This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for nearly a year, and I’m finally getting to it now. With any luck, the other several draft posts–plus a few for the upcoming holy days left in the year (mostly the 31st, but also the Healing Our Hearts at Wounded Knee event)–will yet be done, but we’re winding things down, and with any luck, we should be able to have a clear slate going into 2016.
I’d like to note up-front that this is not an issue that I feel I have the “best” answer on, nor do I entirely favor one, the other, or yet another option on these matters. It’s simply a trend that I’ve noticed over and over again in spiritual practices and the reasoning which takes place around them, including those in polytheism, but not limited to those contexts by any stretch of the imagination (it happens in paganism more widely, but also Hinduism, Buddhism, and other religions as well).
The questions I have and the issues I want to address are with the apparent pull, the dichotomy, the adversarial relationship between the senses of human (and wider) rationality, “mind,” intellect, higher capacities, and so forth, and animality, the primal, the natural, and the body. Of course, one can say from the very start that there need be no dichotomy between these forces, and that we are human animals who have rational capacities that we’ve simply developed in ways that are more apparent than other animals on earth–and then, no problem. However, where spiritual life is concerned, one or the other of these broad categories of action, understanding, essence, and existence tends to get favored over the other; and in some extreme cases, “spirit” gets categorized exclusively as one or the other of them. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” is one expression of this that we’re all familiar with from the more ascetic forms of Christianity and other such practices, I’m sure; but, “you just need to get out of your head” is something I’ve heard more than one Buddhist, (western) Hindu, Shinto, and pagan practitioner advise people as well to get more “in tune” with “real spirit” and whatever it is they consider “the Divine.” (I still don’t like that phrase…it’s still too monotheistic.)
If we examine what one might consider a “proper” classical understanding of this question–one of spiritual or religious anthropology, i.e. how a theological understanding of the human person and its constituent components are schematized, etc.–then we encounter the classical notions obtained from Aristotle and others that there are three types of soul: the vegetable soul, the animal soul, and the rational soul, which respectively provide the human drives to growth and reproduction, to movement and aggression and survival, and to thinking of higher things and pondering one’s own existence. (Note, this is a VASTLY simplified schema–my purpose here is not to argue or critique these notions, but merely to summarize them for a base level understanding of where different movements have taken these postulates from this basis.) While all would agree that each of these drives and souls are needed for human existence, the rational soul’s value to us as humans is “higher” and “better” in almost every system that reckons it in a similar fashion, because otherwise, we’d be no better than plants that accomplish nothing other than their own self-sustenance, or animals who do nothing but fight to survive another day (usually by killing and eating other things, or by evading such a fate)…nearly everything else in human existence that is not at this most basic level of achievement is considered more worthy, more worthwhile, and more noble, “human,” and self-actualized than those things which are “lower.” From this, it very easily follows that those who do nothing but exist to feed their faces, have kids, and accomplish little else are not seen as being nearly as worthwhile or important as those who do other things–and from such schematizing, it is not only those who are unable to do these things, who are disabled and cannot live without interventions of various sorts, or who do not have the means to survive due to economic factors (i.e. those who are unemployed, homeless, etc.) that get stigmatized and marginalized and are seen as “useless” and other unflattering terms, but also on the other end of the spectrum, those who have jobs, houses in the suburbs, and 2.4 children who do not rock the boat and don’t lead lives that are more interesting than watching the latest reality shows, are not seen as in any way “living up to their potentials” and are not taking advantage of what this particular human existence has made available to them, and thus they’re little better than plants or animals in terms of their impact on wider existence.
So, as you can see, it’s not just some sort of ivory tower intellectualism, some economic elitism, or even some hegemonic privileged religious understandings that devalue these “plant” or “animal” level existences as humans and within humanity, it’s also some of our alternative spiritual, religious, and magical systems that likewise denigrate those who live on these “lower” levels of human soul potential.
And yet…
[In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve decided at this point to succumb to my vegetal and animal existences and to take a break to eat some tasty food before continuing on this intellectual excursus. I find that doing so makes my vegetal and animal souls happier, and that my rational soul likewise enjoys the benefits of having the other two be less insistent on having their desires catered to–for good or ill, but if this blog post comes out well, we’ll assume it is for “good” in this particular case, at very least, shall we? Perhaps not…?!?]
There–now, I’m sure that image gets your attention for some reason or other…I’ll leave you to determine what that reason is (delight, disgust, or simply the natural reaction that stimulating the sensorium creates, whether you like the images contained therein or not)…and I’ll move on to the other pole of this apparent dichotomy.
(Yeah: I know–I said “pole.” Huh, huh, huh, Beavis.)
Within many spiritual systems, at least as they’ve been taught in the U.S., and in some places abroad where I’ve encountered them, as well as in many books on these subjects, the emphasis is pretty much entirely in the opposite direction. There is a de-emphasis on “mental chatter,” on the process of thought entirely, and on the apparatus of the rational mind as entirely secondary to one’s existence. Certainly, thoughts (especially ones that have nothing to do with what is actually occurring in one’s environment) can get in the way of truly appreciating experiences, and there has been an over-emphasis on thoughts and on mental constructs in certain strains of dominant religion in the Western world, up to and including all of the excesses of hegemonic creedal monotheism and the required assent to its theological and theo-historical constructions in all of its adherents (and even in those who don’t adhere to them, but want to be in dialogue with them, e.g. the interfaith movements, etc.). What is intuitive–those “gut feelings” that can’t be easily explained but which are immediate and experiential and often sensory-focused–is praised and exalted over anything that is thought, which is always a secondary, reflective, not-“in-the-moment” process, which it is often pointed out gets in the way of truly appreciating and being fully present for something which may be occurring at any given moment, whether eating an ice cream cone or watching the sunset or communing with a Deity. Even Joseph Campbell stated in one of The Power of Myth interviews that “this guy [the brain] thinks it’s running the show, but it’s a secondary organ.” (With all respect to him, it’s sort of ironic when someone who claims to be nothing but “a scholar” whose spiritual practice is “underlining passages in books” states that such is the truth, reality, and perhaps even “point” of true religious experience, i.e. realizing the brain isn’t the thing in control of life and not what should be emphasized.) There is a sense of neo-atavism that is praised and required for certain activities, as if a “descent” to an animalistic state is not really a “descent” at all but simply an acceptance of what already is: that humans, stripped of all mental constructs and the by-products of a rational outlook, are animals like any other, and most of our activities are ultimately directed toward survival, thriving, fucking, and having fun while doing as many of these things as possible. Hedonism and the actions attending it fall into this category quite often, and libertinism likewise prevails as the ethical norm–if, indeed, such a thing can be proposed at all–within such formulations. Nature is good; animals are good; the body is good; sex is good (especially!); and nudity is good, preferred, and even required in some contexts. The Wiccan Rede, the Law of Thelema, and other such “do whatever you like as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else” all stem from these sorts of tendencies, even if they are wrapped in several day-long courses and hundreds of pages of intellectual discourse to arrive at such basic (limited) animalistic permissions and critiques of larger trends within the culture. If you find yourself scoffing at this and denigrating those who would be so foolish or simple as to put any credence in such notions, also consider that there is a tendency, even in the most (what are taken as) intellectual treatments of theology in alternative spiritual frameworks these days which take as a given that any and all spiritual experience–what sometimes gets called “personal gnosis” (which is an interesting term, on which more later), mystical or religious experience, altered states of consciousness, and a variety of other names, but which are actually quite similar in terms of what categories of experience to which they refer–that what spiritual and religious activity ultimately is happens to be non-rational, and (at least by modern scientific, and scientistic, “rational” explanations) “makes no sense” and cannot be expressed. Deities are said to “not be human” in definitively existential fashions (which I’d agree with, to a degree), but this goes further than that recognition of distinctions between different varieties of sentience, and any anthropomorphic “accretions” to the divine characters of Deities are thought secondary and often misguided, because Deities are–in these formulations–forces of nature that have no cares for human capacities to think, or of ethics and morals and even of consent, can never be fully understood by limited human capacities, and so forth. Deities, religions, and so forth which exist “only in the mind” are (rightfully!) denigrated, which is a statement of ideal that has been echoed from Augustine to Simone Weil; and yet often with that, anything at all rational or intellectual or mental likewise becomes denigrated, and the less of this that may accompany both experiences and discussions of Deities and divine states, the better.
[Generally speaking, because I worship Deities like Antinous, and some other Divine Beings (e.g. Hero/ines, Divae/i, etc.) who are former humans, I find such generalizations about the superfluity of human rationality and capacities to apprehend or contemplate Divine Beings and Their natures and presences superlatively problematic, but let’s leave that issue aside for the moment…!?!]
Thus, we seem to get two diametrically opposed viewpoints on matters of spiritual practice, valuable human existence, and for that matter ultimate existential realities as human beings: either one must rise above the mere vegetal and animal natures one has and flourish in one’s rational capacities to be fully human and to rise to the level of being able to contemplate divine natures in the more philosophical approaches to religious matters; OR, what is mental and intellectual is entirely unnecessary, and instead the superlative intense atavism of the “there is only the present” world of sensory overwhelm and attunement with one’s body and with nature, in all its irrational and insensible dimensions, is what constitutes truly divine experience.
And yet…and yet…and yet…
I’ve wondered for more than twenty years why it is that if the brain is a “secondary organ” (as Joseph Campbell suggested), that in the chakra system of kunalini yoga–so beloved and even assumed in such a variety of esoteric practices–the “highest” chakras of spiritual development, evolution, and realization are located in the skull rather than in the torso, and those “lower” chakras often have modes of existence implied by them which are considered “less important,” and less spiritual, and less dignified (even if they are valued as means for survival and other basic drives). In this, even the classical Greek formulation in comparison is interesting in that it postulates that the most advanced forms of rationality take place in the heart rather than in the brain/head/skull, whereas the deepest contemplation in yoga occurs in the sixth and seventh chakras, in the forehead and the top of the skull, and represent the most advanced stages of spiritual attainment.
In the ki course I was doing a few weeks ago, the overall emphasis that has been present in it throughout my time doing it has been “mind/body coordination.” It was said to us, as an assumption and guiding force of the system and methods we were being taught, that “mind creates body, and spirit creates mind” (which is almost a late antique Gnostic understanding of things perfectly!), and therefore focusing one’s mind leads to health and coordination in one’s body, because one’s mind is best used when it is in harmony with “spirit.” However, what “spirit” seemed to like is both “not thinking” and “not feeling,” and in fact the “feeling” (in the emotional sense) we were told to aim for was not any feeling at all, and no feeling at all if possible. In this formulation–which seemed rather at odds with itself in certain respects–both rational processes as well as emotional presentness and the realities of the body and its physical existence are all to be transcended in favor of being in proper and deep resonance with “spirit.”
In certain types of devotional practice, “what the heart knows” is considered much better than “what the mind thinks.” An approach which is appropriate for things like bhakti yoga emphasizes emotion and connection over thought, belief, reflection…and yet, there is often no small amount of essentially “dogma” and “asserted truth” that is also inherent in nearly every form of bhakti that I’ve observed, including a privileging of a literal historico-factual understanding of certain myths.
In a great deal of Zen-type practices, feelings and emotions are denigrated as temporary, and even external to the human person and one’s identity, and an attitude of non-attachment is cultivated towards them. Likewise, thoughts are to be ignored or discarded as they arise because they are not necessarily important in any way, and become obstacles to simply residing in the state of being-awareness-Oneness which is satori and the basis of enlightenment, which is wordless and action-less and pointless, and is the ground-of-being…but all of this is a kind of meta-analysis of particular experiences which exist in a certain state of brain activity which actually plunged quite deeply into the body’s ability to do some of its most basic physiological processes in a more efficient and energized fashion, and to be able to deliberately and consciously enter such states takes a great deal of mental acuity and practice, and no small amount of imaginative reasoning to be able to describe and instruct.
What I hope to convey by these last few paragraphs (despite not doing it very well–even if that lack of fluency serves to illustrate my point more effectively) is how very confused and conflicted a great deal of spiritual discussion, philosophical debate, and theological reasoning is when it comes to discussing these preferred states of being, these preferred forms of engagement and existence, and both what constitutes them and what impedes them and must be discarded in order to attain them.
I can say that I’ve had a variety of different spiritual experiences in my life, in different contexts and under different circumstances–both deliberately sought and attained as well as randomly entered and apprehended–and I honestly can’t say that one of them is “better” or “more superior” or “more true” or “the sum and superlative” of possible spiritual states or pursuits or practices in terms of what they did or how they impacted me or what generalizations about the ultimate nature of reality they can reveal.
I had some Zen “no mind” experiences during my first year of college in a few attempts at meditation that I did. Many people who are monists (in the common understanding of the term), despite whatever other theological positions they may entertain, have experiences that fall into this category, and assume that such states beyond thought and emotion and feeling and result in a sense of oneness with the larger universe and the “ground of being” underlying it, thus demonstrate that this is “true reality” and observe that it is lack of connection to this state and lack of experience of it (despite it being the ground of all things) is the factor that creates all of the problems in the world. The truth is, EVERYONE (with very few exceptions) experiences this state on a relatively regular basis, when one enters a state of especially deep sleep that is dreamless and in which one has no sense of oneself really existing at all. It is especially disorienting to awake from sleep after such an experience, but it is often the “best sleep” that one can have (particularly if one is like me and is an insomniac and tends to be a light sleeper most of the time). The only difference between having this experience as a result of falling asleep, and having this experience as a result of doing a meditation practice correctly, is that one is consciously-entered-into and sought and the other isn’t, and as a result, whereas one may forget oneself entirely in sleep, one still has a sense of existing through the void of the meditation.
And everything else that gets said about these states being “one with the universe” and so forth is intellectual accretion and justification and self-aggrandizement of something that is essentially a neat parlor trick with basic human neurophysiology. The reason that monistic understandings that are grounded in such experiences grate on my nerves (if you’ll pardon the phrase) is that they are praised so heavily, and yet entering into them and doing them is something that only exists for its own sake, and nothing else can be done with them other than what is done with them when one is in them, i.e. nothing, because to do anything else–especially from the Zen angle–is to fall into error, attachment, and so forth. As a result, these spiritual approaches that emphasize this kind of monism-as-reality tend toward solipsism, a feeling of “connection to all things” therefore creating “enlightened self-interest” (i.e. that doing good for others is ultimately doing good for oneself), and can lead to a certain indolence and even complacency with how things are in the world. If everyone had an experience of this kind of spiritual awareness, I don’t think they’d suddenly no longer want to have wars and such, they’d suddenly not want to do anything at all, and look at how quickly people would starve, die of neglect, and so forth, and yet “it’s all okay” because everyone is “One,” and isn’t that neither great nor bad, it just simply is?
In that same year, I also had experiences that could be considered quite of the atavistic sort, of feeling suddenly and movingly plunged into an animal-like hyper-awareness, a sensual overload, an ecstatic embodiment (though that’s an oxymoronic term, technically!) in which what mental chatter occurred was not as important as the physico-sensual enraptured and energized feelings that I experienced, which gave me (amongst other things) a physical strength that I had never before experienced and which was beyond anything that I thought even possible, a sense of timelessness and thus an utter present-ness and focus on only what existed in the given moment, and a capacity to heal other people on more than just an energetic level–a person who was in such an experience with me had a very severe cut that would (should!) have needed stitches, but which was fully healed after it occurred. In talking about it afterwards, it was phrased in very Wiccan terms, and involved “possession” by the Horned God and so forth…which, technically, would mean that it wasn’t really any kind of descent into my own animal nature (unless entering into that was actually a unitive experience with a Divine nature which is inherent in everyone already–which would accord with some theological assumptions of certain schools of thought on such matters), and instead was a casting aside of all the human and even physical limitations I had as a biological being. As fun as this was, too, it ultimately did not do a whole lot to improve my own physical health (and absolutely depleted me in certain ways afterwards), had a rather difficult “hangover/come-down” period, even when following correct grounding and integrating procedures, and outside of its own context, did not do a whole lot beyond making known to me that certain pleasurable states are possible under particular circumstances. The way the whole thing was used in the aftermath by the other people involved, however, was superlatively manipulative, emotionally dishonest, and intellectually suspect, and yet entirely based on undemonstrated assumptions and conclusions that did not fit anything which could be described as “rational” despite being a form of flawed rationality in themselves.
I’ve also had experiences, like at the ki training a few weeks ago, which demonstrated to me that what I was being told was occurring might not have been what was actually occurring. For a practice that is as much about mind-body coordination as that was said to be, and that being “out to lunch” and “not paying attention” being the non-ideal (but for most people, default) state, there was actually a moment where my practice was most praised in which I was particularly “out to lunch” and “not paying attention.” We were being shown what the correct breathing technique looks and feels like, and were invited to put our hands on the chest and upper back of the teacher who was demonstrating this, and he spoke a little bit and commented on the practice while he was doing it. I did that, and noticed what he was doing, and thought “Huh,” and found it interesting, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention to myself, to the other principles we were told to follow and practice, or anything else, and suddenly he said to me, “Oh, you’re doing some really effective [name of technique] healing here now, too, which is great!” Was I? I was pretty much just putting my hands on the guy. Was I really doing that, or was he feeling it but it had nothing to do with me (which is technically what we were told would be the case if we were doing it right), or was it wishful thinking on his part, or were/are all of us thinking about this in any way possible just off our heads?
I don’t know…
I’ve also had a number of other types of spiritual experience: visionary occurrences that have not been willed nor expected; especially vivid dreaming, lucid dreaming, as well as shamanic experiences that closely resemble lucid dreaming (but are not as deliberate); sudden overwhelming sensations emanating from the region of my heart that fill me with love and the awareness of the presence of particular Deities; the painful but focused physical and mental process of giving birth to the first three members of the Tetrad++; ecstatic auditions and participations in ritual which resulted in altered states of consciousness; deep intellectual moments of insight and the satisfaction that results from seeing the connections between things, people, presences, Deities, times, places, and other phenomena; and so on and so forth.
All of these experiences are interesting, good, useful, and even pleasurable, and yet I’d not say that any single one of them demonstrates that is is “better” or “more important” or the basis for any particular “truth” of the universe, other than that there are many different ways and means to find meaning, pleasure, contentment, utility, and purpose in one’s human life. As a polytheist, I’ve often in the past said that I acknowledge that there are a variety of truths and approaches to truth possible in the universe and as humans within that universe (if, indeed, “the universe” is singular, which it very likely isn’t!), and I think that is the case with this wider issue as well.
We have various levels of evolutionary development as a part of our basic neurophysiology. The brain stem and cerebellum are what is sometimes understood to be the “reptile brain,” which regulates some of our most basic aspects of movement, breathing, and other processes that are necessary for survival. Our “mammalian brain” is the limbic system that sits on top of that, consisting of things like the hippocampus, thalamus and hypothalamus, amygdala, and other structures which process and integrate sensory information, trigger the hormones and sensations associated with emotions, and assist in memory–all things which distinguish mammals from many other types of animals. The further that these systems become refined, and the more space they require to process and makes connections between those different areas of inquiry, the more developed the “higher” parts of the brain that consist of our cerebral cortices, and thus larger and more complex those parts of the brain, are, with humans having among the largest and most complex brains currently known in the animal kingdom. There are more connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex possible in every single human on the planet now than there are particles in the known universe…just imagine that for a few moments. The fact that all of the syntheses of thought which can result from such a complicated interconnection of matter is as impressive as human achievement has proven to be up to this point (even despite the MANY mistakes that have happened along the way, and that even threaten to destroy the ecosystem and humans’ place in it as we face currently, up to and including the fact that you’re reading this on the internet, whose servers use extraordinary amounts of fossil fuels to exist–!!!) is a vivid demonstration, at least to me, not so much that our brains are “secondary organs” that are really not that important in comparison to the experiences of the other organs and of the body and sensuality generally, but instead that fully accepting our rational (and even hyper-rational) existences as humans are not something which most people as individuals, nor have most religious and spiritual systems (including ALL of those that are considered the “most advanced” and are the most popular), fully accepted and integrated into their basic understandings of the universe and of humans’ place within it.
In approaching a closing to this discussion, perhaps I’ll discuss what I mentioned above a few times, which is the matter of “gnosis” as a term that is used for particular spiritual experiences, and the differences between its literal meaning and how some of these things are understood (and often misunderstood). Let’s take for granted, first, that there is nothing negative, or even non-ideal, about what has been called (and is often called out for being) “personal gnosis,” as this is the only basis for anything spiritual–whether novel or demonstrated, tried-and-true, and for all intents and purposes “proven” in any spiritual context–which has ever existed for humans; the only viewpoints which denigrate “personal gnosis” are those which are fundamentalist in their interpretation of the “once-and-for-all” nature of any sort of divine revelation, whether through a scriptural source or otherwise, and Christian, Muslim, and other (especially hegemonic) monotheist religions do not have the monopoly on such viewpoints. Gnosis, on a basic level, means “knowing,” as opposed to merely “believing” (based on non-empirical and non-experiential evidence), which is why the “orthodox” forms of Christianity resented and discriminated against many of the sects which they labeled “Gnostic” in the early centuries of Christianity–even when the cosmologies of those sects were as creedal in their assertions as they were themselves. However, that “knowledge” is not mere intellectual apprehension or construction–when, indeed, most of the suggestions of any creedal cosmological or theological postulate are based in such intellectual formations–but instead is experiential, empirical, direct, and particular, and thus is “personal” to the one who experiences it. The religious formulations which result from such experiences of gnosis are as important to a person as who their parents are, what their childhood was like, how they understand their identity in relation to various axes of intersectionality, who and what they love and value and engage with on a regular basis, and their most esteemed and pride-inducing accomplishments, amongst other things–in other words, all of those things from which a person draws their most important senses of self and conclusions about their relative importance and interconnection with others in their communities and in the cosmos more broadly. Such experiences of gnosis do not surpass rationality, but they are not exclusively limited to it either; rationality is a part of what both constitutes and explains or interprets those experiences, and thus it cannot be cast aside entirely. Any form of gnosis which does not have the words, the concepts, and the mental formulations which are entailed in the phrase “I know” as a part of it–no matter how partial, biased, particular, or idiosyncratic these statements may be (which is one of the things about gnosis that makes it a problem for the stricter and more exclusivist systems that wish to universalize and limit the acceptable boundaries of human capacity to deal with!)–and thus the rationality to be able to put words, concepts, perceptions, and the proportions of meaning and the weights of importance existing between them into recognizable forms of communication between oneself and other rational minds, is no form of gnosis at all.
As much as I like being able to “do something” with a particular insight I’ve had, I also sometimes just wish I could forget everything–including myself–for a while. As much as I enjoy the rapture of appreciating an especially beautiful work of art, sometimes I would rather deeply enjoy a cheeseburger or a snog with someone I find attractive. As much as I love those moments where I feel I understand and am at peace with my place in the universe, sometimes I just want to feel the rush that comes with the terror of knowing how contingent my existence is and how tentative my grasp on survival and sanity actually is. And on and on and on…
I suppose a great deal of what I’ve discussed here is epistemology, or perhaps even meta-epistemology, within theology. It hinges upon the question not only of how we think about things within religion, but also what we think about how we think–not only in the sense of “what is our opinion of what/how we think, and thus what are our values in terms of what is good and right thinking vs. otherwise,” but also “how do we conceptualize our processes of thinking, and do these involve simply thought, or also emotion, bodily impulses, perceptions, opinions, interpretations, associations, etc.,” and various questions related to these matters. If we are not clear on what we think of how we think, then how we think at all isn’t going to be very clear. And, there are quite frankly too many views on these matters which do not agree with each other and cannot be reconciled with one another…and thus, the question becomes which ones are “more useful” and which ones are “less useful,” and in each category, the answers will vary between different people at different times in their lives, at different times of the day, and depending on what the issue in question happens to be. Variations within variations within variations, in other words…it’s multifaceted, multifarious, polyvalent, and polycentric, at very least.
For me, for now, I’ll conclude by saying that I don’t think a “vs.” approach to these matters is remotely useful. If any given system makes either of the following mistakes: a) saying it has “THE” answer to life, the universe, and everything within a particular class of experience, a particular set of practices, or any particular conclusions drawn from either of those areas of inquiry; or b) it does not fully account for the fact that we are beings who have bodies and senses, reptilian brains that regulate our biological processes, mammalian brains that register emotions and form memories, and cerebral cortices that integrate all of these processes and sources of information together into the synthesis we know as human consciousness, and does not denigrate any one section of this physiology, nor does it elevate one section of it either (e.g. the limbic existence preferred of some forms of neo-atavistic spirituality, the philosophical flights only attainable through advanced engagement of the frontal lobe, etc.)–then, I think it is a spiritual system that is at odds with itself (which is often observed easily in the explanations it attempts to give of its effectiveness or its superiority, or even of its “objective” truth), and is also at odds with our actual and demonstrated natures as humans, insofar as we understand such things from the viewpoint of the most up-to-date findings of science and technology. No, science is not remotely “the answer” to any of these things, nor the final arbiter of truth (since science deals in fact rather than truth); and yet, if a spiritual system does not take into account what is known of science at any given time–which precisely NONE of the major world religions do at present, despite some of their proponents indicating such in particular contexts or in relation to certain philosophical ideas which may seem to accord with certain scientific principles–then it cannot usefully prescribe what is best for humans when it does not have a grasp of what human nature, on the most basic biological and neurophysiological level, happens to be. I have hope that a polytheistic approach to such questions might prove more useful, but we’re not quite there yet, and thus excesses in all of the directions outlined previously have occurred, and will continue to occur until a more holistic and “whole-istic” approach is taken, and one that does not then resort to universalizing and making “everything one,” but instead which recognizes that it is in our multidimensionality, diversity of composure and constitution, and variousness of faculties is what needs our actual attention, and which will recognize that more-than-one operative center exists in every single one of us that may not convert nor accept the prevailing currency of the other centers.
And here’s a picture of a naked woman just to emphasize that point, too.
