On Fanaticism - Quareness Series 69th "Lecture".
Given the turbulent times we now seem to be living through it may be opportune to delve a little more deeply (than the usual knee-jerk type of "instant" judgment) into our potentially differing mindsets. May I suggest that doing so can only help understanding - a vital element in effectively addressing and solving our problems.
In essence the things of the spirit derive from and are concerned with stillness and those of the flesh with change. And life brings together those things that happen and those that are, the measurable and the absolute, with time as the arbiter and consequence of events and eternity as the container of it all. As creatures of decision we can be free and independent, but when restrained by instinct we must remain a part of the universal psyche of our race. In a sense our excarnate existence of rather limitless scope allows us the possibility of absorbtion into the deity (a religious aim) or of rising up in liberty to our own "godly" stature.
In science a theory is successful because it works whereas in religion devotion appears more effective than enquiry. The emphasis of a church tends to be on its rituals/services and its religious faith is borne out in life mainly because it has conviction rather than truth or error. And such "facts on the ground" might be largely down to a quirk in our human nature whereby we love our protégés better than our patrons, with our affections evolving from our kindnesses towards the same objects (= the sound common sense of learning to love by doing kindness). The world of the arts of course is another area wherein our understanding tends to come from
figments rather than facts and where we may get to glimpse the paradox by which a reducing process often has a unifying effect. All in all may seem it can matter less to be right or wrong than to be sure, and it may be the better part of wisdom to keep in mind that we're really defined by 3 aspects...the inward (or artistic), the permutative (or scientitfic) and the external (or religious).
Humanity must be spent to be conserved (unlike for economics) and must be exerted to keep its energies (unlike for natural law). And our human life is for reaching out/
stretching, not merely for further experience or greater accomplishment or new knowledge, but for something that lies beyond them all. However, fanaticism can arise where cause comes to matter more than people, even though time itself is contained (not passed) and each incident in our life is led to and followed from as a "front and back" and not a "before or after". Not only does the beginning of a story lead to its end, but its end necessitates its beginning. Indeed the writer who looks back will not produce many books but rather will write one book many times...the greatest danger to any artist may lie in early success.
It's quite obvious that man is hardly master of his fate when the freedom of each of us is restricted by the conflicting freedoms of all the others...we can do what we like only if other people let us. Though each is subjectively free, true freedom (like time) is
contained...leaking out only in opportunity. In other words we are free not to act but to react...the decision is wholly ours but the execution only contingently so. There is freedom of the soul, but if there be no soul, we have to wonder what is freedom?
Because we are alone we tend to seek company, finding companionship in common interests. When we are united in a religion we try to fix our devotions, developing dogmas wherein we are possessed of something mutual and unchanging. But unfortunately such creeds often become the epitaph of dead faith and their liturgy its puppet show. Religion may then become a thing of assumptions instead of the enquiry that could/should follow from them. In so far as faith contains conviction it is a conviction in the unfolding of knowledge...faith concurs in a future but belief comprises a past. And true faith is not definitive.
The limitations of religion can be said to arise from it being basically assumptive rather than essentially explorative. It can be quite sobering to realise that while scientists may remit results which prove untenable, a devotee of error must go back to its beginnings to start all over again. Indeed assumptions by their nature tend to be exclusive and admit of no contraries, thereby often resulting in absurdities. Nevertheless it's hardly unreasonable to speculate that, however lowly the origins of our religions (e.g. symbolised in a stable manger, etc.) or however immense their accretions of ancient superstitions, we cannot be sure such were not part of a
fumbling towards reality, or indeed that the similarity between all religions may not be their common ground of truth, or that their essentially trivial differences (however blown up they may be by the hot air of fanaticism) cannot be deflated. Mavbe the religious way to enlightenment lies in the refining of belief rather than the discovery of fact?
"I see science and mysticism as two complementary manifestations of the human mind; of its rational and intuitive faculties. The modern physicist experiences the world through an extreme specialisation of the rational mind; the mystic through an extreme specialisation of the intuitive mind. The two approaches are entirely different and involve far more than a certain view of the physical world. However, they are complementary, as we have learned to say in physics. Neither is comprehended in the other nor can either of them be reduced to the other, but both of them are necessary, supplementing one another for a fuller understanding of the world. Science does not need mysticism nor does mysticism need science; but man needs both. What we need, therefore, is not a synthesis but a dynamic interplay between mystical intuition and scientific analysis" - Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics).
It has been pointed out by the British psychologist Stan Gooch ("The Double Helix of the Mind") that undue devotion to the nature of the Self only too often results in a gross distortion of objectivity, just as conversely, excessive devotion to the Ego results in the gross distortion of subjectivity. He saw the extreme tendencies at both ends of a spectrum as equally, though oppositely, insane... evolutionary blind alleys having no possible future. For him (and many others) it is possible for man to argue both sides of our human equation with equal vehemence, given that an "artist" or "whole person" is one who can think of and act on two completely contradictory views at the same time.
Conventionally religious people trying to read justice and reason into the random tragedies of life, in the sense of reasoned or even consistent action on the part of some God, may lead the human community very quickly to the edge of insanity. Ultimately a sane person is one with a balance of the objective and subjective, the yang and yin in his/her personality.
There is a Zen question - what is the sound of one hand clapping? One answer is man without woman, yang without yin, right without left, adult without child...the one without the other being silence, emptiness, senselessness. Of course we never really can have one without the other - just as we can never have a magnet with one pole or a battery with one terminal. Even if we removed all the women and all the children from the planet, we would still be left with the female within the male and the child within the adult. And any attempt or idea of living as if there were just one pole to existence (like many committed religious, political and scientific minded people try to do) is likely sufficiently destructive to rule out much hope of progress in human evolution.
All human actions and states are necessarily mixtures of the objective and the subjective, though the two elements may be present in differing amounts. But the nature and qualities of these two elements are always dramatically opposed, each always reverses the other. Objectivity begins outside us i.e. the physical universe is in some sense there whether we are present or not. Indeed it is clear that we have been produced by the evolutionary processes of stars and planets, rather than ourselves subjectively creating the physical universe by our presence (as some mystics claim), although the precise way in which we perceive and experience the
objects and events of the physical universe around us results from the nature of our sense organs, and is therefore subjective. Objective events then start outside us - but end up within us. Conversely, subjective events start within us (and of course without us there can be no subjective events of any kind) but can often end up outside us e.g. when we perceive the objective world as alive and sentient (like some mystics or primitives), or when we see ghosts or visions, or read personal meaning into chance events.
The cerebellum appears to be the most complex organ ever developed by life on this planet, and may therefore (from a scientific point of view) be the ideal candidate for any source of highly evolved, alternative consciousness. The scientist in us might then suggest that the notion of the Higher Self arises from the subjective sensation and consequences that accompany the release of cerebellor consciousness from its normally "inferior" location, so that it temporarily takes over from and displaces normal waking consciousness. Whatever the full reality of the matter, we can surmise that the truly integrated state for mankind is a genuinely humble or neutral one in which we are free from such ultimately counter-productive notions as pride and self-congratulation.
At the other end of the Bentov & Ellis bi-polar universe Torus model (= like a giant figure 8 where at one side of the "waist" the phenomenon of a black hole or sink of the contracting universe can be observed and at the other side the phenomenon of a white hole or gusher of the expanding universe) the evolved species "located" there would be heavily endowed with magical and paranormal abilities, while the capacities for logic and rationality would in them be rudimentary - the converse of our own
position in fact. Our moving to the "outer" position i.e. towards the White Hole and away from the Black Hole, could be what is often described as the dawn of the Age of Aquarius. And as our planet reaches the top or outer edge of the Torus figure 8, the Self and the Ego come into complete balance. But then, as the Earth moves down towards the Black Hole end, the Self begins to grow to a point where the balance is once again upset. The story of Lucifer's rise and fall can be seen as another intuitively accurate story of the movement of a planet through the full cycle of the Torus, though it can of course also be more simply viewed as a description of the role of the "inferior" sun in the ancient moon religion.
In attempting to bring the Self up to strength, in line perhaps with the evolutionary development of our planet, we have to be careful to give it neither undue importance nor a major say in objective areas, and we can avoid such excesses and mistakes by properly appreciating the true nature of subjectivity and magic. There are two important rules here - (i) you may never impose or force your own subjectivity on someone else, and (ii) you may never deny the validity of another person's subjectivity. On the other hand in science you do legitimately seek to impose your own view on other people, and you do question their view of objectivity. This is done by public debate and, more importantly, public experiments designed (a) to show that your position is the correct one, and (b) that someone else's position is not the correct one. This is how science/logic progresses and the final outcome is a public consensus agreed by all scientists
In this context it is noteworthy that virtually all religions and their adherents appear to have almost entirely failed to understand the deeply personal and private nature of the religio-magical inner universe. Instead they have tried to behave like scientists and objectivists "legitimately" imposing their own subjective view on others, and denying others' existing subjective view. But perhaps the truth is that there should be as many different forms of religion in the world as there are individuals. While we all naturally have certain subjective experiences in common as members of one and the same species, the fine detail of your magico-religious view is yours and yours alone. Of all the religious groups down through our history, it seems that only the Quakers have really come anywhere near to understanding this position.
It is widely agreed that one of the functions of the cerebellum is to deal with physical balance, and there may also be a connection between physical and mental balance. Organised religion and the Church no longer seem to nourish the Self, as Carl Jung said... "Life has gone out of the Church, and it will never return". In our Western culture the Self may literally be starving to death, and those who would satisfy its hunger may tend to grab at any and every figment of sustenance, however
inadequate. The more one-sided and unjustified the behaviour, the more eagerly it may be seized upon. For the more comprehensively society denies the Self (with its essential subjective individuality), the wilder the reactive backlash must become perhaps feeding the flames of all sorts of fanaticism.
Hopefully a deeper degree of understanding these aspects of our human condition can help us all to "see the light" a little more clearly.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness
August, 2016.