I once heard an eminent astronomer proclaim: “The universe doesn’t care if we exist, and it won’t care if we go away.” If you’ve spent any time alone in the wilderness, you know that’s true physically.
But is the cosmos totally indifferent to the evolution of brains such as ours, with the capacity for consciousness beyond thought and technology? To dogmatic materialists, who insist that consciousness is only generated between the skull bones, the answer is unequivocally yes.
But that just closes out the question, and denies the direct experiencing of immanence by mystics across cultures and throughout the ages, who have felt an immeasurable awareness beyond the mind of man, when thought is completely silent.
Being a philosopher of no faith, in the sense of a belief system, and of little faith, in the sense of trust without evidence that a higher intelligence is operating in or on human consciousness, I have a perennial question about whether there are ultimately three or two movements in life.
On the one hand I’ve had too much experience with what I’m loath to call dark forces to deny their existence. On the other hand I have too little experience with a movement of intelligence in human consciousness to feel that there is anything beyond the possibility of negating darkness within the individual, beginning and ending within oneself.
My spiritual practice reflects the imperative of negation and stillness. Taking a daily period of passive observation is a matter of internal hygiene to my mind, an action of simple inward cleansing. The transcendent states that ensue with complete negation of useless and harmful cognitive and emotional content are an unsought benefit, not the reason one washes off the dirt through negation in meditation.
Water, as an actuality and symbol, is of the essence, both in terms of life itself, and in terms of religious practice. Many astrobiologists now think that wherever there is liquid water in the universe, there we will probably find life. That hypothesis has yet to be tested on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, or Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn, where liquid water lies below thick crusts of ice. But if Earth is any indication, liquid water and life are synonymous.
Water is the central symbol of many religions. Hindus ritually cleanse their bodies and souls in the sacred waters of the Ganges. Catholics baptize their babies and Protestants their born again believers in water, sometimes with full immersion.
Therefore beyond the physical necessity of water as the most important element of life, there’s the oft-neglected necessity of keeping oneself inwardly clean. Few people do that, but to a person who does, it’s even more important than physical cleanliness.
It is unnecessary and unhelpful to think in terms of sin. Rather, it is in the nature of human consciousness to accumulate memories, hurts, hatreds, sorrows and suffering. They pile up in the mind and heart, encrusting one’s perception and feeling, destroying sensitivity and innocence.
One can see how stultifying this content, this material in consciousness has become, since sensitivity and innocence is being systematically destroyed in younger and younger children. They lose their innocence not only through physical and sexual abuse, but also through continuous exposure to the rampant and rancid consumeristic garbage of the globalized capitalistic economy.
It’s circular nonsense to say things like, “my relationship with my thoughts,” since I am my thoughts, and the observer is the observed. A daily period of passive, intense observation of the movement of the mind and heart in the present cleans the caked material that builds up on the windowpanes of the mind.
Passive awareness gathering non-directed attention restores unobstructed perception in the mind and heart. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “You must return and become like children.” Given what the world has become, there is no more important action that an adult can learn, and teach their children.
But even though I’m certain of the efficacy of effortless, undivided attention (call it meditation, mindfulness, contemplation or whatever), that still leaves the question of whether there is only the crud of consciousness as we know it, and the individual cleansing through daily diligence of passive observation.
Since one regularly contacts a completely impersonal sacredness, to my mind there is, beyond reasonable doubt, an immanent, inseparable intelligence permeating nature and the cosmos. Whether God in this sense, like nature itself, is utterly indifferent to us, or in some impersonal sense cares about the awakening of insight in the human brain, is the question.
If there are only two movements in consciousness — the accumulation of darkness, and its negation in the individual — then authentic religious experience is just for the very few. That makes no sense to me. Besides, it would mean that humanity doesn’t stand a chance in the long, and perhaps even in the short run.
Sometimes I feel that there is a third movement that grows out the negation of darkness. I just don’t feel it very often, especially lately. And if a so-called mystic who regularly experiences transcendence doesn’t feel it, then no wonder so many people have given up on humanity, taking the view that there’s only cosmic randomness, unmitigated materialism, and intractable self-centeredness.
Is true intelligence simply absent, in the present age at least? Can Intelligence only operate through us? And is this the darkest hour of the darkest night of the human soul?
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