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.

Deepsea Diving

A neutral sort of way to understand “The Fall,” thus by a physical analogy, is to think of a radical change in environments. For human beings life at great depths in the ocean is not a natural way to live, to be. When we venture to such places, we need a supply of air and some protection against low temperatures and pressures. The world down there is deficient in the oxygen we need. The diving suit is an additional something that we require—and when we once more reach our proper environment, we take it off so that we can move more freely again, take deep breaths of the plentiful air, and enjoy the light of the sun.

One way to picture The Fall is by analogy. The realm where we rightfully belong may be pictured, walking with Theosophy for a moment, as a subtle world where we have subtle bodies—a world were those subtle bodies are nourished by energies of a kind not even detectable by science, a world where our light—indeed all radiations of the electromagnetic spectrum, the most subtle phenomena we know—would be considered coarse.

Now let us picture a very large community of that subtle realm either voluntarily or involuntarily falling into the coarse dimension of what we call materiality—where the electromagnetic, the most subtle there, is already of such density that it significantly interferes with the people’s proper functioning—as deep water interferes with ours. Suppose that they, deprived of the subtle ethers, can’t even properly remember what happened, cannot orient, get lost in the flux of matter, and even have major problems communicating one with the other.

Unlike us they do not suffocate in the material flux. They’re immortal, actually. They retain their subtle bodies but these lack the necessary force to influence the vast coarseness of matter much at all. But they find ways of adapting—although it takes millions of years. They begin to build themselves some diving suits beginning at the atomic level, where they are able to nudge the atoms this way and that. These suits—we call them bodies—gather and concentrate coarse energies—and they discover that these energies also carry residuals, to be sure, but still some real traces of the subtle ethers they once “breathed” as it were to energize their subtle bodies and used in other ways to maintain their memories and to communicate one with the other. This effort to make sense of The Fall, indeed to cope with it, becomes Job 1. And it grows in extent until, today, we call it life on earth. The object of that enterprise becomes—although vast numbers, having experienced confusion for so long, cannot all unambiguously grasp it—is to get back to the subtle world by gathering up enough of that subtle ether, call it grace, to make the trip back again.

Could be turned into a rather exciting TV series, actually—although, in season two or three, I’m fairly sure, the original theme will have been lost. But these higher beings, although greatly challenged by the environment, and vaguely remembering that they might have been guilty of some kind of disobedience, recklessness, or foolish curiosity are still immortal beings. And despite many failures along the way, still destined ultimately to succeed.