Science and spirit

I’m fascinated by the English physicist Brian Cox. In his popular TV shows that examine the dynamics of our universe, he conveys a joy and wonder that I find infectious.

In the first episode of Wonders of the Solar System, Cox and his crew are in the holy Indian city of Varanasi, waiting on the bank of the river Ganges to observe a solar eclipse. Thousands of Hindu worshippers are all around, preparing for what to them will be a sacred moment. Speaking to the camera, Cox says scientists can predict the date and duration of future eclipses for hundreds of years to come. Science is based on provable facts, he adds, and not faith. When the eclipse occurs, Cox seems as awe-struck as the Hindus around him.

If faith is defined as adherence to a particular system of knowledge, then it seems to me that science is as much reliant on faith as any religion. More so if it claims to be the only or superior system. Though its achievements are prodigious and it has radically changed and enlightened the world in many ways, Western science has its limits. Mechanistic Newtonian science – where everything runs like clockwork according to eternal laws – still reigns in the popular mind, but has given way for many scientists to more complex and nuanced understandings of the universe. Science is as bound by change as any other system of knowledge.

And by limiting itself to the study of the material universe, it can’t truly be comprehensive. Without delving into the transcendent or numinous qualities of existence, the realm of spirit, there is a crucial gap in knowledge and in human life. Science either denies spirit outright or leaves it out of its field of interest.

To incorporate spirit into a world view is to live in a purposeful or meaningful universe, not one governed by chance. It is also to recognise metaphysical forces beyond humanity that help to shape our lives. I recently read an interview in which the late American psychologist James Hillman talked about the soul of each person carrying an image that was their calling or purpose in life. Hillman pointed out that the myth of each individual being born with a particular destiny was common to many cultures. I think this is an excellent example where non- or pre-scientific thinking is important, even vital. To contemplate the soul-image that you or I was born with is fascinating and can be immensely fruitful to add meaning and depth to our lives. It can point us in the direction of a career or towards a particular type of person for a relationship, potentially allowing hidden layers of ourselves to come to consciousness. There is a truth here that is foreign to the world view of positivistic Western science. It is a truth from the world of metaphor, from the depths of the psyche, and no less real because of it. In this kind of truth there is no separation between that which is revealed by the senses and unseen reality – the two are one.

As part of the process of healing our planet, I think humanity needs to re-engage with this spiritual level of truth, which accords with traditional mythical ways of seeing the world. In this regard there is much to be learnt from the wisdom of Indigenous cultures. We are, I believe, sorely in need of new myths that speak to the current condition of our lives and the Earth and that reconnect humanity within the bigger pulse of life. Essentially, we need a new cosmology – one that recognises and values diversity while acknowledging that all is ultimately one. I believe we are on that path.

Meanwhile, the Earth groans under the ravages of human greed and ignorance. Such wholesale changes that need to be made to rein in humanity within ecological boundaries include a radical transformation of science. Indeed, science is indispensable as we move towards a more enlightened way of being, just not the kind of science that we have been used to.

Awakening to the earth

I had the most magical experience – I went walking through the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, looking closely at all the trees.

It’s strange to admit that when I had been there in previous years – strolling through the gardens or picnicking with friends – the trees didn’t interest me much. Sure I’d felt their vibe, taken in the generally pleasant and calm ambience, but I never stopped to read their names and descriptions nor examine them in any detail. 

Now I was pausing at each one, reading their plaques, looking at their bark and leaves, the girth of their trunk, their canopy. I was acknowledging each one and even talking to some. There was the magnificent Queensland kauri and the bottle tree, the flame tree, the hoop pine and the cabbage tree palm. There was the coast banksia, reaching its distinctive cones high into the sky, and the bird catcher tree, which fertilises the soil for its seeds by trapping and killing birds with sticky fruit. 

I was in a kind of appreciative rapture, mesmerised by the beauty and incredible variety of what nature produces. I wanted to bow down before the kauri, with its massively broad, grey trunk – if there was anything that deserved veneration, this ancient giant certainly did. I spent several hours at the gardens, but only walked through one part.

I think of myself as going through a process of reintegration into nature, a gradual awakening to place and earth. I imagine it is what people who garden for pleasure experience, were they to drill down into it. It is a feeling of being solid and connected that brings joy and inspiration. I am learning about the plants in my neighbourhood, learning the names of the species that grow along the creek where I walk regularly. It’s a beginning. 

If you approach anything with patience, openness and grace, you can start to pick up its sound, the message that it is sending. The American author-activist Starhawk, in her book The Earth Path, says it is not enough for people who care about the environment to care in the abstract; you must know a place, be familiar with the plants and animals in your backyard, know their habits and uses and how each plays its part in the whole. To be truly connected is to enter “a world that is alive and dynamic, where everything is part of an interconnected whole, where everything is always speaking to us, if only we have ears to listen.”

Indigenous cultures understand and practise the kind of listening to which Starhawk is referring, basing their vision upon a fine awareness of the many voices emanating from the land, its plants and animals. From a Western perspective, there is nothing ultimately alien or crazy in this. Scientists are becoming increasingly aware that life exists as a totality of many symbiotic relationships – trees need fungi to break down dead matter into nutrients; the dispersal of fungal spores is dependent on small animals; insects need dead matter on the forest floor to lay their eggs; insects and birds disperse pollen from trees; humans and a myriad other species need healthy trees to produce oxygen to stay alive. The welfare of the whole depends on the condition of each part. And the way to understand and interact with each part and with the whole is simply to live close to nature. To appreciate the energy of a kauri tree does not require New Age beliefs – it means observing, feeling, being a little quiet around it. To listen to what a river is saying is more about spending time by that river with a receptive attitude than it is being an expert in hydrology.  

Western culture conditions us against paying attention to the intuitive connections we have with nature; intuition is left to artists, poets and other dreamers on the fringes of society. And it leaves the observation and understanding of nature to certain specialist professions, usually in the sciences, while the mass of people remain ignorant. Urbanisation further cuts people off from direct relationship with nature while effectively it is being used, abused and discarded. Starhawk mentions being stunned at one university talk she gave when a student asked her, “Why is the earth important?”

Fortunately, there are Western traditions that can be drawn from to support a move towards reconnection. There is the rich earth-based spirituality of pre-Christian Paganism, as well as contemporary neo-Paganism and Wicca. There are also the undercurrents of mysticism that have existed for centuries in Christianity and Judaism that can feed a “reanimation” of nature. Firstly and fundamentally, though, it is about getting to know your own patch; getting your hands into the soil; walking through the environment and learning its species; learning what makes it tick, the well springs from which it draws life.  

Gluttony

I became interested in gluttony a while back, when I encountered the Sydney Airport Food Court.

On my way to the departure gate to fly home to Melbourne, there it was: a giant amphitheatre filled with the sound of chomping teeth and food sliding to the bottom of stomachs. Burgers, sushi, souvlaki, stir fry with rice, salads, chips, fried chicken, tacos, baked potatoes were landing on plastic plates around the perimeter while in the centre hundreds of people were in the process of eating, getting up or sitting down to eat. The constant movement, noise and sight of jaws hard at work made me think of a plague of locusts; a voracious swarm in a brightly lit field of plastic and metal chairs.

Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, a collection of vices proscribed to the faithful Christian. The others are envy, pride, greed, lust, wrath and sloth. The prohibition against them is to encourage moderate behaviour – which is socially and morally beneficial – and to turn the mind away from purely physical and emotional drives to a spiritual orientation. 

I turned on the TV recently and noticed one channel was running three consecutive cooking shows that evening. Popular culture is obsessed with food at a time when obesity is rapidly on the rise in countries like Australia and the US, and when it is acknowledged that human beings are depleting the world’s resources. What’s behind this obsession? 

Gluttony is symptomatic of our age, a time of gross materiality when “more” means “better”, and which may well be the peak of human global excess. There is an ever more tantalising envelopment in matter, an ever closer entrapment, as if the material world is all there is. Perhaps perversely it represents a great yearning for the spiritual life, a displaced drive for meaning and fulfilment.   

Author David Tacey, building from the work of Carl Jung, says in his book Gods and Diseases that physical and psychological ailments are not simply signs that something is wrong, but opportunities for healing and messages for wholeness. Seen in that light, the problem of gluttony offers humanity a great challenge – to move beyond animal, instinctual nature as the primary and overall motivation for action. Animal nature is an organism acting according to innate needs and desires: procreating, consuming, satisfying whatever urges it holds for its increase and benefit.

One of the defining features of our species is the development of consciousness in concert with animal instinct. This gives us the ability to choose how we act. Indeed, over the ages civilisation has evolved a complex web of controls and channels for human animal nature: systems are in place for food, water and shelter; laws govern right behaviour and punish wrongdoing; cultural mores mediate urges for power and sex. We could not live collectively if there was no management of instinctual drives. And individuals continually make decisions to override animal nature in many mundane ways: for example choosing healthy food instead of eating whatever is immediately gratifying, or giving up the comfort of a seat on a train to an elderly person.

Yet even in this developed state humanity as a whole is governed by short-sighted instinctual motivations that are solely about us and our increase. If we and other species on Earth are to survive, there needs to be a quantum leap in human consciousness. This would mean a broadening of the collective human psyche, a whole-hearted turning outwards to all creation and the needs of the planet. It would involve a reappraisal of our position in the universe, from the source of all value to recognition of humble interdependence in the grand scheme of life. In sum, it would mean moving beyond our animal concern with “us” to a concern about the welfare of life generally.

How would this translate practically? I believe it would result in conscious choice to limit and reduce the human population, while redistributing global wealth so that as many people as possible are able to share in the basics and goodness of life. Of course, the economic system would have to be overhauled so that growth and wealth are not ends in themselves but serve society and nature. The political system could no longer be about the perpetuation of elite power but would rather serve community and nature. This all seems very pie-in-the-sky if not for the fact that many individuals and communities are already acting in ways that transcend sole concern about their own material wellbeing and are making choices that involve a broader recognition of the sanctity of life. Perhaps such a great shift is nearer than we think.

It needs to be said that moving beyond animal nature does not mean abandoning it. It is not a retreat into asceticism, the renunciation of the material world or old Judeo-Christian notions of the worthlessness of the body in relation to spiritual reality. Rather, we value our material existence and instincts while taking the next step of the human journey.   

Matter does, however, for the present particularly in the still affluent parts of the West, need to be kept in perspective. It is not the answer to everything, and awaits the bountiful redeeming breath of spirit. Gluttony need not be an eternal condition of humanity.

I want more

A poem about consumption, quite relevant at this time of year, with a chorus from an old favourite tune:

I want more

More entertainment
More sport
More news
More channels
More cooking shows
More food

When the urge hits your mind
like an emptiness blind,
that's a-more!

More music
More variety
More choice
More games
More laughs
More travel

Fill the gap in your gut
there's no end to the glut,
that's a-more!

More downloads
More apps
More speed
More sizzle
More pizazz
More thrills

Jam the void in your soul
the insatiable hole,
that's a-more!
that's a-more!

Soul

“As soon as we allow ourselves to think of the world as alive, we recognise that a part of us knew this all along. It is like emerging from winter into spring.”

Rupert Sheldrake, The Rebirth of Nature

I went walking not long ago in the hills behind the central Victorian town of Heathcote. It is dry, rocky country full of hardy box trees and wattles. The earth is red clay dressed with grey tussock grasses, and you feel the silence more than hear any sound from a living thing. If you sit down somewhere you might see an industrious bull-ant heaving a dead bug off to its nest or a curious skink appear on a lichen-covered rock. 

I came to a lookout from where in the distance you can see the roofs of the town. The wattles were in bloom, spiky saplings with bright yellow balls lighting up the dour, olive-grey bush. 

Sitting on a rock at the lookout I began to get a sense of the presence of this land. A shimmering feeling came to me, a joy for the aliveness of this place and its unique character. I felt blessed to be there. And this joy seemed to be emanating from the land, shining from the very surface and through every living thing – it sparked the air all around. I felt like I was witnessing a gentle but deeply profound force.

For better or worse, my mind wants to conceptualise. I want to be able to connect the intangible, which I recognise to be a large part of life, to the material world.

Soul is not talked about much in our society, but its effects are profound and everywhere to see. In fact without it, life could not exist. It is the principle of quality that informs and interpenetrates material existence. All objects need soul for their integrity. Take something like a block of wood – inspecting it on many levels we can see its shape and grooves, its geometry, the mathematics of its angles, its cellular structure, its former presence as part of a tree, its design as part of the framework of a house. The block of wood has integrity and purpose, and therefore soul is present in it. 

Everything in the universe has soul, but we must have eyes to see it. I think it requires fine and developed appreciation, and this is something that the religious spirit over the millennia has tried to cultivate. Religions have sought to connect people with the meaning and integrity of their existence within a meaningful universe. All religions, whatever their differences, are ultimately ways to relationship with soul. They are means by which the gaze can be shifted from everyday material life to the inner forces that infuse and enrich that life.

At a time of decline in organised religion, we can still connect with soul. It can be through poetry or meditation, through being in nature or any place that sparks reflection, through any good relationship, celebration or ritual. Wherever there is quality, there is soul. And for those who experience it, even just an occasional glimpse, everything shines and is truly wonderful.

We humans have the capacity to recognise soul but we can also deny it and act against it. When we deny it, we have the potential to align with what could be described as the “dark principle”, the manifestations of which are disconnection, destructiveness and evil. What is often labelled “soulless” – for instance a treeless urban environment of concrete high-rise buildings and freeways – is an example of human work (conscious or not) for disconnection and dissolution. The symptoms of living in soulless environments include relationship breakdown, alienation, addictions, and poor mental and physical health. These have been well-documented in the outer suburbs of cities where there is a lack of community and integrated, meaningful life.

Soul is still present in that kind of environment, but it is obscured by that which is its opposite and which works against it. We have to liberate soul by acting to increase relationship, connection and community. Even in the most extreme circumstances, such as wars, it is impossible to say that soul is not there. If it were totally absent, there would simply be no existence.  

My experience in the hills behind Heathcote was a personal pointer to soul. I wish that I was more aware of it in my life and in the world at large, and that I acted more in concert with it. This is a challenge for all of us as individuals, but I believe it’s also something we have to face collectively as a global human community. Perhaps all the global issues – the need for environmental repair and economic, political and social justice – ultimately mean us acting together in service of soul.

Untaming the wild

Cape Tribulation, despite its name, is a jewel – there is no other way to describe it. I had the privilege of being there recently.

Named so by 18^th-century British explorer James Cook because his ship struck a nearby reef, the cape is three hours’ drive north of Cairns in far-north Queensland. It’s a blissful place, with emerald-coloured rainforest spilling down from a backdrop of the Great Dividing Range onto a beach that looks out to the Coral Sea. The tropical forest is intensely, fiercely alive in a way that surprises and beguiles a person from the temperate south. Giant fan palms and strangler fig trees, coiling vines and ferns of all description compete in a dense profusion of life. There are the bizarre “meowing” calls of the cat bird and the hooping sound of the wompoo pigeon, and on the forest floor the scratching of brush turkeys and scuttling of goannas. It’s a bewitching, magical place and quite different from any other I have been to in Australia.  

A friend of mine was at Cape Tribulation 30 years ago. Then, she says, there was but a rough dirt road and a small number of hippies living in huts. Now, the sealed road allows a steady stream of tourists up to the cape. Cabins, hostels and bed-and-breakfasts are strung along the way, mostly tucked into the forest in “eco-tourist” fashion. Some of the nearby land has been cleared for farming and horticulture.

Beyond the consumption of “sights” and activities that is tourism, I suspect many people come to a place like Cape Tribulation to commune with nature. Though perhaps not conscious of it, they want to speak to the environment and to receive its words in whatever fashion. It’s an acknowledgement and opening to mystery and to forms of communication beyond those of the ordinary human world. Even if all you do is lie on a beach for a week and read a book, that beach somehow makes its way into you; it speaks to you; its rhythm and vibration meet yours.

We seek out nature to get in touch with our true self, our soul. Outside the well-trodden paths of the human world we meet not just our own life in depth, but the very Ground of Being. The jaggedness of our ego is somehow smoothed as it begins to find its proper place in the great scheme of Life. Perhaps we experience ourselves as in nature, not outside it. 

The difficulty, nowadays, is that humans are spreading in greater numbers across all parts of the globe and wiping out non-human nature. And as places like Cape Tribulation are cornered in national parks, cut by roads and swelled with tourists, communion with nature becomes harder. What is destroyed cannot return. In order to save nature humans have to retreat somewhat, to reign in and ultimately decrease the human population, to stop building roads, dams, mines and other major incursions into the natural world. And much more money and resources need to go to saving species and ecosystems – a global Marshall Plan devoted to nature preservation. 

The heart of the matter, though, is not one of harnessing human willpower to save nature. It requires a change in human consciousness. As many ecologically minded thinkers and activists have been saying for some time, we have to see ourselves as part of nature, not separate from it. That entails behaviour that is light on the planet, that values locality and simplicity, and that is fundamentally about relationship and connection. 

Crucially, we need to rediscover nature in ourselves and in our immediate environment. For all our faults, we are one of the expressions of life on this living planet and our actions need to be in accord with this reality. In the city, we can bring non-human nature back through the planting of native trees and shrubs wherever possible, digging up bitumen car parks and empty land. We can also cultivate food in this way and keep animals. An urban green revival has already started, with examples including community gardens and revegetation groups, green roofs and rooftop hives for beekeeping. The movement, however, is still in its infancy and has a long way to go.

Perhaps, over time, something of the communion with nature that we experience at a place like Cape Tribulation could be felt just where we are – wherever we are. Many people who garden in their backyards develop an intuitive sense of nature, as well as joy and balance, from direct connection with the earth. The more we get in touch with nature, the more we are in touch with ourselves. Then, perhaps, with spiritual development and refinement we would not need to escape so much to national parks and other wilderness for inner nourishment. The distinction between the “wild” and “domestic” will be less relevant as all life is experienced as sacred.

Limits are good

The mere shattering of form is for human as well as for animal life a disaster, ritual and decorum being the structuring forms of all civilization.

Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

Limits are a dirty concept in our culture. We want to get what we can whenever we can. And the logic of economic activity in our time is of ceaseless growth and expansion.

Limits are a dirty concept because our culture is thoroughly penetrated by the worldview of market economics, to the exclusion of almost everything else. The goal of life is a feast of materialism in which we want ever more.

This worldview is dominant in what has been described as the “postmodern” era, when the inner dimension of meaning and values is fluid and unshaped. Ambiguity and uncertainty, with no central meaning to anything, are its defining features. It is said the world is made up of an infinite number of “discourses”, of constantly changing forms without absolute value.

At the risk of sounding reactionary, I think limits are good. We are stuck in simplistic views of them as restrictive and oppressive; it’s time we developed a more sophisticated understanding of form and limits.

All material form has structure and therefore limits. As the form changes, so does its structure and the limits inherent in it. A seed in the earth becomes a sapling and then a mature tree, which eventually dies and goes back into the earth to nurture more growth. At each stage in the process of change there are embodied limits. A eucalypt seed will not sprout an oak, a sapling can only grow a certain amount depending on conditions, a tree is a tree and not a rhinoceros or any other form, and like all form it eventually dies and renews with its death the ground from which it emerged. Even with genetic modification, form ambiguity and fluidity, there is still form and limit, though it may be difficult to name or comprehend. All material form has limit.

Limits need not be restrictive – in fact, they are continuously changing as all form evolves. In the human world, limits are necessary for social relations. As we allow certain behaviours, so we proscribe others for everybody’s benefit. Over time our limits change as our understanding of “the good” changes – when once there was slavery, now it is banned; when once we restricted the roles of women, now those restrictions are lifted. When we chafe or buck at certain social limits, feeling them to be oppressive, we are saying that the forms to which they belong no longer affirm life in a meaningful way. This then allows human society to grow and develop, changing its laws, relationships and sense of itself. New limits are set which, in time, will also be replaced as society evolves.

Limits help us to understand ourselves and our world and encourage responsibility for our actions. Children learn by bouncing off limits – when a child touches a hot iron, it knows not to do that again. Adults also learn by making mistakes, or meeting the limits of their capabilities or actions.  

To be cavalier with limits is dangerous, and to ignore them outright invites disaster. The ancient Greek goddess Nemesis would visit retribution on anyone who broke fundamental laws or had too much of anything. In our own time, the result of greed and disregard of limits is the destruction of life on Earth, which ultimately imperils human survival. We need to urgently rediscover the importance of limits.

Our postmodern uncertainty and sense of ambiguity around limits are symptoms of a major period of transition in which the old ways of understanding are no longer helpful. We have reached an age of complexity in human material power and knowledge that requires new vision. As in times past, transition periods are chaotic, and much of the worst of human nature rises to the surface. There is a need for a realignment of values and meaning to meet the shape of current times. This will ultimately mean the creation of new forms and the setting of new limits.

Jungian author David Tacey says Western society is based on knowledge, but Indigenous cultures are grounded in wisdom. I think he has touched on something very important. Wisdom implies humility, which is recognition of oneself in relationship with others, a healthy tempering of the ego. A life-affirming society with ecological balance and respect cannot be achieved by form-breaking materialism. It will need to have wisdom at its core.