Category: spirituality

Consciousness and Conscience

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I have blogged on the subject of Consciousness before, relating it to the philosophy of panpsychism. Consciousness is essentially interior and relates to how we perceive the exterior. (Merriam-Webster define this as “physical or mental wakefulness in which a person is aware of their surroundings”.)

There are many levels of consciousness, such as that of plants, of animals, of ‘soap opera’ humans, of the masses in rigid societies, of the intelligencia of advanced societies, of spiritually realised individuals… The spiritual journey is, essentially the path of raising of consciousness to higher levels.

But this is not enough. The journey also has a moral dimension, encapsulated by the word conscience – awareness of guilt and what is right. (“Moral awareness” – Merriam-Webster)

Interestingly, Merriam Webster suggests that, although both words have the same Latin roots, English speakers were first made aware of conscience in the 13th century, and of consciousness in the 16th century. I note that the former were religiously dominated times, and the latter was around the time of the Reformation and the beginning of the scientific revolution.

I was led into this thought process reading Mick Collins’ book The Restorative Spirit. These two words consciousness and conscience help encapsulate humanity’s and our own developmental needs. And we need both, as they are complementary.

A blog by Steven Martyn expresses the distinction more clearly:

Consciousness is a mental state of knowing. Conscience is feeling that knowledge. The two are always meant to accompany one another because the knowledge is so dangerous if it’s not grounded in the feeling of wholeness and oneness. The feeling part which is so painfully missing these days is like an invisible tendon, connecting us to the whole body of reality. This connection is essential so we remember our wellbeing is inseparable from that of everything else’s well-being. Like the tendon in our arm, our knowledge and conscience guides its actions in an obligatory way to benefit the rest of the body and not just itself. Part of that obligation as a human is to act for change when there is imbalance. You need not look far and it need not be complicated. Usually the changes we need to make are right there in front of us. Generally our obligation in this life is to bring peace, joy and love with you wherever you go and to diminish the unnecessary suffering in the world…

From Innocence, Consciousness and Conscience by Steven Martyn

In today’s world the impression is given that we have lost the vital importance of conscience at the very top of our societies, when ego-driven bullshitters such as Trump and Johnson can achieve the highest levels of office in the Western World and ego-driven dictators can ride roughshod over the lives and destinies of whole peoples. I am reminded of the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in 2016:

“We have forgotten one of the most important lessons to have emerged from the wars of religion in 16/17C and the new birth of freedom that followed. A free society is a moral achievement. Without self-restraint, without the capacity to defer the gratification of instinct, and without the habits of heart and deed that we call virtues, we will eventually lose our freedom.”

Jonathan Sacks from Ethics reduced to economics.

In other words, raising of consciousness and development of conscience are vital.

Featured image is licensed from Shutterstock.

Stuck? 9 Reflection

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Continued from Stuck? 8 Scientific and Spiritual Practice. This is the final post of the series, preenting the conclusion of the original paper.

Reflection

I began by describing my own growing up, embedded in the materialistic dream that science has been a willing accomplice in imposing for hundreds of years. Mine is one of the last generations in the West to live the dream.

Analogous to my own experience, I suggested that we need to collectively embrace our spiritual potential – growing beyond our current Level of Being and gaining the wisdom to save our world. Failing which it will surely fall apart in crisis and conflict. Either way, the dream is over.

We need a new story of our place in the universe and what Thomas Berry calls the Great Work[i] we are called to achieve at this critical period in history – “to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner”.

A new dream of resolving the world crisis through the spiritual growth of humanity is surely so powerful that, once understood, many will join its cause. Indeed, understanding of the need brings responsibility for helping to make it happen. The evidence of Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson’s research[ii] suggests that millions of ‘cultural creatives’ are already engaged in the task. We may not be far from the ‘hundredth monkey’ effect [iii] when our common perception is changed, the Berlin Wall of materialism tumbles, and we later wonder what all the fuss was about!

The young adult emerging from a future education system will be comfortable with both science and spirituality, recognising their roles and their potential through models such as the Levels of Being and the Four Fields of Knowledge. They may choose to engage in science, still an important field of endeavour, with full understanding of the limitations of the stance of ‘objectivity’. And they will choose some sort of spiritual path, perhaps from a myriad of forms and guides available, eventually growing to become just their true spiritual selves.

2023 reflection: I believe that we have made progress over the twenty years since my original paper, but we still have a long way to go!

[i] See The Great Work, Thomas Berry

[ii] See The Cultural Creatives, Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson.

[iii] In a Japanese study in 1952 the knowledge of how to wash sweet potatoes was invented by one monkey, spread to a number of individuals, and then suddenly they could all do it. I was recently reminded of this in The Prophet, Thom Hartmann.

Stuck? 8 Scientific and Spiritual Practice

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Continued from Stuck? 7 The Four Fields of Knowledge.

Scientific and Spiritual Practice

We would hope to find common ground in the methods and principles which lie at the heart of scientific and spiritual practice.

What is the essence of the approach of science? Its main characteristics seem to be an aim for growth of a body of knowledge through exploration or experiment; an insistence on evidence and repeatability; a body of validated recipes that can be followed; some concept of peer review and consensus; and an openness to change as new ideas and evidence come along to change the current consensus paradigm[i]. And a certain humility – remember Gödel – no model is the last word.

What is the essence of spirituality? Its main characteristics are perhaps an aim for growth of an individual or group through inner exploration, experience and service; an insistence on inner evidence, reinforced by repeatability; a body of validated recipes (yoga) that can be followed; validation of the consensus of others by oneself; and an openness to change as new ideas and experience/ evidence indicate the need to further develop. And a spiritual humility – we can never assume that ‘that’s it, I/ we finally made it’.

Not a lot of difference really! And each is ‘scientific’ in its own way.

David Lorimer[ii] suggests that a similar spirit inspires the search for truth in both science and spirituality: “Exploration expressed in wonder and curiosity; Creativity and imagination – bringing forth new models and discoveries; Critical and analytical rigour – applied to methods and procedures; Practice – through experimental prediction and testing; Openness and awareness of metaphysical assumptions.”

Lorimer suggests that it is in the last of these that history shows scientists falling down, remaining too attached to their current theories and basic assumptions – and we could add that the same is true for religions. Both can only make the progress needed for integration through openness and the recognition of an expansive metaphysics such as the ontology of the Levels of Being and the epistemology of the Four Fields of Knowledge[iii].

2023 reflection: what I never considered in the original essay was the subversion of science to commercial ends, so that much current scientific practice is not actually objective as the theory says, it is science used for specific purposes. Paradoxically this sort of science is very much subjectively driven. Also, the materialistic framework of scientism is now pretty well discredited. At bottom, there appears to be no inconsistency between the practice of science and of spirituality, albeit that the focus is different. It seems to be easier to assert this in 2023 than it was twenty years ago.

[i] The word ‘paradigm’ was first coined in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn. Its common meaning now is a body of knowledge that is generally accepted. In its original formulation I understand that Kuhn was more precise in including the recipe or approach as part of the paradigm.

[ii] David Lorimer’s reflections on science and spirituality are in his introduction to The Science of Spirit, ed David Lorimer.

[iii] Metaphysics: theoretical philosophy of being and knowing

Ontology: department of metaphysics concerned with the essence of things or being in the abstract

Epistemology: theory of the method or grounds of knowledge

So ontology is about the world as it is, and epistemology is about what we can know about the world.

Stuck? 7 The Four Fields of Knowledge

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Continued from Stuck? 6 Levels of Being

The Four Fields of Knowledge

Schumacher goes on to consider the question of what can we know about the world. He identifies four fundamentally distinct fields of such knowledge[i], corresponding with combinations of the two pairs ‘I / the world’, and ‘inner experience / outer appearance’. These four fields are each different and require different approaches to gaining knowledge – and in each field knowledge can be gained about the Levels of Being.

The ‘inner I’ is the field of the subjective – of inner psychological and spiritual development. Here applies the Delphian inscription ‘know thyself’.

The field of ‘inner world’ relates to our understanding of (and empathy with) the inner world of others, and our culture. The traditional wisdom says that we can understand other beings only to the extent that we know ourselves, so there is a crucial relationship with the ‘inner I’.

In these two ‘inner’ fields we find ‘my own’ and ‘shared’ values respectively, and Plato’s divine qualities of the beautiful and the good[ii], the aesthetic and moral dimensions. These are the fields neglected by the obsession with objectivity, and here lie today’s neglected qualities and values.

The ‘outer I’ is the field of ‘myself as known to others’, and the ‘outer world’ is the physical world around us. Here objective science has established its domain. We can describe, form theories about, and experiment on the world, so long as we remember that this supposed objectivity has its reflection in the inner fields. These two outer fields are the domain of Plato’s third divine quality, the true.

Schumacher makes the useful distinction between the ‘descriptive’ sciences such as botany, which ask “what do I encounter”, and the ‘instructional’ sciences such as physics, which ask “what must I do to obtain a certain result”.

The instructional sciences are the domain of ‘proof’, and only effectively operate with lower Levels of Being (higher Levels of Being have too many degrees of freedom for such strict causality). Instructional sciences are only relevant to the ‘outer’ fields. The descriptive sciences, he suggests, are sterile without ideas from inner experience, hence are not so confined. (Goethe pointed the way many years ago with his science of wholeness[iii].) However, there is no concept of ‘proof’ in the descriptive sciences. For example, we can never conclusively ‘prove’ the Theory of Evolution.

Ken Wilber suggests that science needs to operate with awareness of the Four Fields of Knowledge – and scientists operating within the subjective fields will change themselves – no longer the objective observer, but participatory in nature[iv]. For example, future astronomers may reconnect with the ancient knowledge of astrology that their some of their 20th century equivalents have so assiduously denigrated[v].

Synthesis

So we have the framework of the Four Fields of Knowledge which encompasses objective science, but is not dominated by it. It demonstrates the restricted scope of scientific materialism, and the ‘inner’ fields it wilfully excludes.

And we have the previously almost universally accepted Levels of Being, which provide a coherent framework for a universal spirituality. The Four Fields of Knowledge indicate the necessary scope of that spirituality in terms of how we relate to, and are seen by, others – and indicate different ways in which science can seek to understand spirituality.

For me, these provide a convincing and satisfying framework within which science and spirituality can happily co-exist. Wilber discusses this reconciliation in more depth[vi], suggesting that both sciences and religions need to release their attachment to the belief that their myths are the only valid ones.

Of course, the adoption of such a framework has implications on growth and transformation for everyone on the planet, and for humanity as a whole. When we have faith in it, it will become reality, and humanity will become more than it is today.

2023 perspective: I sense that this framework is becoming much better understood through work of such as the Scientific and Medical Network and the Institute Of Noetic Sciences. Here is evidence of the cracks of change undermining the materialistic mental mind.

The featured image shows Ken Wilber’s four quadrants, similar to Schumacher’s framework.

[i] The Four Fields of Knowledge, or four quadrants, have more recently been extensively explored by Ken Wilber in his various works such as A Theory of Everything. Wilber uses the similar (but not identical) split ‘individual / collective’, rather than ‘I / the world’.

[ii] In A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber relates Plato’s ‘big three’, the Beautiful/ Good/ True to the four quadrants and to similar major concerns of philosophers such as Popper (subjective/ cultural/ objective), Habermas (subjective sincerity/ intersubjective justness/ objective truth) and Kant (critiques of judgement/ practical reason/ pure reason).

[iii] Goethe’s approach to science is outlined in The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science, Henri Bortoft. For discussion of a science of quality see How the Leopard Changed Its Spots, Brian Goodwin.

[iv] For an extended discussion of participation see The Participatory Mind, Henryk Skolimowski

[v] Indeed astrology is today used as a tool to help in psychological development. See e.g. Astrological Psychosynthesis, Bruno Huber.

[vi] Reconciliation of science and religion is discussed at length in The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Ken Wilber

Stuck ? 6 Levels of Being

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Levels of Being

Continued from Stuck? 5 World crisis and its roots

In the 1970s E.F.Schumacher[i] was one of the voices crying in the wilderness for humanity to change direction. He diagnosed the basic philosophical problem underlying the ‘Western’ world view, suggesting that the breakthrough attributed to Descartes represented a break with the traditional wisdom of earlier societies, and its essential truth that there are different Levels of Being. These Levels are represented in the physical world by the essentially different natures of mineral, vegetable, animal and human – and by the corresponding mysteries of matter, life, consciousness and self awareness. And the wisdom tradition indicates that there are also higher levels of soul and spirit that we humans can aspire to.

This seems fundamental. If we do not recognise the possibility of higher Levels of Being then we voluntarily impoverish ourselves. Schumacher makes it clear: “The level of significance to which an observer or investigator tries to attune himself is chosen, not by his intelligence, but by his faith… his fundamental presuppositions and basic assumptions.” It seems clear that the materialists had thrown out the baby of human potential with the bath water of the religious faiths whose dominance they were trying to break away from.

Since lower Levels of Being are not aware of higher Levels, or of their significance[ii], this has encouraged the majority of people to stumble along in a materialistic trance, lemmings approaching the cliff edge of the end of the world. And all in accord with a simplistic and restricted materialistic faith, known as scientism[iii], that does not recognise our true potential.

In the world of my upbringing the word ‘faith’ was always coupled with the word ‘irrational’, conveniently ignoring the faith that underlies the materialistic view itself. An optimistic faith based on the premise of the existence of higher Levels of Being, for which there is so much testimony from our forebears and contemporaries, seems the rational response to the situation we find ourselves in. Higher Levels of Being generally correspond with a more inclusive and less selfish approach to the world (for example in my earlier heroes, M.K.Gandhi and Martin Luther King).

If we do not choose to follow the quest for those higher Levels we will certainly never achieve them, instead continuing along our present destructive path.

Accepting the concept of Levels of Being, we can see religions as being potentially in the role of providing alternative paths towards those higher spiritual Levels[iv]. There is a strong attraction to the idea that there is this common core at the heart of all the world’s religions, as confirmed, for example, by Huston Smith’s extensive research[v]. Religions become different paths towards a common aim, which is to connect with that which is highest in humanity. Each religion provides its own approach for following the path to this common spirituality, like a crutch which can be discarded when we are able to stand on our own spiritual feet.

2023 perspective: Many authors have taken up this theme. The extensive body of Ken Wilber’s work and his Integral Philosophy provide a comprehensive model of the levels of being. There are also countless modern spiritual exemplars and a huge selection of books related to various paths. Yet the materialist juggernaut trundles on and on in the ‘real world’...

Featured image shows models of Levels of Being by Sri Arobindo and Ken Wilber,
by Joshua Jonathan, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

[i] E.F.Schumacher is most well known for his work Small is Beautiful. His philosophical ideas (discussed here) were published posthumously in A Guide for the Perplexed.

[ii] Schumacher explains the Great Truth of adaequatio – nothing can be perceived without an appropriate organ of perception, and nothing can be understood without an appropriate organ of understanding. “If a man persuades himself that the only ‘data’ worth having are those delivered by his five senses, and that a ‘data processing unit’ called the brain is there to deal with them, he restricts his knowing to that Level of Being for which these instruments are adequate, and this means mainly to the level of inanimate matter.”

[iii] Scientism – a materialistic faith that everything will be explained by objective science; “the religion that thinks current equations are revealed truths agreed by God… at the beginning of the universe” (Charles Tart, tongue-in-cheek at a Mystics & Scientists conference)

[iv] The role of religions as paths to higher Levels is discussed in The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Ken Wilber.

[v] The abbreviated conclusion of Huston Smith’s extensive researches of the world’s religionsis in Forgotten Truth, Huston Smith. For illustrative texts from all the major religions see Universal Wisdom, Bede Griffiths. The 1993 Parliament of World Religions produced a draft of core values Towards a Global Ethic.

Stuck? 5 World crisis and its roots

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Continued from Stuck? 4 The technological/ business/ capitalist world

World crisis and its roots

As a result of ‘the system’, as is now widely understood by scientists, the world is in crisis[i] – stressed environments, species loss, global warming, social deprivation and poverty, weapons of mass destruction etc. The result of our selfish materialistic system, and its irrational over-dependence on oil[ii], threatens to destroy our civilisation completely. Recent environmental catastrophes such as oil and chemical spills and widespread floods, and political catastrophes such as wars and terrorism, are but some of many recent warning signs.

The symptoms suggest a collective mental dissociation from the emotional and physical effects of our actions. Just as in my own life-threatening crisis, the battle between material desires and spiritual values rages. It seems a reasonable analogy[iii] to suggest that we need to collectively grow up, beyond the simple certainties of selfish materialism, to integrate our human mind, heart and body (the planet) and build a world based on spiritual values, to the benefit of the common good.

Just as I needed to integrate my own neglected feelings, we need to connect with our hearts. We know that it is things of the heart that really matter, whilst the glamours and illusions of today’s transient desires for consumer goods and money soon pall and fade[iv]. If we will but listen, our hearts are in anguish over the state of our planet and the threat to our children, and to our children’s children and future generations. But, as Al Gore has persuasively argued, we are collectively still in denial[v]!

Only with inspired creativity and wisdom can we solve the many divergent problems of the world crisis. The mind alone acts out of the power-based balancing of interests we see in world politics today, leading eventually to the relative neglect of concerns of body, heart and spirit that we also see. Mind, heart and spirit in concert can harness intuition to act with wisdom, doing what is best for all[vi].

Origins

Many commentators have suggested that it was around the time of the emergence of modern science in the 16th/ 17th centuries that the current split in our consciousness occurred[vii]. Simplistically, Descartes split our mind (res cogitans) off from the world (res extensa). The disembodied intellect (cogito ergo sum) controlled the world. Francis Bacon clarified the separation of science and religion, stating that the scientific method has no moral significance. What sounded at first a reasonable separation of concerns and striving for objectivity became a flight from qualities and values. By the 18th century Enlightenment, science “seemed to have dispensed with the need for God as a necessary factor in its explanation of the universe”[viii].

The resulting paradigm of scientific materialism has proved to be inadequate to describe the world we live in. With its fellow, capitalism, it has in some parts of the world created wealth and technology undreamed of. On the other hand, it has destroyed and exploited communities on a grand scale and is instrumental in the world crisis. Humanity would seem to have a choice – to transcend this simplistic paradigm, or to create an environment that is increasingly unsympathetic to the existence of human beings, perhaps to perish.

Our collective human psyche needs to be healed from the ‘Descartian’ split and re-inspired.

2023 perspective: It is difficult to comprehend that things have actually got worse over the last 20 years, despite all the many clarion calls across the years. The modern ‘permacrisis’ now threatens humanity’s very future. We now live in the crisis years when change becomes inevitable.

Featured image is NASA chart showing global CO2 levels since 800,000 years ago.

[i] The world crisis is documented in many places, notably in the annual State of the World reports by Lester R. Brown for the Worldwatch Institute.

[ii] For an inspiring work on the problems of the oil economy and what we need to do, see The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Thom Hartmann.

[iii] ‘As above, so below.’ Analogy and correspondence are tools of the traditional wisdom.

[iv] For discussion of glamours and illusions see GLAMOUR, A World Problem, Alice Bailey

[v] A good analysis of the state of denial of our dysfunctional civilisation is given in Earth in the Balance, Al Gore. The failure of the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg to produce coherent action plans illustrates the continuation of this denial.

[vi] In A Guide for the Perplexed, E.F.Schumacher distinguishes between ‘science for understanding’, which he equates to wisdom, as primarily directed towards the True, the Good and the Beautiful, with the modern ‘science for manipulation’ primarily directed towards material power.

[vii] The evolution of Western ideas is brilliantly captured in The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas. There is also a concise summary in Earth in the Balance, Al Gore.

[viii] Quoted from The Enlightenment, Norman Hampson.

Stuck? 3 Personal crisis and growth

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Continued from Stuck? 2 Early doubts.

Personal crisis and growth

It took more than theories to really change that simplistic materialistic viewpoint that had emerged from my school days. It was in the crucible of everyday experience, of relationship and conflict in the real world – the development of the psyche that began to recognise that it was more than mind.

First, there was body and feelings to be accorded their due. Body rebelled at improper treatment through lack of exercise, late nights, alcohol, etc., and had to be accommodated. And for many years I had not really understood ‘feelings’, hardly being aware of the consequent moods foisted onto those around me. Slowly awareness dawned. The mind had a role, but it was in accepting and working with body and feelings, not repressing them. But this was not all.

After years of an unsatisfactory selfish life style, and years of denial, I eventually realised that I was in crisis. An essential selfishness in my being was leading me on a destructive path, which could destroy my material life altogether. I see retrospectively that an inner battle raged between material desires and spiritual values, with conscience as the insistent arbiter. I made painful changes to my life to get back onto a steady track, towards becoming a personality integrated within itself and with the world.

I was inspired to follow directions indicated by earlier intuitions, eventually discovering meditation. This proved a wonderful systematic tool for personality integration, and for ongoing exploration into what I term my higher self – which seems to correspond with the worlds of soul and spirit apparently universal to human experience and documented by many[i].

Expressed simply, I was embarked upon the process of integration of the personality, resolving the previous dissociation of mind/ feelings/ body, and beginning to connect with my higher self/ soul/ spirit[ii]. Inevitably this led to becoming gradually less selfish and more concerned with the general good – the real experience of a developing spirituality. [I lay no claim to great spiritual achievement, being merely an open-minded explorer and seeker.]

2023 perspective: this is a never-ending process; the only destination lies the other side of the dying process. There are many books that I have read since those days, all highly recommendable. See eg the many reviewed on this blog.

[i] The most influential of my guides (written 2002) have perhaps been the extensive works of Paul Brunton and Alice Bailey. See e.g. The Wisdom of the Overself, Paul Brunton, A Treatise on White Magic, Alice Bailey. There are many others.

[ii] A more modern description and approach to personal development is in Psychosynthesis, Roberto Assagioli.

Stuck? 2 Early doubts

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Continued from Stuck? 1 Education of a Materialist.

Early doubts

I always had intimations that there might be something more to life than materialism, choosing the label ‘agnostic’ if pressed on my beliefs [atheism seemed to me to be irrational bravado].

Mathematics had given me an insight of enormous value in my subsequent deliberations. Gödel’s theorem[i] shows that any mathematical system is in a sense incomplete – there are things outside of the system that cannot be known within it. Since much science is essentially about the construction of mathematical models of reality this seems enormously relevant to our subject. There can be no complete model of the universe. Period.

Physics also suggested that the materialistic viewpoint had its limitations. Paradoxes of relativity indicated that different people apparently aged at different rates. Quantum theory seemed even more challenging. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle suggested that science could not be as precise as it had seemed. You couldn’t even know, at the same time, how fast a particle was moving and where it was. And something was a wave or a particle depending on what you were looking for!

Quantum phenomena also included non-locality, when physically remote parts of the universe appeared to be causally and instantly connected[ii]. So-called paranormal phenomena came to seem quite plausible, and indeed are well documented, despite being apparently resistant to proof by controlled experiments.

Astronomy and its bedfellow cosmology offered exciting materialistic visions of our context in space and time. ‘Big bang’ theorists argued against, and prevailed over, ‘steady state’ theorists. And yet what did it all mean – and what came before the bang?

In the background I was becoming aware of the exciting psychology of Freud and Jung, then humanistic psychology and Maslow, and later Assagioli’s psychosynthesis. People grew to self actualisation or individuation. I had special experiences that later found the label ‘peak experiences’. I was convinced that these were intimations of my own potential for something more[iii].

I was also drawn towards the Eastern religions, particularly through the evocative novels of Hermann Hesse[iv] and the philosophical writings of Alan Watts[v]. There seemed to be sense here, notably in Buddhism and Taoism. But Christianity became more and more of a puzzle. The great European Gothic cathedrals were wonderfully evocative and inspiring buildings, surely pointing to something more than material concerns. The teachings of Christ largely made sense. And yet I became increasingly aware of the great crimes done over the centuries in the name of the church and Christ, such as the persecution of Cathars, the various Inquisitions and Crusades, even the apparent tacit support of the Nazi regime in the Second World War. I realised that the church, and the religion, were not the spiritual essence.

And there were great heroes, such as M.K.Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who achieved great things for humanity, apparently driven by the fire of an unselfish spirit.

Twenty years later, there is much more evidence of the validity of a ‘spiritual’ world viewpoint, from many great researchers, including the Integral philosophy pioneered by Ken Wilber and a whole raft of inspirational spiritual and psychological teachers. Yet, the materialistic emphasis of the everyday world continues as ever, driven by the interests of those in power, across the world, reinforced by the internet and social media that encourage us to skate across the surface of things, rather than penetrate below and inwards. The contradiction between the teachings of the great spiritual leaders – Christ, Buddha, Taoism, Hindu, etc. – and the institutions established in their name, is ever apparent.

To be continued in Stuck? 3 Personal crisis and growth.

Featured image of stars by Nova Dawn Astrophotography,
CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Notes

[i] Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel’s theorem is discussed in The Emperor’s New Mind, Roger Penrose. Of course, chaos theory has more recently demonstrated that non-linear systems can exhibit inherently unpredictable emergent properties, but that’s another story…

[ii] A modern perspective on Quantum Theory is in Schrödinger’s Kittens, John Gribbin

[iii] The Outsider, Colin Wilson was a strong early influence.

[iv] Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse is a particularly sublime work.

[v] See e.g. The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts

Stuck? 1 Education of a Materialist

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Twenty years ago, early in my retirement, I wrote an essay on ‘Science and Spirituality: Complementary or Contradictory?’ as a submission for a Resurgence Magazine Essay Competition. It expressed my understanding of the dominant thinking of the time, and its limitations, through the lens of science and spirituality. It didn’t win the prize and the essay was just filed away on the computer.

Recently, I came across it, and thought that it would be interesting to reflect on my views as expressed all those years ago. Has anything changed? Am I any wiser than I was then? Are we collectively any wiser than we were then? Did anything change, or am I/we just stuck in my/our thinking? To attempt to answer these questions, I am serialising that essay over a number of blog posts, with any commentary that seems appropriate, in italics. You are welcome to join me on the journey.

Preamble

Science and spirituality are part of our collective experience. That they could be contradictory now seems strange to me, and yet once they seemed so. This series of posts draws parallels between my own personal experience of growth and the corresponding growth of humanity; reconciliation of a complementary science and spirituality is a fundamental part of this process.

Education of a materialist

My school years centred around the 1950s in Lincoln, England. Science was king. I well remember the reverence accorded to white-coated boffins on the television (when we eventually got one in 1953). What they said was treated as gospel. The pressure from teachers was for the sciences. This was the future, what the country needed. Humanities were second best, for those with no aptitude for science.

When we were kids, religion was singing in morning assembly, and being sent to the Methodist chapel on Sundays. The minister told bible stories and warned us of the dangers of alcohol, while parents kept away and did the gardening. Yet we loved the occasional lay preacher who came with song and speeches that stirred our soul with their passion. Except we had no concept of soul.

Spirituality was something we secretly found out about through reading library books. It seemed to be all to do with séances, ouija ouija boards and magic. It was not talked about in polite society, and definitely not recognised as valid by science.

So I emerged from the education system with an essentially materialistic scientific viewpoint, deeply sceptical of religion, and uncomprehending of spirituality. After studying mathematics, I took up what was then called computer science, and soon became information systems engineering. I joined the everyday world of industry, married and eventually we started a family.

That was the preamble, still valid today. To be continued in Stuck? 2 Early doubts.

Featured image of Lego city by Lamiot,
CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Alignment

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Moon, Venus and Jupiter were aligned over Knutsford when I looked out one evening last week.

A happy occurrence of heavenly alignment. This one even pretty well aligns with the street lamp on earth.

Have we forgotten what it is to align our affairs with those in heaven? Do we always act from the highest motive, for the greater good? This question becomes ever more urgent amid the permacrisis with undercurrents of unwinnable warfare.

On a more mundane note, I was amazed to find that this photograph looked even remotely presentable, having been taken hand-held with my smartphone. There’s some incredible software in these things!

Science and Spiritual Practice

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On reading the book with the above title by Rupert Sheldrake, I was surprised to discover that Rupert and I had a number of things in common. Rupert was born and grew up in Newark-on-Trent in a Methodist family. As he became fascinated by science, he became aware that most of his science teachers were atheists. Science and atheism went together. Similarly, I grew up in Lincoln, a mere 30 miles away and several years later, and was initially exposed to Methodism until the unrelenting materialism of the science at school led me into a deep scepticism about religion.

Rupert always felt that purely objective science was inimical to the study of biology; it seemed to be based on killing the things it was investigating. Eventually, through the inspiration of Goethe, he came to be an independent scientist with his own theories of what was called morphic resonance. After the then-fashionable experimenting with meditation and eastern religions, Rupert eventually returned to Christianity, which he has practised ever since, alongside an increasingly recognised scientific career.

Our paths crossed briefly in the 1990s, when Rupert came up to Knutsford and stayed at our house, to deliver a fascinating Knutsford Lecture on the subject of ‘Dogs that Know When their Owners are Coming Home’. As a person, he was delightful to be with, unpretentious and yet seemed very wise.

Anyway, on to the book that is the subject of this review. Rupert refers to research that shows that religious and spiritual practices confer benefits in terms of physical and mental health. He has chosen 7 specific practices to concentrate on, that are common to the major religions, and each of which he has personally experienced. As he says, spirituality is about practice, not about belief. For each, he suggests ways of gaining direct experience of these practices.

The seven practices covered are: meditation; the flow of gratitude; reconnecting with the more-than-human world; relating to plants; involvement in rituals such as choral evensong; music, singing and chanting; pilgrimages and holy places. We are encouraged to get involved in each of these as part of our journey. And Rupert is suggestive, not prescriptive – a somewhat homespun approach to spiritual practice, but maybe that’s what we need. As one who has been involved in most of these as part of my own journey, I can say that it all makes sense – practical spirituality.

The concluding chapter suggests that each of these practices is a way of connecting – to our minds, to others, to the more-than-human world, to different life forms, to our social past, to the flow of life, to holy places. This is by no means an exhaustive list of practices, but engaging in them enriches our spiritual life. It also has measurable benefits, which will please the secular/ scientific reader, but come as no surprise to the more spiritually inclined. Rupert is doing great service in potentially spreading spiritual practices to a wider part of the population, without them feeling they are becoming part of ‘woo woo’ spirituality.

Featured image is of Boston Stump, a holy place in Boston, Lincolnshire – not far from Newark and Lincoln.

Anger and Criticism – Assagioli

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I’ve always found anger and criticism difficult to handle, both in myself and in others. It provides for a lifelong set of learning experiences. As it does, I am sure, for many other people. Consider, for example UK Minister Dominic Raab, currently being investigated for bullying many civil servants. I don’t know, but he sounds like an extremely angry and critical man.

I just came across this short consideration of these attributes, by Roberto Assagioli, quoted by Kenneth Sorensen, which I have somewhat edited. Some may find this helpful.

Anger

“We will now examine another of the greatest obstacles standing in the way of spiritual development: the tendency towards personal self-affirmation, and the aggressive ways in which this manifests itself. It can take various forms: some impulsive in nature, others of a more calculated type. We will consider them together because it often happens that emotional and mental elements coincide within us in a complex fashion.

Among the manifestations of aggression we might mention antagonism in its various forms: anger, rage, resentment, condemnation, reproach and criticism.

Anger or rage is the reaction brought about by any obstacle or threat to our existence or to our sense of self-affirmation in a given area. The fact that it is a ‘natural’ reaction does not of course mean that it is an appropriate one, nor even that it serves any useful purpose for those selfish goals of self-affirmation that it seeks to promote. Quite often in fact it only serves to cause damage: anger is the worst of counsellors and if it is not brought under control it will result in violence and all manner of excess. Anger, like the Australian boomerang, returns to the one who launched it. This is so obvious it hardly needs stating, but unfortunately we often forget the most obvious and basic things in life!

Another harmful effect of anger is that it plays a pivotal role in the production of poisons in our system. These poisons are also produced by resentment, which we might regard as a chronic irritation.”

Criticism

“I think it appropriate, however, to focus our attention on one aspect of the fighting instinct, which is so subtle and insidious, so widespread, and which, because of its seriously harmful effects, deserves special attention. That is the area of criticism – the tendency… to blame and belittle our fellow human beings at every opportunity…

…many basic human tendencies find considerable satisfaction in the exercise of criticism. In the first place, criticism satisfies our self-affirmation instinct: discovering and pointing out the shortcomings and weaknesses of others gives us a pleasurable sense of superiority, as well as nicely bolstering our pride and arrogance. In the second place, it provides an immediate outlet for our aggressive energies: it gives us all the satisfaction of an easily won victory with no danger to ourselves (because the enemy is not present), and it seems a harmless pursuit – often, in fact we feel it our duty to criticize – so it is not subject to any check or inner censure, and our moral conscience is taken in.

We might add that for many people who have to suffer domination by others without being expected to fight back, or who have to put up with situations and circumstances they find disagreeable but can do nothing to change, criticism is the only way in which they can give full vent to their hostility and to their repressed resentment. It is the only safety valve they have for reducing their inner tension…”

Effects of criticism

“Criticism is one of the most insidious of the glamours which goodwill can eradicate because it is a double-edged glamour, that is, it affects both its originator and its object. To think of someone critically builds a thoughtform through which we then see that person whenever we look at him. Consequently, the weaknesses and failures with which we have surrounded him are the main things we see in him, while his good qualities and his real self are hidden by what we have built. But not only do we see him through the veil of our own thinking; we are also projecting it onto him and, when criticism is voiced, are clothing him in this in the eyes of others also. All this is definitely harmful and may have far-reaching and devastating effects. It produces reactions in the person we criticise which—according to his type—may be of a depressive nature or of counter-criticism and active hostility against ourselves.

But the harm we inflict on ourselves by our critical attitude goes even deeper. Not only are we affected by the “ boomerang-reaction ” of others, but our criticisms evoke the same faults and negative aspects in ourselves and thus stifle the opposite good qualities. This is our self-inflicted—and well-deserved—punishment!

We often criticise thoughtlessly, without recognising that we are being harmful, but it has been said that criticism lets in more glamour than we ever realise. We should beware of the temptation of “sitting in judgement”. We may be under the delusion that we are seeing people as they really are, but this is rarely the case.

To criticise is a particular temptation for those with an active mind. The outstanding characteristic of the intellect is to analyse, dissect and separate; therefore the more people are becoming mentally polarised, the more the cultivation and expression of goodwill is needed. It is a first expression of the love of the heart which balances the mind. Yet goodwill is more than a quality of the heart. It also entails a rightly directed will—a will for good—and it carries with it an inner orientation to reality and the good of the whole.”

Featured image of Anger, etching by Thomas Rowlandson,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Healing Place 

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Here’s another poem by Steve Taylor, which very much speaks to me. I hope it also speaks to you.

The Healing Place 
 

There is a healing place inside you 
beneath your thoughts and feelings
beyond any concept of identity 
or any sense of separation – 
a reservoir of soul-force
radiant and pure 
infinitely deep and dense
like the nucleus inside an atom.

When your body needs to repair itself 
or your energies need replenishing 
or your restless mind needs calming 
let go of your life’s demands 
and sink into the healing place 
like a diver into warm still water.

Immerse yourself in its radiance. 
Let its healing force soak into you.
Let pure consciousness pervade the cells of your body
and shine through the space of your mind. 

The healing place lies outside space and time. 
It transcends matter, isn’t bound by the laws of physics.
It’s a supernatural place where miracles occur
as naturally as the wind blows. 

And so you will emerge from the healing place 
refreshed, even recreated 
miraculously transformed 
as if risen from the dead.

Featured image is on the Dee Estuary

I Only Need To Meet You Once

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I loved this recent poem by Steve Taylor. It’s about those people you meet, maybe only briefly, where you immediately feel a connection and a common understanding. But Steve expresses it so much better than I could!

I Only Need To Meet You Once

I only need to meet you once
to connect with you forever.
I catch your gaze across the room.
We recognise each other, though we’ve never met before
We have an invisible sign of allegiance;
the same shade of light shines through us.

We smile and draw together
and feel at ease straight away.
There’s no need to ask questions 
because we already know each other.

We don’t need to protect our personal space 
because we already share common ground.
Time stops as we stand together.
The room dissolves away 
as if a soft warm cloud has enveloped us. 

Soon we have to go our separate ways. 
We hug and walk away, still smiling. 
We don’t feel sad, but more fulfilled.
We feel no sense of loss 
because we’ve gained each other’s love.

Our connection transcends distance. 
Wherever we are, we’ll inform each other’s lives 
and softly touch each other’s souls
through a timeless spaceless bond.

I only need to meet you once
to know that I’ve always known you
and that I’ll always know you
even if we never meet again.

I only need to meet you once 
to know that we are one.

Featured image of cats by Panini!, via Wikimedia Commons

Forgiveness

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“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Jesus, Luke 23:34

I am republishing this post on forgiveness, first published in 2016, because it is intimately connected with my recent post on Letting Go. We cannot let go if we cannot forgive. See also Edith Stauffer on Unconditional Love and Forgiveness.

Part of growing up is learning to forgive. It is psychologically important.

At its simplest, there are two parties, two sides to an issue. Two different viewpoints, perhaps an expectation or a trust betrayed.

To an outside observer, perhaps one party is in the wrong, perhaps both in varying degrees. Regardless, each has a need to forgive the other – in the sense that they release that inner charge on their own psyche. The hurt that is not forgiven simpy festers and does damage at a later date.

So forgiving is something you do for yourself, not something you do to the other person.

I feel so much for a friend who was wronged and has been unable to forgive the person she had trusted for many years. She cannot let go of the hurt and it almost visibly eats away at her well-being.

It is striking how much we respect someone like Nelson Mandela, who was able to forgive his persecutors of former years – or Gordon Wilson, who was able to immediately forgive the IRA after the Enniskillen bomb that killed his daughter.

I am reminded of the story of the two monks whose order demanded they have nothing to do with women. They came to a river and a young lady asked to be carried over to the other side. The older monk picked her up and carried her over and set her down on the other side. The two monks walked on in silence, until the younger could restrain himself no longer and said ‘you should not have picked up that young lady, it is against our vows’. The older monk simply replied ‘I set her down upon the river bank, you have been carrying her with you ever since…’.

This does not mean there are not consequences. There are choices to be made in the light of what has happened. A relationship may be ended or modified; society may choose to deprive a convicted criminal of his/her liberty for a while, with the aim of a period of reflection and rehabilitation in civilised societies; and so on…

This is not to say that the pent up energy caused by lack of forgiveness cannot sometimes lead to beneficial results. For example, the refusal of many to accept the whitewash of the Hillsborough disaster, probably because it was not forgiven, eventually led to the recent enquiry that has helped the truth to come to light. But we should be clear that there is a psychological cost…

Looking at the broad sweep of history, it appears that the coming of Christianity brought foregiveness to the fore, supplanting the previous philosophy of ‘eye for an eye’ that is still prevalent in many places. More recently, psychologically, we now see lack of forgiveness as one of the defense mechanisms of the ego.

“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive.”

Maya Angelou

How to forgive

See eg Wikihow on practical ways to forgive.

See also two excellent posts by psychosynthesis counsellor Catherine Lombard:

1. Birthing forgiveness

2. Writing the apology you long to hear

Extraordinary Awakenings

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Steve Taylor‘s book Extraordinary Awakenings: When Trauma Leads to Transformation documents a remarkable piece of research which takes a thorough look at the subject of spiritual awakening, which Steve describes:

“Spiritual awakening is simply a shift into a more intense and expansive state of awareness. In awakening, it’s as if the filters or boundaries that limit normal human awareness fall away. At the same time, awakening is a higher-functioning psychological state — a state of enhanced well-being and freedom from psychological discord, in which people live more authentically and creatively.”

Steve has explored the stories of many individuals who have gone through such awakenings driven by traumatic circumstances, in all of the following categories:

  • on the Battlefield 
  • through Incarceration
  • bereavement
  • facing Death
  • depression, stress, suicidal
  • addiction

Many examples are given, such as that of Sri Aurobindo, who was imprisoned for a year for political activism. When Aurobindo was released:

“His political colleagues expected him to continue to fight for their cause, but now he was a different person. Political issues no longer seemed important. It no longer seemed enough to help liberate his country. Now he wanted to serve the whole human race, to help liberate all human beings from psychological suffering. Most of all, he wanted to help manifest the next stage in the evolution of human consciousness. And he devoted the rest of his life to this goal.”

Steve quotes many examples across the above categories of ‘transformation through trauma’. The most important attitude to deal with them is acceptance. We often go into a mode of resistance, such as when we talk about fighting a disease or struggling to overcome obstacles. But doing so blocks transformation. When we shift to acceptance, surrendering to the situation, letting go, then transformation becomes possible.

It is important to recognise that we have a choice about is how to respond to suffering. This was one of the insights of psychologist Viktor Frankl, gained during his three years as an inmate of Nazi concentration camps. Frankl was one of the 10 percent of inmates who survived Auschwitz, and attributed his survival to his strong sense of purpose. He watched others give up hope, losing their sense of purpose, noticing that soon afterward they would fall ill and die. This sense of purpose is the freedom that circumstances cannot take away from us.

In the final part of the book, Steve outlines a Four-Step Process of Responding to Challenges, aimed to help this transformatory process along, and help individuals in their process of response. First, it is essential to acknowledge your predicament, second is to acknowledge your negative thoughts and feelings about the situation, third is to explore them and how they are affecting you, and fourth is acknowledgement of your predicament and accepting and letting go of your own resistance. You’ll just have to read the book if you want to better understand this.

Steve then moves on to consider how this knowledge can help those of us not currently suffering from stress and trauma. The key message he draws out is that we should embrace challenge and expansion, also contemplate death and the change and dissolution of the body, a process that becomes inevitable as we age…

And we should cultivate non-attachment, through techniques such as meditation, mindfulness, letting go. Attachment is of the ego, and the spiritual path enjoins us to transcend our attachments to a state of greater involvement in the whole of life.

Steve’s book gives us the encouraging perspective, that whatever stress and trauma may occur in our lives, we can use this experience as a springboard to personal transformation, becoming more conscious and better human beings.

Our spiritual potential has always been real, and presaged by many wise forerunners. It is only in the material forgetfulness of the modern world that many are in denial of this fact.

Letting Go

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Approaching the later years of life, I realise more and more that life is all about letting go. We spend the first part of life building up an ego, a bank of experiences, attitudes, habits, patterns of behaviour, traumas, relationships, material things. Over the second half of life, essentially we have to let go of our attachment to all of these, as we go through the process of preparing for our approaching death. If we do not, the ego dies with the sudden traumatic loss of all those attachments – surely the reason why death is so feared by many.

Why do I come up with this theme at this point in time? Because I have been touched by the experiences of those going through this very process, suffering illness, problems with memory, suffering from attachment to past relationships, suffering from anger, suffering from stress ‘because of’ the behaviour of others…

Of course, Letting Go is not just about dying, it’s about living life in the present, here and now, unencumbered by the past. This is the essence of life.

A little bit of web research came up with the following useful links.

In this post, Paula Stephens gives a Buddhist perspective on Letting Go – for this is an essential Buddhist teaching. Letting go of attachments is a necessary precursor to Presence – living in the present moment.

“Don’t let the darkness from your past block the light of joy in your present. What happened is done. Stop giving time to things which no longer exist, when there is so much joy to be found here and now.” ~Karen Salmansohn

Jack Kornfeld points out that the question of Letting Go is at the heart of spiritual practice, and compassion, forgiveness, grace are its handmaidens:

“These simple questions go to the very center of spiritual life. When we consider loving well and living fully, we can see the ways our attachments and fears have limited us, and we can see the many opportunities for our hearts to open. Have we let ourselves love the people around us, our family, our community, the earth upon which we live? And, did we also learn to let go? Did we learn to live through the changes of life with grace, wisdom, and compassion? Have we learned to forgive and live from the spirit of the heart instead of the spirit of judgment?”

I particularly like this post by LonerWolf on 42 Powerful Ways of Letting Go – full of examples and techniques for letting go. You will probably find your own bugbears within this list; we each have our own cross to bear. The material is grouped under the following headings, so something there is probably relevant for any reader:

  • letting go of anger,
  • letting go of anxiety and stress,
  • letting go of toxic relationships,
  • letting go of frustration and impatience,
  • letting go of depression and grief.

This post also gives sixty quotes related to Letting Go. Here are a couple with particular meaning for me.

“In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.” – Deepak Chopra

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” – Steve Maraboli

Letting Go – essential for the good life and for the good death.

Compassion is Great Intelligence

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Beaautiful post by Tom on compassion, with superb photograph and ee cummings poem. Compassion – a symptom reflecting wholeness.

Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog

One may ask, “Is compassion very significant in life?” Yes, compassion is immensely significant because it reflects and is a wonderful radiation of the whole. That whole has its own intrinsic, organic intelligence (of which compassion is a very big component). A fragmented, isolated consciousness, that merely perceives with self-idolizing boundaries and cold distance is, unfortunately, not of compassion. Such a debilitated mind is distorted and is not of the whole. Such a mind is isolated and apart. It may be intelligent in a very mechanical, crude, and limited way, but it is not intelligent in a living and wonderfully dynamic way. The isolated mind’s intelligence is — being limited — like that of a programmed, mechanical, robotic computer.

A mindful consciousness is of the whole. Such a dynamic, living mind sees beyond “learned distance” and learned isolating patterns. It is not like a left hand that is attacking the…

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St Jacques, Aubeterre

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The church of St Jacques at Aubeterre sur Dronne is a typical pilgrimage church on one of the routes through France to Compostella in northern Spain, approached by a long climb up through the village from the river Dronne. Romanesque simplicity is the keynote, remarkably beautiful.

West front and tower, wide angle lens

I passed through many similar churches over 20 years ago, as I followed the route from Vezelay to Compostella in our motorcaravan. The basic plan is the same.

Enter, there is no one there, you find a haven of peace, the atmosphere shared with so many thousands of pilgrims since the 12th century. Profoundly moving to tarry awhile, part of that historical stream of seekers.

Nave and side aisles

The tradition of pilgrimage lives on, not only in the so-called Christian world. Yet so many today appear to have forgotten about the interior dimensions of life, focusing only on the external – money, business, science, technology, politics, war… Yet the interior journey is the true journey of life – how we deal with the challenges thrown up by the external, how we learn from it and grow…

I should add that Aubeterre is perhaps better known for its Church of Saint Jean, an underground, Monolithic church built into huge caves in the rock of the hillside – also well worth a visit.

Aubeterre is in Nouvelle Aquitaine, France’s largest region, administered from Bordeaux.