Covered Over

Aldminster is a fictional cathedral in England created by Joanna Trollope in her novel The Choir. Here is a telling description of the dean’s wife:

When he [the dean] had wooed her and won her—no very arduous task, for she was thirty-two, very eager, yet very exacting as to the breeding and calling of her suitors—he discovered that she thought God was a part of mammon, a kind of high moral gloss available to put upon the good things of the world. He also discovered that she was not teachable, that she lacked not only any kind of self-awareness but, even more dangerously, the smallest atom of humility.

Joanna Trollope is a top-ranked writer and worthy descendant of Anthony Trollope—and, sure enough, one hears the voice of the genuine author as she looks down upon the world and dispassionately notes what she observes.

But questions do arise. Can observers like Joanna Trollop or like me really be sure that such descriptions are correct? If yes then people like the dean’s wife precisely match the modern description of what a human being is, thus a pure mechanism driven entirely by instinct and habits formed by her environment. If the modern description is correct, what do we make of people who can consciously process such a description? That takes self-awareness. But how can self-awareness be the product of mechanism?

The dean’s wife is a healthy, vital, energetic sort, busy, active, and very active in the social round, although quite manipulatively. She’s intelligent enough, indeed quite smart in reading the clues of her environment—and it’s a complex one. I loved this description when I read it the other day. It concentrates quite a few problems in living pattern usually absent from abstract discussions. Here are the problems. If she is really devoid of self-awareness (as her behavior indicates, but it’s typical behavior) and if she is nonetheless intelligent, is intelligence per se part of consciousness?

The traditional view is that intelligence is in the soul, not in the circuits of the brain. The dean’s wife is not a machine. She too has a soul. But then why does she behave in such a way as to seem an automaton—very complex but still one. My take is that she illustrates the human condition—and my favorite thematic, the fall. Her intelligence is too a function of her soul, but she is so covered over by the dust of some very ancient volcanic explosion that she is totally shielded from the higher currents that could bring her awake.

Now what the dean’s wife needs, in order to awaken, is hardship at a high enough degree (which need not be monetary or physical) so that, experiencing the pain, she will find herself. And then her escape from this dimension will begin. Paradoxical situation. The better things are, the less awareness. And those who are aware quite early in youth already should at least in thought be on their knees daily thanking the Lord for the gift of self-awareness. When it’s not a gift and you have to buy it, as it were, you have to pay with suffering.

A Minimalist Conclusion

Once we more or less grasp was life is all about—children are still protected from this—is the feeling that something is wrong—not in minor detail but in general. The traditional western expression of this is that we live in a fallen world; the eastern prefers the notion of ignorance—and the illusory and therefore unreal nature of existence.

At the root of this is what we are—and the fact that we must die. To quote from lyrics by the McGarrigle sisters:

We are meat, we are spirit,

We have blood and we have grace,

We have a will and we have muscle,

A soul and a face,

Why must we die?

…

We are human, we are angel,

We have feet and wish for wings.

We are carbon, we are ether,

We are saints, we are kings.

Why must we die?

Why must we die?

     Kate McGarrigle, Anna McGarrigle, Joel Zifkin, “Why Must We Die”

At the root is that we know this. And the contrast is so great that the “something’s wrong” conclusion naturally arises. None of this requires either revelation from on high or blinding enlightenment achieved by heroic breakthroughs to Nirvana. We can’t give that something any definition, but inside that cloud’s a spark of light. Humanity’s minimal conclusion also introduces the concept of right and wrong—and hence the powerful projection that there is somewhere else where we genuinely belong. Sheer logic tells us so—and a feeling for truth, which is also innate.

Thomas A. Williams and Mallarmé

I chance across books in what sometimes seems a random manner. Here for instance I have in hand Mallarmé and the Language of Mysticism by Thomas A. Williams. The circumstances, thus the other two books I chanced across in the same isolated spot, suggest that this book was my Mother’s acquisition, but already used—indeed already heavily marked up but not in her hand. Yes. She would have found Mallarmé fascinating. Thomas Williams was a Duluth-born but resettled New Hampshire novelist and professor. The book is still accessible on Amazon.

This work is bi-lingual, you might say. About a third is in French because all of Williams’ quotes of Mallarmé and of French authors about him are rendered in the original. Thus unless you’re really fluent in French, this is a bit of a labor. But what I find fascinating here is mostly in English. It contains a quite extensive collection of quotes from people who have themselves had mystical experiences—including names travelers in this zone know well (Eckhart, John of the Cross) and others quite unknown. Next, Williams thinks that the artistic and the mystical experience have the same rooting—if they are inward enough. Thus he ranks Mallarmé among the mystics although the poet was an atheist.

The book has value because it shows something I’ve long thought true, namely that such “penetrations” into the foundations of consciousness don’t produce any meaning beyond a meaningless ecstasy.  They sometimes happen accidentally; very often they are the consequences of very willful determination to get to the root of things—present in Buddhism and elsewhere. But what they are not is Revelation. They also produce, when deep enough, the powerful conviction of the emptiness of ordinary experience, thus reality-is-illusion—which it certainly is not. Therefore my conviction that this method of understanding reality is backwards. To go that way is possible but not intended. It’s either that or all these travails down here and all those galaxies up there are absolutely empty of meaning.

Travel or Community: Good Luck

A person isn’t really tested by solitude. Solitude is beatitude—provided, of course, that it isn’t marred by physical stimulation. Physical equilibrium, solitude: beatitude. Excitement, distraction, over-stimulation: the fallen state.  Escape is really only present when the person is genuinely sovereign in midst of the fallen state, not by merely muting its effects.

The Sufis teach that genuine learning takes place in the world, thus in the midst of hardship, hence they send disciples on travels. Travel is hard work. If you can keep yourself centered in that environment, you’ve got your stuff together; if not, you have a ways to go. A wonderful contrast comes to me by means of Kathleen Norris’ magical book†. She quotes a saying of St. Benedict’s that living in a community is asceticism as such. Or as Sartre once said, “Hell is other people.” The two teachings, in effect, are functionally identical.

Expanding on this just a little. A great chasm exists between mere knowledge and experience—and the dubious value of either emerges when the two are not actually fused. Experience alone is insufficient. It must be understood. Knowledge by itself, no matter how high or detailed, creates a false sense of superiority. When knowledge is tested by experience, the sense of one’s superiority is blown away like a useless bit of litter in strong wind.

A bit more. The body merely experiences—and by body here I include the whole structure of ordinary being, thus also “states” of mind, reflexive thought, emotions. And these in turn merely record reactions. The more dense the stimulus, the more dense the reactions. And to control this in theory simple input-output system demands an active state of detachment. But the detachment required isn’t merely “recollection in tranquility” but active presence in the midst of turbulence. That presence requires a kind of energy; but the hurly-burly consumes it—sucks the oxygen right out of the system—hence one loses one’s grip of the situation far too easily. Tough sledding, all of this—or an arduous climb. Tranquil solitude is but a kind of breathtaking in midst of an unending labor.

---------------

†Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.