Human Nature and the Spirit

I put this here for interest sake. It is taken from thirty-five-year-old notes that were used in the preparation of presentations and discussions. I may not agree, these many years later, with some of the points made here. The graphics are clearly from that era, created on a Mac SE and salvaged with some effort. I hope I am justified in thinking that my understanding, like the development we find in computer imaging, has grown from those pixilated early versions.

When addressing spiritual matters, one cannot proceed in a strictly empirical way; that world does not lend itself to measurement. In pursuing an understanding of this aspect of human nature, one is faced with the problem of how to go about establishing truth. A possible solution may lie in the examination of religious teachings which address matters of the spirit. A difficulty with this approach is that religions typically present a specific dogma or system of belief. They may, as a result, appear to be closed to questioning or investigation. Though their purpose is not to assert a testable hypothesis, on further consideration, it becomes evident that they do, in fact, lead to greater understanding. Religious dogma arises out of the meeting of the person with the Ground of his being. It makes a statement whose meaning the believer will pursue and, in doing so, will enable him to reach into the Truth that lies in his depths. They offer a means to connect with the actual structure and Source of the structure, that lies beyond the ideas in themselves.

This type of truth is clearly a personal truth. We live and die by the truths we hold, even if and when we are totally lost in confusion or chasing after delusions. Though we may take on faith, the ideas conveyed by parents, teachers and other authorities, ultimately it is we ourselves, in our relationship with reality, who must be open to the truth to best navigate our journey through life. In search of what is true, guidance is essential, but it is the person themself who struggles towards deeper understandings of the reality that is one’s existence as a member of humanity.

One’s view of spiritual matters is derived from the approach that one takes; the person exists as an intellectual grid that organizes information into particular consistent patterns. One’s view of the person may, for example, be shaped according to principles based mainly on biological determinants of behaviour; such aspects of human nature as love, being, creativity, will, and meaning, that might otherwise be seen as primary, come to be understood as secondary to more “concrete” aspects such as neurotransmitters and our evolutionary emotional heritage. Depending on one’s approach, religion may be seen, as something infinitely personal or perhaps as a social institution of hierarchical religious orders and more-or-less adherent laity. Religious teaching about the world of the spirit may be considered a social invention, potentially bringing groups together in harmony or insidiously enslaving and manipulating the masses. Beliefs may be conceptualized as systems of meaning that permit a relationship with the transcendent; they may also be understood as phenomena which developed in the attempt to cope with overwhelming infantile passions. According to one perspective, they may appear as fables and attempts at wish-fulfillment through imaginary means; they may be alternatively, considered beacons, directing the person to That which holds ultimate meaning and fulfillment. Religion though it is a social, intrapsychic, and physiological brain phenomenon, has primarily a spiritual aim; it is a human activity reflecting our need to establish a relationship with the Ground of our being. 

As a basis for understanding the person in relation to the ground of his being, we can turn to the sacred texts of the various religious traditions that have, for millennia, served as sources of knowledge of human and divine natures. They can be interpreted as addressing the world of being; they assist in the understanding of the relationship of one’s individual being to that of the Totality and or its transcendent Source. Religious teachings have more than a sociological or literary value; indeed, they point to the core realities of existence. This miracle in which we are at this moment participating, the fact that this, as all, moments is happening, is the basis of religion which seeks to reunite the person with the Absolute.

The difference between the approach of the natural sciences and that of religion to the question what it means to be human reflects differences in the way we know ourselves. In Hindu thought two types of knowledge are described: Prajna, transcendental, and vijnana, relative. Relative knowledge in its refined form would be science. It includes both the concrete and the abstract, and the search for universal principles. At this moment when I try to understand the world of the spirit, for example, I am involved with this kind of knowledge. It is propelled by the sense that something is missing in one’s understanding. It’s nature is such that, though countless books have been and are yet to be written, it will never be complete; the unknown remains ever before us intellectually. Prajna, transcendental knowledge, on the other hand, comes complete. It is symbolized in the image of Lao-Tzu, the Chinese sage who is said to have been born a bearded old man. As he was departing from China, he was stopped by a gate-keeper who asked him to leave behind a record of his teachings. He wrote the Tao Te Ching (The Way of Life) a short collection of Taoist metaphysical statements. Lao Tzu represents the eternal Self manifested in the finite as a set of concepts which come whole; describing the world of the spirit, they cannot be derived from concepts having to do with the world of things.

Religious teachings can be understood as attempts to describe awareness and being; they seek not so much facts and theories but to ultimately reveal the speaker, the seer, the hearer, the thinker. There is a reality that is the seer of these words and the thinker of these thoughts. The living truth is not to be found in the world of ideas; and reason is not enough to bring one to the It. It is because of this, that religious and metaphysical understandings are seen as possible only through faith, revelation, and realization. The approach is different from that of science because the aim is different. A revelation, for example, seems an unlikely way of discovering the most effective antidepressant medication. Alternately, it is not possible for one’s intellect to come to an understanding which is not a thought, but the actuality of the person as he is.

In itself, apart from its contents, the beingness of this experience cannot be understood scientifically. To arrive at knowledge of oneself as a conscious creative being requires revelation or realization; such self-knowledge is attained as being reveals itself. The world of being and the spirit is that of the eternal; the finite, the transient cause-and-effect world is that described by science. The relationship between them is such that the finite eternally emerges from the eternal. We are centred on Being from which our structure emerges. The person is a finite expression of Being which is eternal and fundamentally unchanging. The person is the incarnate god, which emerges as the Logos, the Word, the Father cleaves the eternally virgin Mother, the ever pure ocean of Being. The universe is creative and we participate in that creativity. Though in a finite sense, it can be said that we create ourselves, we do not bring about our own being. Existence transcends the individual. Our actions, the choices we make, what we do that makes us who we are as individual expressions of the Self: the Self that identifies with each particular person, that is now the author, that is at another time and space the reader, that is the heroic, that is the demonic. While analysis is an attempt to understand what it is that we are creating, Self-realization involves the revelation of the creator. The actor, the ultimate truth about the person isn’t merely intellectual, but is  a living truth; the Ground from which springs the person is too real; It is beyond phenomena and too concrete to be grasped by the rational mind.

Though the totality of the person cannot be comprehended intellectually it remains possible to understand aspects of him. Though the person will ever be an enigma to the intellect, one does come to understand more and more about what it is to be human. In terms of the spirit, for example, one can assert that the person is a dynamic unity and a living truth which is centred on being and possesses a structure which is a manifestation of being. The structure which constitutes the person can be described along the two dimensions of mind and matter. Like other paradoxical phenomena in nature, our totality presents as only one aspect at a time to our finite reason.

The person is an individual participant within a larger structure, which is, in turn, an expression of infinite creativity and freedom. This creativity is finally manifested as the finite expression of free will. There is a structure, but the person is not static; the person is someone whom he becomes as a result of what he does. Freedom and determinism are a unity where the structure of the person is created through a hierarchy of Will which remains one with that of the universe as a whole but reaches into the individual existence of the particular person. In the person, the oneness of the universe is separated and expressed as a frame of reference which is united but at the same time distinct from the rest of the Totality, of the cosmos. The individual person is defined by what he is not; in effect he is created because of non-being. The intellect in trying to elucidate hidden patterns, tries to fill the gap of nonbeing but cannot reach the person; being who he is, doing what he does, the person is ultimately illumined not by reason, but by one’s being, revealing itself.

I would now understand being as relational in nature, as is the Source of all Existence, who is perfect relationality. I could go on, but its all in my book, hopefully stated better than I could right now. And, it is relatively inexpensive.

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