How Would We Know of a Spiritual Reality?
Posted: Thu May 19, 2022 6:17 am
The question has come up in another thread of how we might know of the existence of a spiritual reality. So, building on some thoughts from Kish and using a great deal from Aldous Huxley, I'll offer some thoughts on how I see this. To clarify at the outset, I'm absolutely not of the view that mere good feelings or physical tingles are themselves barometers of truth, spiritual or otherwise. I am, as I think will become clear, talking about something much deeper and more substantial.
Practitioners of contemplative traditions across millennia and around the globe report that, diligently pursued, contemplative practices such as meditation or prayer and associated lives of love ultimately culminate in the knowledge of the transcendent. And, as Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy and others have shown, they tend to arrive at a surprisingly consistent view of that transcendent, and of this world's relationship to it, despite wide variances in their cultural contexts. (See The Perennial Philosophy: https://archive.org/stream/the-perennia ... y_djvu.txt or
https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philo ... 0061724947)
To quote Huxley:
Given the prospect of knowing ultimate reality and what is of ultimate value, and of being transformed by that knowledge to live a life of greatest meaning and contribution to others and to the world, I can't help but think of these parables of Jesus:
Practitioners of contemplative traditions across millennia and around the globe report that, diligently pursued, contemplative practices such as meditation or prayer and associated lives of love ultimately culminate in the knowledge of the transcendent. And, as Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy and others have shown, they tend to arrive at a surprisingly consistent view of that transcendent, and of this world's relationship to it, despite wide variances in their cultural contexts. (See The Perennial Philosophy: https://archive.org/stream/the-perennia ... y_djvu.txt or
https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philo ... 0061724947)
To quote Huxley:
What more consequential and ultimately promising experiment could we possibly perform?'Practice,' in the words of William James, may change our theoretical horizon, and this in a twofold way : it may lead into new worlds and secure new powers. Knowledge we could never attain, remaining what we are, may be attainable in consequence of higher powers and a higher life, which we may morally achieve. To put the matter more succinctly, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' And the same idea has been expressed by the Sufi poet, Jalal-uddin Rumi, in terms of a scientific metaphor : The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is love.
... The Perennial Philosophy is primarily concerned with the one, divine Reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds. But the nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfil certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit. ... It is only by making physical experiments that we can discover the intimate nature of matter and its potentialities. And it is only by making psychological and moral experiments that we can discover the intimate nature of mind and its potentialities. In the ordinary circumstances of average sensual life these potentialities of the mind remain latent and unmanifested. If we would realize them, we must fulfil certain conditions and obey certain rules, which experience has shown empirically to be valid. ... It is a fact, confirmed and reconfirmed during two or three thousand years of religious history, that Ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended except by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit. ...
... No amount of such theorizing, however ingenious, could ever tell us as much about the galactic and extra-galactic nebulae as can direct acquaintance by means of a good telescope, camera and spectroscope. Analogously, no amount of theorizing about such hints as may be darkly glimpsed within the ordinary, unregenerate experience of the manifold world can tell us as much about divine Reality as can be directly apprehended by a mind in a state of detachment, charity and humility. Natural science is empirical; but it does not confine itself to the experience of human beings in their merely human and unmodified condition. Why empirical theologians should feel themselves obliged to submit to this handicap, goodness only knows. And of course, so long as they confine empirical experience within these all too human limits, they are doomed to the perpetual stultification of their best efforts. From the material they have chosen to consider, no mind, however brilliantly gifted, can infer more than a set of possibilities or, at the very best, specious probabilities. The self-validating certainty of direct awareness cannot in the very nature of things be achieved except by those equipped with the moral 'astrolabe of God's mysteries/ If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those who were, and who, because they had modified their merely human mode of being, were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge.
- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy
Given the prospect of knowing ultimate reality and what is of ultimate value, and of being transformed by that knowledge to live a life of greatest meaning and contribution to others and to the world, I can't help but think of these parables of Jesus:
DonMatthew 13: 44-46:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and in his joy he went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. When he found one very precious pearl, he went away and sold all he had and bought it.