Introduction
I finished an audiobook of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature last week and I have been letting his argument quietly simmer in my mind. In essence it is the ‘civilising force’ of secular humanism that has had the biggest impact in the reduction of violence over the past few millennia. The movement away from religion has been a major plus. I am listening to Dan Jones’ Crusades, which underlines how much violence is perpetrated in the name of religion.
I think it is necessary to clarify that secular humanism is a perspective that can be adopted by materialists, the religious and those who affirm a deeper dimension to human nature free from any religious association. For most of my working life in Australia I worked in human service agencies in the public sector – and secular humanism was the common language we used because we shared the same essential values. It is the foundation of a good caring society.
No way of understanding the world is ideal, but the model we adopt speaks volumes about our psychological needs. The more existentially insecure we are the more we need a model that reflects the power we sense a lack of. There’s also a hazard that we can become over-confident and invent a model that reflects a cockiness – but that’s also a form of insecurity.
The good thing about secular humanism that it is strongly reason based, so disputes tend to be emotional and political and intellectual. They are less disposed to physical violence.
I have been trying to get to the essence of Christianity – an elusive thing. It seems to me that Jesus’s teachings are fundamentally identical to ideas of secular humanism – when you strip all religious camouflage that’s intended to distract your attention from them and draw you into messy muddled religious thinking.
The Enlightenment kicked off in the 1700. Religion was rejected but not necessarily the essential values of the human spirit. In fact, I think they were retained and brought into a new intellectual and cultural environment that married idealism, spiritual values, science and reason. What was produced was an aspect of our culture that valued reason over faith and belief but did not wholly reject the metaphysical. There has been a vigourous contestation between materialists and those who assert a spiritual dimension. Its is a contest I think the materialist have been losing for decades.
So, religiosity and materialism are weakening and being replaced by alternative ways of thinking that are secular humanist at core. By that I mean there’s a sense of universality and goodwill that isn’t conditional on any dogma. That alternative way of thought is diverse and uneven in its intellectual rigour.
We may not be able to anticipate a post-religious/post-materialist understanding will be. But we can say, I think, that it will be strongly based on science and intellectual rigour – though whether that survives at the popular level is anyone’s guess.
Below I want to muse where I think this all may take us in terms of thinking about what it is to be human.
The problem with boundaries
Religiosity and materialism both put limits on what it is permissible and possible to think. And those who think outside those limits are often zero-sum opponents, enemies.
If you explore the evolution of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) you will see this. This was what Jesus was supposed to disrupt, but his thought was swiftly encrusted in religious limitations. All three faiths have ‘mystical’ (universal) element. But that inclusivity is mostly contained within a hard shell of exclusivity.
While religious exclusivity was backed by violence, materialists confined their exclusivity to intellectual and political methods, would a generous helping of scorn to season their disagreements.
Boundaries are important. They can be applied judiciously or as a blanket response. In vulnerable communities they reinforce cohesion and common purpose because survival depends on them being maintained. If communal survival isn’t a concern, ambition or power or wealth can trigger a pragmatic need for boundaries. This is certainly the case when religious power is allied with political and economic clout. Violence as a means of control of religious affiliation was commonplace as Europe evolved after the establishment of Christianity as a state supported faith.
Why think about being human?
We use the term ‘human’ enthusiastically and carelessly. We distinguish ourselves from ‘animals’ because of some mysterious plus factor that elevates us above animals. What is this plus factor?
In the Christian tradition humanity was created separately from other lives and was set to have dominion over them. Later Christians asserted that they were uniquely possessors a soul. In fact, for a time, it was debated whether women had souls. Some also denied that ‘primitives’ and ‘savages’ were human at all.
With the reaction against Christianity leading to atheism, materialism and the development of humanism our distinguishing attribute became our intelligence. We were better, superior, because we were more intelligent. We immodestly named ourselves ‘homo sapiens sapiens’, asserting wisdom to be a primary quality. But then we started using terms like ‘humane’ and ‘humanitarian’, suggesting qualities of compassion and empathy also defined us.
With the advent of Darwin, we declared that we had descended from apes because of our superior intelligence – and this was the defining thing about us. These days the dominant conception of being human is a materialistic belief in our evolution from ape ancestors. But is it a sufficient and correct understanding? It isn’t.
Who are we really?
The spirit problem
Throughout human history there has been a consistent account of spirits in some form or other – gods, the souls of the dead, spirits of place, nature spirits and so on. Humans have been, for the most part, naturally animistic. Materialism is a recent extreme denial of animism, aided by Christianity’s aversion to any spirit not explicitly authorised by its various dogmas. Materialism denies any dimension of reality beyond the concrete, and it remains the dominant influence upon our western culture, despite clear empirical evidence of its error. It is not a good thought tool for engaging with, or navigating, reality.
One of the great difficulties I experienced as I grew up was that my paranormal experiences were considered not real, caused by misunderstanding, misinterpretation, gullibility, weakness of mind or madness. My life experiences demonstrated to me an abundance of spirits. Later, I had experiences that confirmed the reality of out of body experiences, and I engaged with intelligent non-physical agencies.
This was confirmed, as well, through my reading extensively across religious and spiritual beliefs, the paranormal and psi phenomena. There was a strong consistency between experience and research. Explanatory theories were another matter entirely. They were either vague or implausible for the most part.
The materialist model was everywhere disputed and demonstrated to be wrong. But it persisted in dominating our cultural and intellectual discourse. Its errors had attained the respectability of ‘science’ – not as a method of inquiry but a dogma that framed our intellectual, political and economic conduct.
As a culture we must get over this divergence into a moral and mental cul-de-sac. This will be a huge crisis of consciousness which will disrupt and re-align so much of our ways of thought, our beliefs, our values and our behaviour. This change will take decades, maybe even centuries, to become dominant because it will be opposed by materialists and, oddly, the religious. Christianity will not like any change driven by experience or science because it will force changes to dogmas that have long been asserted as coming from the divine instead of men’s imaginations.
There is good evidence that sound scientific research will fuel the changes along with reports of personal experiences. This is quietly underway and has been so for a few decades. What hasn’t happened yet is the emergence of this new way of thinking as a guiding influence upon our overall cultural discourse.
I recently had cause to look into the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). I signed up for regular notifications. One notification alerted me to the Wiser project and a survey on ‘paranormal’ experiences. Good to see there’s serious work being done.
Spirit is real and is fundamental to our reality and identity. When this becomes broadly accepted how we see ourselves will be transformed. This is not to say that we will enter a golden age of spiritual enlightenment any time soon. Egos will still want to rule and will resist any changes that take away their power and influence.
Spirit in an age of AI
Commentators on the introduction of AI in workplaces are sounding a common theme of the importance of the development of meta-cognitive skills. They are already seeing evidence that AI can make users dumber or way smarter. The primary message seems to be that AI can enhance efforts to get smarter, or it can feed lazy consumers of the technology and weaken them.
This is a stark demarcation of a trend that has arisen as more and more research produces more and more insights about human behaviour and human nature. It is also a trend evident in how we engage with technology. The smart phone is the epitome of the opportunity or the danger. We can use it to engage in mindless pursuits or to get smarter.
As we transition from reliance on guesswork, fantasy and texts that are grounded in Iron Age views of human reality we will have to put greater effort into developing a sense of spirituality that has a foundation of disciplined intellectual inquiry and personal experience. That will not be appealing to many – for whom achieving a level of comfort and ease has been an understandable goal.
I hesitate to use the early development of Christianity as an example because it is difficult to find much that is insightful and coherent. But the first few centuries were a time of intense experimentation as the new ideas were engaged with. Experimentation and contestation continued for many centuries. Regardless of what you think of the faith, it profoundly changed the world. My point here is that new ideas, even those of profound merit, will enter a culture imperfectly and bring about even adverse changes as well as benefits. We can’t assume that experimentation with new ideas will be an unalloyed good thing.
In fact, if we survey our histories we will see how often new ideas are adopted with a passion rather than through informed reflection. This suggests to me that while we are being given the opportunity to develop new insights and knowledge there is also a quiet caution that we should ensure that we employ an adequate level of self-reflection and effort.
In a way it’s a pity that the insight about developing metacognitive skills has been made in specific reference to AI because it applies equally to any system of thought or belief. Refugees from Christianity routinely confess their faith and belief made them stupid. I haven’t heard the same from materialists – but then, I don’t expect to, either. It’s a different kind of ‘stupid’.
So, what is a human?
The evolutionists make a strong case that our organic nature has evolved over tens of thousands of years. But what about the spirit bit? What about the self that can leave the body while it’s still alive and permanently when it’s dead? How does this fit into our sense of being human?
I have read extensively in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience because I do understand that that so much of our behaviour and cognition is driven by our organic nature. We want that organic experience. This is the desire Buddhist speak of. It’s just not all we are. Christianity has demonstrated it is of little use in adding any insight. I prefer the Indian traditions as guides to understanding our non-organic, non-perishable, nature. I think, so long as we experience our reality through the medium of our organic bodies, we can safely say that being human is being an ape with a plus factor. But in that immaterial dimension where spirits reside, I don’t know whether being human is a thing. It is evident that those who speak with ‘from the other side’ us seem familiar in how they communicate. There is a fair degree of mutual understanding. But that doesn’t mean they retain a human identity indefinitely.
I quit fulltime paid employment about 5 years ago and I have seen my identity as a public servant fade over time. It’s still familiar and I can engage with current public servants coherently. But at some stage my experience might become too distant to be compellingly relevant. But if I take it up a notch to philosophical and psychological references my relevance is extended. Maybe the same thing happens with inner plane teachers? For several years I had conversations with a real Druid through a mediator (a better class of medium).
So, I am content to imagine that being human is being an ape with a plus factor. It’s a package deal with a memory. The memory is as legitimately part of one’s identity as the experience which created it.
So let us imagine that being human is entirely an organic affair. Our sense of being humane or humanitarian suggests an empathic or compassionate quality. This might hint at a spirit of stewardship rather than dominion – or dominion of a sustainable and conservative nature. Instead, we have pushed natural systems to the edge and created the crisis of global warning.
The idea of dominion which has fueled how we have recklessly spread across the globe comes from a belief in spirit – in this case a polytheistic company of divine beings (collapsed into an imagined supreme being) who have played out the drama of power, ambition and control.
We in the west are confused. Our sense of identity is vague and ill-formed. We are, as humans, a fusion of spirit and organic (ape +) being. It is an identity we adopt on our birth – not as a superior or primary intelligence but as singular union of spirit and flesh.
We are confused because the nature of our being here is distorted by the dogmas of science in its materialistic character and religions who cling to archaic explanations about how things work in the world – and primarily conclude that obedience to authority is what matters most. Worse, in Christianity there is the tyranny of holding ‘eternal life’ as conditional and subject to whim and fancy. This keeps insight at the level of ego – as disastrous folly.
In Far Journeys Robert Monroe recounts an experience of being out of his body in the company of a guide. He is above the Earth and is witnessing a crowd of spirits clamoring to be born into the material world. It is a compelling image. The spirits crave physical sensation – of being in time and space. Buddhism tells us that suffering comes from desire and that release from suffering can be attained by ending desire for physical existence. That way the cycle of rebirth can be broken. There is a coherence here.
Coming into physical life is part of a process of evolution of consciousness. This is what we think of as spirituality. We must not forget that we are spirits having a physical experience, not the other way round.
This is the essential point of the traditions that have been developed in India. Buddhism is the most widespread expression. In the west the religious traditions of obedience and redemption mask and distort the same essential insight. Christianity, which started as a spiritual discipline, was transformed into a faith of state and hence more about compliance and conformity rather than self-discovery and self-awareness.
Secular psychology has stepped up to deliver discourses on self-awareness and self-discovery. The grip of materialism on psychology has been weakening for decades. But it hasn’t yet developed a coherent model of spirit plus organic natures. The knowledge of the psychology of our organic aspect has advanced because that is indisputably true regardless of our beliefs. We have an animal spirit/consciousness which belongs to our body as well as the deeper spirit which defines who we ‘really’ are.
This spirit is contested territory. Its existence is denied or otherwise so wrapped in dogma that its actual nature isn’t understood even by those who agree that it exists.
Here the problem is quite simple. Being clearly conscious of this spirit nature isn’t a commonplace experience – but it’s also not rare. It is hence easy to wreathe its nature in myth, metaphor and dogma. Those who have such experiences are often called mystics – denoting the unusual nature of such awareness – and its uncomfortable relationship with the politics of power and control. I often marveled that Catholic church murdered radicals and then celebrated them as heroes.
The Indian traditions are substantially about helping people to become aware of this spirit nature. So too, are the ‘secret’ mystical traditions that persist in the west, but which are largely rejected by secular and religious authorities.
What has changed in the west is that the idea of a distinct incarnating spirit has become not only part of the general cultural discourse because of the spread of ideas originating in the Indian tradition but because direct experience of it has become more common – from both a religious and secular perspective.
Consider the steady growth in experience of, and acceptance of, OOBEs, NDEs, encounters with intelligent non-physical agents, ‘UFO abductions’ and psychedelic drug experiences – to name only some. Seriously disciplined research into reincarnation must be added to the list.
The evidence that we have an enduring spirit nature that is independent of our organic bodies isn’t subject to balanced debate anymore. What this means is, however subject to passionate dispute – often for the wrong reasons. Humans are indisputably dual natured.
Biology vs the machine
This is the stark duality we are told we face. We can integrate the organic and the mechanical. It isn’t so. The singularity isn’t machine but spirit. Materialism has generated a vision that our bodies are organic machines which can be enhanced with human-made machine parts. Our brains are generators of our consciousness, which will dissipate on the death of the organic body unless transferred to more enduring medium. Spirit is only a metaphor or something that comes in a bottle.
We must take pause and reflect on how profoundly wrong this vision is, and how it utterly distorts our relationship with the material world.
The alternative vision – that spirit is the root of our being – is growing steadily as academic and otherwise disciplined inquiry erodes the grip of materialistic and religious dogma and bias. This is the vision we must align with, because it excites a realignment of values – that can inform our behaviors.
Conclusion
I don’t know whether I have been blessed or cursed by my lifetime of paranormal experiences. On the one hand they have put beyond any shadow of doubt the reality of a ‘spirit realm’. On the other I have endured years of existential trauma that often left me bewildered and emotionally exhausted.
There is a companion dimension to our time in organic bodies which is complex and potent – nurturing and challenging. Sometimes life feels like a football match in which half the players are invisible. A subtle reading of history, anthropology, indeed the ‘human sciences as a whole’ suggests to us that our whole reality is physical + metaphysical – rather like yin + yang. That ‘invisible’ metaphysical side isn’t imaginary or speculative – even though it seems that we have withdrawn into the material and shut the doors and windows that allow at least acknowledgement of the metaphysical.
It’s as though we westerners have become agoraphobic and have retreated into our self-made stories about reality. Our experience of being in the world is increasingly mediated by stuff we have made. This includes physical technology, culture, theories and beliefs – many of which create filters which are a crafted by interests which do not champion our freedom, or what is true.
I grew up with a passion for science, to which I remain true. But it’s a passion for ‘truth’, not a dogma. This has put me at odds with the dominant influences of my culture because they tell a story about being human that invalidates and contradicts my experiences. I have learned, over the years, that my experiences align with the long story of our ancestors and that the conflict with materialistic and religious dogma is a sign of its weakness, not strength.
I am struggling through Paul Brunton’s Hidden Teachings Beyond Yoga. It’s an ebook and not written in a style that meshes well with my mind. It’s too wordy for me. But I read it when I was 15/16 over 18 months and I have come back to it on a hunch. I do see what captivated my youthful mind so powerfully. It’s about ‘Truth’ that lies beyond belief, tradition and dogma. At the moment, that’s only a crack in the psychological curtains that obscure what is beyond. But it’s enough to excite me.
Being human is about being in the material world in an organic body, but not as an ‘only’, rather an ‘as well as’. Our consciousness does not terminate at the boundary of our awareness. That awareness is constructed by the spirit, psychology and needs of our organic body, our responses to experiences in this life and the beliefs and dogmas built by our culture, community and relationships. It is one side of an at least equally complex reality of which we are mostly unconscious. And yet a good deal of our internal dialogue is an interface between both sides.
Endnote: What I have written above is my reflection on my experience. It is not an assertion of an objective truth. I am not saying, for example, that a materialist is wrong to think as they do, only that it’s not a way of thought that serves my needs. It is clear to me that some people serve their psychological needs by believing in materialist dogma. I do not intend to invalidate those needs by disagreeing with them. It’s a tolerance that cuts both ways. My issue with materialist and religious dogmas is that they are carry a spirit of immodest and aggressive exclusionary dominion with them – ‘This way or no way!’
The human dialogue with our material reality has been stunningly complex and no one dialogue serves all needs. For many the religious or materialist model will serve their needs exactly, which is why those dogmas attract so much adherence. But I don’t expect such people will read these words. I am not into dissing people because we don’t agree. But efforts at tyranny don’t sit well with me.
Disagreement isn’t about invalidation. This isn’t a zero-sum game. That’s why I like secular humanism. We can all play. We can all be good neighbors and not give a damn about who believes what. Jesus was about being a good neighbor (think the second ‘greatest commandment’) but the faith created in his name tortured and murdered those who didn’t agree with its limits on thought, even if its victims followed His teachings.
I disagree with the religious and the materialist because what they believe does not serve my psychological and spiritual needs. Steven Pinker made an observation that I found compelling. People with strong ‘moral’ passions are more likely to be violent. This is in the sense of what people believe, not how they behave. People can be good neighbours but be persecuted for metaphysical beliefs that have zero impact on their conduct. This isn’t about morality. But it is framed that way because once it was – way back in the iron age when belief was an indicator of conduct (maybe).
These days most of us live in complex, diverse and pluralistic cultures. Policing belief is a futile and pointless exercise. We police conduct instead. This is the universalism of secular humanism at work. We are all in this together, now please do try to behave yourself.
This is longer than I usually write and it’s a bit of a rant reaction. I’ve tried to catch the typos, but my brain is a normal human one, which like AI, will lie to me.