Rated T (for theory)
There are heavy things and there are light things in life. My last two posts demonstrate that. How we experience anything, however, is related to one common thing. That common thing is our worldview. Our worldview, in turn, is supported by a “sponsoring thought” about the world. That sponsoring thought is what enables us to believe whatever we believe in the first place. I teach a class at PVAMU called Ecology and Man. The purpose of it is to walk students back through their worldview and the sponsoring thoughts beneath it in order to reconsider our entire notion of “self,” where it comes from and what it could be. Let me just go ahead and say it now for the light hearted among us, this is going to be a heavy lifting post. The work that I am doing via this blog is the same work that I ask of my students. It is the collective work of humanity at the moment. That said, I am doing my best to treat this as a marathon, not a sprint, even though the moment feels urgent. I’ll walk us through the theoretical stuff as gently (which may not feel so gentle) and as slowly as I can, one step at a time, with plenty of breaks in between for experiential life stories. If a post like this proves too much, just put it aside for now and come back to it later when you feel ready. If you have questions, just ask. Dialogue is good.
What led me to wanting to address this notion of humans and things was Micki’s comment to my “Umbrella” post. Micki, incidentally, is that crazy extrovert from hell best friend of mine that I described in my “Friendship Guide” post. She also happens to be a gifted Jungian psychotherapist. Here is what she said:
I heard a teacher say one time “The greatest spiritual lesson is to accept the humanity that we all are. You can’t be so busy being spiritual that you forget your humanity- That is the highest lesson.”
Just hold that thought for now. I have something to tell you. If you are a Westerner, your worldview is supported by the same sponsoring thought as every other Westerner. That is to say that the same sponsoring thought has given rise to Western religious, spiritual, agnostic, and atheist worldviews. Easterners are not immune either, although it may be less complete in its domination due to Eastern wisdom traditions. This sponsoring thought came to us courtesy of René Descartes, the French philosopher/mathematician/scientist, in the early 17th century. Um… that is to say that we are operating on a 400 years old understanding of what is what! Please let that sink in. He didn’t necessarily pull this idea out of the blue- there were precedents- but he did solidify it with the phrase “I think, therefore I am.” The phrase has become so ubiquitous that it needs explaining.
The sponsoring thought is this: being is a mental/spiritual state that comes from a divine realm that is completely separate from the material world which is itself nothing more than a mechanical/dead universe. If you are of the religious/spiritual persuasion, this is already starting to resonate with you. Just wait atheists and agnostics, your turn is coming. It is important to note that neither animals nor plants were considered to be sentient at the time, which is to say that they were as dead as doornails although they had acquired some ability to appear otherwise. Due to their lack of being, it was perfectly o.k. (virtuous even) to reduce them to resources that existed only for the benefit of humans. Matter became the realm of science/technology, consciousness the realm of religion/spirituality, and the two were expected to stay within their newly defined boundaries.
And these were newly defined boundaries. The original human spirituality was animism. Animism held no such separation. In animism, every single material thing (even a doornail) is spiritual, is sentient. To be clear, matter doesn’t have spirit, it is spirit. Matter and spirit (consciousness) were not separate things, they were the same thing. God wasn’t in some other place watching us with disgust or perhaps chuckling at our clumsiness, God/spirit was right here in us and as us through and through- in physicality. The Cartesian split was a radically different sponsoring thought. As it played out, people took sides. You kind of had/have to. The religious/spiritual identified their “self” with mind/spirit. Want proof? “I am a spiritual being having a human experience.” The implication here is that the human side of the experience, the part of the experience rooted in matter, is not really being at all- at least not in the divine sense. It says that our divine nature is not of this world. It is a temporary state of confusion at best. The material world, in this sense, is imaginary. I’m pushing buttons, I know. Breathe. It’s o.k. You are divine beyond your wildest imagination. There is much more to say about this which I won’t cover in this post.
The atheists (many of whom are of the scientific persuasion, although not all scientists fit this bill- such as Einstein) identified their “self” with matter. As science gained more and more confidence in its ability to explain the material world, mind was pulled back into the material realm, albeit this time as a phenomenon that is itself nothing more than mechanical in nature. From this point of view it was spirit that was imaginary- an illusion rising out of material processes for reasons we don’t quite understand. In short, God was dead. Therefore, when your physical self goes, you’re gone too. Incidentally, science has to date proven no such thing, it’s just that some scientists (positivists) are confident that they ultimately will be able to prove what they believe to be true. On the other hand, science has made a great deal of progress such that the boundaries between the two realms of matter and mind/spirit are colliding in on each other. Actually, they have been for over 100 years. I’ll leave that for another time. To get back to my main point, no matter what side you fall on these days, you are doing so under the assumption that there are two separate realms in the first place. Pick your side, and there you will find your definition of “self.” Oh, and as for you agnostics, lest you think that you have avoided this debate… you refuse to take sides, but you continue to believe that the sides exist.
Of course I am speaking in generalities. Our worldview is now shifting, so you may find yours in some in-between state. My point is that the Cartesian sponsoring thought is still dominant, and therefore we are all responding to it in some way. Now let’s return to Micki’s observation above. Even that observation, although getting closer to what I believe to be the truth, is still based on the Cartesian split. It says that you have to at least balance your spiritual seeking with your human seeking and that somehow the two are related. It is pointing out that the downfall of seeking only spirit (enlightenment) is that it is attempting to escape our embodied nature, our humanity. It is trying to escape being here, as a material thing. Yet maybe now you can see that this is only true if you are operating with the Cartesian sponsoring thought that matter and spirit are separate realms. If you were seeking spirit with an animist sponsoring thought, then your spirit-seeking would actually take you deeper into your material being. And, incidentally, your physical body would not be just a human thing, because nothing is just an objective thing. Everything is both matter and spirit. Everything is both/and. The separation of the two was a bogus assertion in the first place, in the opinion of many people working on the outer edges of consciousness. And yet, that bogus assertion is still ruling our worldview today… even as science and spirituality inch closer and closer together in their observations about the world. What I would say is that healing this split is the crux of every challenge that we are currently facing. To do that, we have to reconsider the validity of our sponsoring thoughts.
This was a lot for one sitting. So I’m going to leave it at that for the moment. Just know two things. 1) There is much more that needs to be said to understand where our worldview is today, how we got here, and where we are going. 2) You are all correct from the perspective from which you are looking at it. If you want to discover more on your own, there are three books that I would recommend. Each of these books will walk you through the history of our sponsoring thoughts and associated worldviews:
The Ascent of Humanity, Charles Eisenstein
The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi
You are the Universe, Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
That’s enough for now. Just sit with it. Or, feel free to ask any burning questions you may have. Lastly, you matter (pun intended).