The Life of the Mind

This is really a note on aging; if you are young, come back as you’re approaching eighty. The notion today is that as we become ever more aware of a life of the mind the more keenly I feel and sharply see the ridiculous side of physical life.

By “ridiculous side” I mean my own body and its ingestions and excretions, its dirt, smell, fatigue; its aches and pains—not what I’d call “nature,” thus its trees and birds and sky and grass. These days I feel directly a kind of general disgust my Mother expressed when she was the same age as I am now. I understood her at the intellectual level; now I actually feel what she must have felt then.

The life of the mind is also difficult to characterize fully. It is mistaken for intellectual pursuits. Those certainly play a role but are by far not identical. The life of the mind is simply an awareness or a feeling and oddly, also, a place that is not really a place in the sense of a spot you can define by using coordinates; it is a country but not one on any map of the word. It is a state of consciousness. It is a quite active state but not in the sense that that word has when local TV talks of Action News.

In this dimension everything is linked to matter not least the life of the mind. That life is closely tired to what I’d call natural activities like taking walks and engaging in handicrafts or chores, chores of a quiet type, thus sweeping but not vacuuming. The work may be quite complex like gardening or carpentry or writing or cooking—provided that it is routine and neither willfulness nor anxiety are present in the chest. Reading may be a part of it but not all reading; the subject matter and the tone are highly relevant.

The more absent certain aspects of the physical life are, the more the life of the mind comes to the fore. And here I note that, curiously, the physical as such may be quite potently present in it as, for instance, grime and effort are present in gardening. The physical, therefore, has two aspects: the “natural” and the “social”; by social I mean the collective activity of humanity. And it is the latter that needs to be muted to a maximum extent to experience the life of the mind as fully as we are able.

The thought occurs that life’s course is designed to enable us to experience the life of the mind, the inner life. And in that process minimizing involvement in the hurly burly of collective life may be of great value at any age.

Crises and the Inner Life

Certainly in times of crisis—perceived or real—various tensions between the social and the interior life become apparent. By “perceived” I mean, for instance, the current atmosphere produced by news of markets, political deadlock, misfortunes in war, and the like. These macroscopic phenomena don’t directly influence the daily life of most people right now, but they produce stresses in those whose personal horizons—in space and time—are expansive. Those who live in the narrow here and now and largely centered in the self, don’t react either to anticipated triumphs or dooms in the wider, in the outer world.

Interesting this. Empathy for others requires expanded personal horizons—thus caring for others. Superior judgment requires expanded time horizons—thus action with a view to future outcomes. But such characteristics link the person more closely to the world and thus distract from the inner life. The inner life might be encapsulated in the phrase “practicing the presence of God”—or, in other traditions, characterized by the word “detachment,” that detachment being from the world. Do empathy and foresight, markers of the higher life, conflict with the inner, the highest form of the higher life?

If someone is genuinely detached from the world, does that mean that he doesn’t care? Is that a kind of selfishness? Never mind the problems of the world. I’m after my own salvation, my own nirvana. What about mendicant orders (Christian and other) that let ordinary people labor for food that they accept because they have a “higher” vocation? Is there a problem here?

The problem is real—but only if we think in a linear way. One of the most maddening aspects of the higher life is that it isn’t linear—thus that it points out of this world, is at right angles to the three dimensions. When I manage to grasp and hold on to this—rarely for more than five minutes at a time—and crises tend to remind me—the problem disappears.

Detachment or conscious awareness of God—there is no spot where God is not—must coincide with, transcend, and at the same time fuse with caring for others and looking far ahead. It is an attitude, a will, to care while being inwardly separated from the great chaos all around. Identification is the technical word here. We can effectively act without being identified. To do this is the hardest thing in the world—but is rewarded with subtle energy by whatever name called. Neither those who are stressed by crises—nor those who just ignore them because they have no direct effect—are properly detached. Both represent linear adaptations to what is coming down. Detachment means to care, to act, and yet to be at peace, no matter what. The most popular version of this general view is a poem called Desiderata. It was written by Max Ehrman in the 1920s (link). One of its most quoted lines is this one: “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” Not a bad thought to hold as the Dow, this moment, struggles to reach 11,000 at 11:40am eastern time.