Even as our science has led us toward a larger view of the cosmos, much of twentieth century philosophy has led us away from the concept of spirit. In our scientific and secular age the word spirit conjures up images of unreal entities and demon-like forces which knowledge of physics has dispelled. In that point of view, to believe in spirit is to believe superstitiously in external control of human actions, and perhaps of physical events as well, which a deterministic view of science does not allow. Such science rejects the existence of spirit, for it rejects the existence of any reality beyond matter itself.
But what then is there about the Sistine Chapel paintings, or any other great art, including sculpture, poetry, and music, which moves us? By what deterministic physical chain is a flood of feeling released anew by the rediscovery of the brilliance of Michelangelo's colors, and especially now, when a renewal of a sense of connectedness is so much needed in a chaotic disconnected world?
To approach a modern understanding of spirit requires us to revisit, in the light of all modern knowledge, the question of the nature of man. That inquiry must open up as well our concepts of the nature of God.
Who are we humans? Who am I? That is surely our oldest philosophical question. Grammatically it looks like two questions, but is it not really one? The ancient Hebrew psalmist framed the primal inquiry in poetry: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?" (Ps. 8, RSV).
In our day we might frame the question as, "Who are we, The People of Earth? Who am I, A Person of Earth?"
Ultimately, that question must place us in relation to the cosmos, the All. We recall that the psalmist raised the question while contemplating the vastness of the Creator's work: "When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established ...."
Our understanding of the size of the heavens, compared with that of the psalmist, vastly increases the scale of difference between the individual human (the "son of man") and the cosmos. Our spiritual sense of awe in considering our place in the cosmic scheme of things must vastly increase as well, but it is a sign of the times that so many, perhaps overwhelmed, are denying the spiritual sense and have lost the vision of human relationship to the all and to each other.
That means nothing less than that a large segment of humanity is rejecting our humanity, for it is the spiritual sense which is the defining feature of our species.
Many, even though accepting the idea of human spirit, would say that the defining feature of homo sapiens is not spirit, but "mind", that is, intellect, or perhaps more precisely, that aspect of intellect which knows that it knows (homo sapiens sapiens).
The Latin root meaning of sapiens has to do with taste. Only its later meaning conveyed the idea of discrimination and thinking. This homo is the one whose mind can and does discriminate, or categorize, events, observations, and meanings. The "mind" of this species is rooted in some primal way in its ability to taste the meaning of life, and that, of course, is the quintessential and elemental act of spirit.
Saying that the spiritual sense defines our species draws us to understand spirit in a much larger sense, not merely as the capacity for religious experience and artistic expression, or as the non-cognitive aspect of mind generally, but as the totality of psychic energy. Such a view encompasses the human potential to view the whole and to relate to it, but as we shall develop, it leads us also to consider whether and how the cosmos relates to us.
The standpoint of Religion Confronting Science was that of sacred theology, seeking to name the divine whom we have already met in spiritual experience. The existence of God was taken as a given, but we required that interpretations of revealed truth of scripture (specifically, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures) be harmonized with knowledge obtained by science. The revealed word of scripture itself declares that creation is God's spoken word. "God said, Let there be be ...."
To hold that the "correct" interpretation of scripture is at odds with "God's word spoken in creation" is to insist on a self-contradicting God. No matter how venerable the tradition of interpretation, that interpretation which contradicts the evidence of God's own work is unacceptable, and must fail.
This inquiry into the relation between spirit and cosmos starts with the perspective of natural, or philosophical, theology because it insists that God's work in creation is its own testimony to truth, apprehendable by reason. It also insists that all knowledge is pertinent to religious understanding. But this, too, is sacred theology, for it insists that the wellspring of theology is spirit revealing itself. Of course reason itself requires that we investigate the workings of spirit, if only because spirit is a phenomenon which exists in creation (but as we shall see, spirit is not merely phenomenon). And is it not spirit which compels us to inquire at all?
We have reached a point of human knowledge at which the historical split between secular and sacred, between physics and psyche, must break down. Quantum physics has carried us experimentally to the threshold of perception of ultimate reality, changing forever the idea that the non-temporal ("eternal") realm is imaginary and thus false. Though its truth lies in the realm of the abstract, beyond substance, all substance (all matter) finds in that realm its ground of being, as must humans themselves.
The empirical studies of analytic (Jungian) psychology have pointed to a deep collective reality underlying the phenomenon of psyche. The spiritual, or psychic, realm also has its roots in a non-temporal ground of being. I suggested in Religion Confronting Science, without elaboration, that the ground of both physics and psyche is the same ground of being, seamless, timeless, and all-encompassing.
If that is true, the solutions to humanity's many problems must also touch that reality. Our problems are rooted in human nature itself, which is rooted in the reality, physical and spiritual, of all that is.
Achieving a global understanding, finding the will to address problems, and achieving a oneness of purpose in solving them are at base a spiritual problem. It is essential to mankind's progress to recapture a sense of mankind's meaning in the cosmos, and to develop a sense of collective purpose. We need no less than a new vision of the Whole, and a religion of the Whole.
I propose that we begin by acknowledging that all of the world's spiritual traditions are about the relationship of human beings to one sacred reality which underlies all cosmos. But since historically we have attached allegiences to various different revelations, we must inquire into a method for affirming a central "empirical revelation" which we can then translate and acknowlege as present in each of our own systems. That, in essence, is the whole point of "pleromatics."Only then may our agenda move to examining how the various traditions relate to the known elements of cosmos. I will suggest generic language for discussing the nature of cosmic unity, but will conclude by examining some of the deeper meanings in the language of the Christian tradition (my own tradition). Though it has dominated the western world for two thousand years, it now stands at a point of krisis, facing the spectre of theology evolving.
Of course, we must acknowledge at the outset that many other people are working simultaneously -- and synchronistically -- within and toward an emerging global religion of the Whole, whose eventual form only Spirit Itself may define.
Historically, we Christians have let the great differences in language and doctrine divide us from the world's other sacred traditions. We (and they) have tended to insist that reality has one name only, manifest as "our" own god, who/which must necessarily exclude all others. However, the myriad names and traditions regarding ultimate reality have all developed in the same primal stream. Though the world's many peoples share a common genetic and archetypal heritage, as they have adapted to many niches of the globe they have adopted varied languages and philosophies.
The primal stream of spirit has taken on many colorations, as though people standing in the stream to dye cloth have erected barriers to the flow, trying to protect the distinctive coloration of their own work. The primal stream still flows most closely to its earthen banks in various native traditions. Ancient Hebrew and Greek traditions show some mixing with those of Egypt, and mixing was especially turbulent in the Eastern Mediterranean of 2000 years ago. The mixing phenomenon can be seen now in the variety of ideas on the "New Age" shelf of bookstores, but new age is really not-so-new!
There was a relatively sudden and simultaneous spiritual awakening of 500 BCE, when the founders of Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism, Buddhism all flourished, contemporaneously with Heraclitus. Karl Jaspers called that great age the Axial Period, for on it turns all of the great spiritual and moral philosophies of world history.
We also tend to forget that the Greek origins of our Western science lay not in a nonspiritual "rationalism", but in the quest for an clearer understanding of the human relationship with the Whole. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death for religious reasons. And we forget even more easily the contributions to our world culture of ancient Chinese and Islamic science.
There was probably considerably more East-West mixing of traditions in the ancient world than we have traditionally thought. Alexander penetrated to the Indus and there were ancient Jewish communities in South India. Aramaic, the language of Jesus, was not merely a local dialect of Hebrew. It was a widespread trade language used from the near east to the Mauryan empire, where at least one of the emperor Asoka's pillars had an Aramaic inscription.
Several authors have pointed to correlations between the teachings of Buddha and Jesus. An example of modern "cross channel mixing" is illustrated by Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian minister who acknowledged the influence of Gandhi who acknowleged Jainist influence.
Nor do we appreciate the considerable local mixing with native traditions, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia. Such diffusion, however, accounts for only part of the story of the development of human spirituality. As shown by Jung, the spiritual stream flows ultimately from the primal archetypal unconscious, which gives shape and form to the symbols of religious expression.
Though we have colored the spiritual waters many ways, we still live in that same primal flow, which carries hydraulic energy yet untapped. If we can learn to see the unity of the Whole, we can harness the spiritual power of both science and religion, and help lead the world to a new level of human understanding, creativity, and achievement.
If we Christian folk are to be true to our calling, we must accept our rightful role in this global process of spiritual unification. Perhaps this study can add to that, by offering a framework for discussing the unity of the ultimate physical-psychological reality from which the primal stream flows.
Such a "unification theory", which requires the efforts of many people, has been developing throughout this century. Once achieved, it will provide the human species with a new intellectual trait which will then have to explore and find its niche among other intellectual divisions of our species. We would have a new level or dimension, a homo sapiens cosmicos perhaps, of collective consciousness of a spiritual cosmos, of which the human experience is at least one bud, if not the only one.
The elements of such unification are already available in the modern intellectual environment, and have only to be brought together to be restated in a usable, global spiritual language. If that could be achieved, it would be for Earth's ancient but living spiritual traditions what the Rosetta Stone was for linguistics: a key to translating ancient meanings into new.
This humble effort can only hope to encourage and broaden general interest and effort in that direction. No one restorer can remove all the film which obscures our cosmic vision, but would-be restorers should at least work actively together toward that goal. Daresay, removing only one thin layer of that film would yield cosmic colors which would dazzle even Michelangelo.