Hayden and I have been discussing “spirit”. I can’t do our conversation justice by attempting to summarise it here, but at least it reached a point where we happily agreed on various points, including a definition of spirit that covered the vast history of the concepts covered by this word.
I suppose our real starting point was rejection of the notion of spirit as something opposite to body, or – to add insult to injury – superior to body. I am sure that in the history, there have been those who have considered spirit as a substance, even though most agree that this, by definition, is precisely what it is not. Those who understand that spirit is not a substance – it can’t be weighed, have spatial co-ordinates and so forth – still treat spirit as an entity. The universal spirit is God, the spirit of a human being is soul, and then there are angels and “sprites” of all kinds.
Today we have the phenomenon of “spirituality” without specific beliefs in spirits as entities, but with various beliefs nonetheless. The big question that sceptics ask is, “Where is your proof?” But the very question is alien to the proponents of spirituality. “Proof” belongs to the material world. The spirit world, or should I say the spiritual world, trades in a different currency, personal experience or sometimes faith. No rate of exchange between the currencies in the different worlds has been established.
I’m not really happy having a foot in two different worlds. I’m in the “integration” phase of life. So what is spirit? Hayden and I agreed that it is a way of looking at things. If you imagine that trivialises the subject, then think again. We need several ways of looking at things to acknowledge all our experiences, deeply personal as well as communal.
And now to a topic which is more connected to the above than it seems. For several weeks I have been wanting to write about photography: how indispensable it is to our world and to cyberspace in particular; but how hopeless it is at capturing the essence – all right, let me say it, the spirit – of what we have seen, what has moved us. It struck me first when I wanted to capture for this blog the magnificence of a certain landscape near my home, particularly in the evening when the trees cast long shadows, and at that particular season – late May – when the fields of ripening wheat were of a certain vivid bluish-green. My frustration at not being able to capture or share went deep, and yesterday I found myself buying some oil pastels, charcoal and a sketchbook. Henceforth, my digital camera will be used as a scanner to copy these sketches and present them to you here. What primitive, what childish joy! What a lifetime will be required to learn the skills! Let me live as if each day is my last and, simultaneously, as if life goes on forever.
I am dissatisfied with photography because – at least with my camera – it merely reflects the surface of things and does not capture spirit.
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13 comments:
I like this summary, Yves. Particularly your addition of the word "essence." Spirit as essence is an easy way for me to think of this.
as ever, I am open to experience, but have no faith upon which to build belief, including a belief in God.
However, if one can define God as universal essence, things could get quite interesting. Key here, I think, would be separating "god" from "creator." yes?
I am curious to see your sketches!
Then I shall confidentially send you one of my primitive efforts so far, Rob. My struggles with elementary technique are currently vying with wildly ambitious stabs at effing the ineffable.
"effing the ineffable"! laughing, yves -
An experience labeled as "spiritual" out of personal experience seems possible to me, since it's connected feelings of connectedness, etc.
To claim there is a soul, god or universal spirit, or sprites is going too far without proof, because to exist they have to be detectable in some way. If no evidence, they are only figments of the imagination or mental states. In neurotheological research, similar mental states can be induced through electromagnetic stimulation. Those experiments create spiritual experiences in the subjects. It's all electromagnetoneurochemistry in the brain.
Brad, yes BUT. we also know that it is quite possible to "see" things that we simply have not named. Name the bird and you will see him. Name the phenomena and you will find it everywhere. We don't suggest that the bird or phenomena was less real prior to being named. Because you are "vibrating" at a different level with theta waves or electromagnetic vibrations in your head, does that make the thing you see less real? What about the problems of physics and the observer? What about the missing 6 dimensions physics speculates about? Is it not at least possible that these brain alterations enable us to perceive things that are just as much "there" as they are when we can't notice? What about light and sound frequencies that we can not see? They are still there even when they are outside of our range.
If those other things exist either in one's head or outside, then observations of them should be repeatable. As the phenomena are better understood, then they can be "named" and causative processes explored. Each of the items you have listed, except the "missing 6 dimensions", is something that we (humans) didn't understand, but now we do. They are real things. They can be measured, once the instrument was developed. The human body, including the brain, has been mapped out pretty well. We can hear and see because we have sensory organs for those senses. We can't read other people's thoughts, because we don't have structures for that purpose. Some people experience blissful states because they can alter their brain chemistry internally or externally (electromagnetically). It doesn't make their experience less real for them, BUT there is no reason to attribute the experience to something that exists outside of themselves, i.e., it's not evidence of any sprite interacting with them (unless the sprite provides information).
Thanks for your input, Brad. I'm wondering what difference it makes, that we can induce certain experiences by doing things to a brain. After all, the effect of chemicals on mood and perception has been known for thousands of years. Drugs and alcohol have been part of certain religious rites, and are taken informally too.
Men have been on the moon, but we can still see it primitively and poetically. They did not go on the moon to destroy myths but to support a different myth ("America the great").
I'll bet the neurotheologists do what they do, not to refute those pesky religionists and New Age hype merchants, but because they love to discover new things.
brad, there is a tremendous body of respectable research, done by Phd anthropologists, that is, little by little doing exactly what you suggest.
my thought is that if it is repeatable, - and it certainly is for those growing numbers who have the training - it shouldn't be ignored.
it's true that we now can measure sound waves that we can't hear and have proved them.
but the sound waves were there before the proof was found.
I am late as usual, but I am here, and I have some monkey wrenches for the science, neuro and psycho, about which you speak relative to 'spirit'.
Bernadette Schaepdryver pointed out to me that hospitals have 'weighed' dying patients, as they died and for a period thereafter. They LOSE WEIGHT at physical/mental 'death'. So it is said that 'spirit' does have 'weight'. I was recently with a lady who passed, a group of us were there to see her off, several of the group made claims to 'seeing' the 'spirit' of the lady, rise from her reclined body just moments after her death, as measured by physical/mental instruments, and 'move' purposefully, thru the room, to the side then up and out thru the ceiling.
Many 'esoteric'/spiritual organizations utilize meditations on chakras and on glandular activities. I was once, closely, many years ago, associated with one of these, a world wide, very wealthy, very well organized, and
a very old, long-standing, Group.
They specialize in this 'brainwave' research as it regards 'states of awarenesses'. They have a 'web' of relations strung thruout the world and collect 'customers' who serve as 'guinea pigs' for esoteric/spiritual research. Once in the 'group', one 'volunteers' to participate in their investigations into glandular meditations (unknowingly), provides written feedback as to states produced and in great detail. The 'data' is filed into an organized system which is then 'researched further' by providing designed 'programs' which try to reproduce the same results in new/different practioners. Again, results are written in detail and all is integrated and reformulated and again 'programs for trail' are produced and 'checked out'. This is all 'esoteric', secret, and is intended for subversive purposes as you might imagine, not altruistic, good-of-mankind purposes. The objective, in a word, is for control.
The fact here for 'spirit' is that this 'system' does work, but is not reliable, is inconsistent, is not 'progressive', in other words each time is separate and not accumulative, mind-over-matter is hit or miss and intelligence does not gain a 'handle' on it.
Fasting to a 'pure' condition, then eating 'very carefully and deliberately' can give some insight into the chemical control of 'states' at 'subtle' levels, but levels 'perceivable' by the human faster. They are interesting, but temporary and 'singular' in reality, not building and coming to something more.
Spirit does seem to 'build and come to something more'. If so it is not simply a temporary psychological/neurological/physiological phenomena.
LSD is thought, (maybe proven?), to 'build' as to the states produced, over time. It has been said that the states, become more and more 'revealing', not longer lasting nor more intense, but more 'enlightening' to the user, and at a point, there is claimed a 'break thru' to a 'different' consciousness. This is the only 'chemical' that I have found evidence of, that it does this.
More later, I have to get some things done, I still have more to say on this issue. I apologize for my lateness to this fascinating discussion, I have been 'hit and miss' on the computer and concentrated in Zohar, which 'teaches Spirit'.
From Brad's comment '..it's not evidence of any sprite interacting with them (unless the sprite provides information).'..I am not sure here of two things, what is 'sprite', does that simply mean 'spirit' also?, and what do you mean 'provides information).'
I will relate a spiritual experience of my own, in which much info was given to me, even the info needed to unlock the Zohar and Torah in Hebrew and do Kabbalah. At the time I had no, NO, knowledge of Hebrew even existing really, only barely had I encountered such a text as these, and yet, I within a year was doing it like I had studied it for years and years. Is that 'information' like you speak of?
I have a post defining 'spirit' as best as I can at the moment, on my Restoration/Restoration blog, it is strange, don't be put off by the appearance of it at first.
Ultimately, THOUGHT is what it comes down to, but there are many 'states' or manifestations of this ONE thing, and each is interpreted as 'something' at each/any given 'level' of manifestation. First a 'pre-thought' exist that is 'wordless and even soundless'. From there it comes down thru 'states' of being. Each state has its own 'realnesses', and its own definitions of 'spirit'.
Also, Essence is a 'time thing', like grapes can become wine or juice, and do in time, or even food, and do in time. The use or next state purpose, that is the essence that the grape was before it was even a grape, because it was in 'pre-thought' state. This can be applied to any/every thing.
So today has within it, the essence that 'tomorrow' will be.
Great discussion folks. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.
Thanks Jim, I will look at your definition of spirit when I can. I think it will be different from mine! As for spirit having weight, i.e. mass, if it does it is matter and not spirit. I have taken LSD (way back in '71 and '72, a few times). Yes, it chemically alters brain function. I'm sure one can have experiences without the aid of drugs which alter brain function in parallel ways. Of course!
The word "sprite" which I introduced somewhere is a term which I used to mean an individual human-like-but-not-human "spirit" - like a fairy or perhaps an angel. Do I believe in them? Poetically, yes. What is poetically? using imagery to represent a feeling or sensation.
good word then Yves, thanks for it.
I agree on the drug thing, no need for it.
I am even discouraging about it.
My apologies for the wordiness and length.
Thanks for your comments at my blog, you are very encouraging.
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