical man because he believes that this process must take place within normal society.
Explosive Words
I’m struck by the interesting relationship between the Western concept of “the church militant” and the Islamic concept of “jihad.” Both have positive meanings if viewed from within the faith system in which they arose but may be viewed negatively from the other—provided that the individual or group doing the viewing is moved by ignorance and ill will. From the Islamic point of view that “militancy” is the violent crusading spirit which brought war and mayhem to the Islamic world intermittently during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. (This comes to mind because I just finished reading one of Ellis Peter’s Cadfael novels.) From the Western point of view, jihad is terrorism.
Concepts can be as dangerous as high explosives. There is no escaping our mixed state in this dimension. Religious structures that came into being to raise humanity to a higher level themselves function in a chaotic environment, are themselves subject to decay, and are often captured by the very forces of ignorance that they would enlighten. Furthermore, they’re never finished and need the continuous effort of every generation even to function badly. Indeed those two expressions incorporate the very meaning of this struggle and its great difficulty. The last thing those on either side who formulated these expressions had in mind was the slaughter of the other.
Concepts can be as dangerous as high explosives. There is no escaping our mixed state in this dimension. Religious structures that came into being to raise humanity to a higher level themselves function in a chaotic environment, are themselves subject to decay, and are often captured by the very forces of ignorance that they would enlighten. Furthermore, they’re never finished and need the continuous effort of every generation even to function badly. Indeed those two expressions incorporate the very meaning of this struggle and its great difficulty. The last thing those on either side who formulated these expressions had in mind was the slaughter of the other.
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