To the disciples who wanted to know what sort of meditation he practiced each morning in the garden the Master said, "When I look carefully, I see the rose bush in full bloom."
"Why would one have to look carefully to see the rose bush?" they asked.
"Lest one sees not the rose bush," said the Master, "but one's preconception of it."
Following on from my last post, I suggest our ability to see the puppet and what it represents simultaneously is one example of the type of seeing in de Mello's story. Another example can be seen in the quotation from Matthew Crawford's book I mentioned a few days ago.
So which is easier to see, a rose or a motorcycle? Strangely it could be the motorcycle. It may be difficult for the novice (and sometimes the experienced mechanic) to see the motorcycle as it is but there is direct feedback. See the motorcycle properly and you can fix it or make it go faster.
See the rose bush and, well, you see the rose bush.
August is traditionally the silly season and this year, before it settled down to more serious news, I was delighted to read that Paul Daniels had been hospitalised after Sooty had thrown a pizza at him. I was not delighted Paul Daniels had been hospitalised, of course but the idea of a little yellow bear throwing a pizza struck me as hilarious and most people I have told this story to also find it hilarious. Until of course they remember Sooty is a puppet and the pizza was actually thrown from someone's hand.
An article about puppets in today's Metro, about Handspring Puppet Company, is worth a read, the challenge is to make the puppet seem alive. I read somewhere, and thought it was in this article but I can't find it there, that whereas an actor's role is to get the audience to suspend their disbelief, the challenge to the puppeteer is to get the audience to suspend its belief this is in fact a puppet.
This week's New Scientist's cover story Quantum Minds suggests that the human mind might be described by the same maths as quantum theory. Note this is not the same as using quantum theory to explain human minds. It does seem logical that the same maths might explain both, as the maths enables the mind to grasp quantum behaviour in the first place.
I think puppets might help. One characteristic of quantum mechanics is super-position. This is where we are asked to understand the behaviour of a particle as both a particle and a wave, two mutually contradictory things.
This is exactly what we all do with puppets. If you don't believe me, watch this video about the puppets used in the stage play of Michael Morpurgo's 'The War Horse'. We can see its a puppet and yet we're able to perceive it as if it is a real horse.
The problem raised in my last post, is the difference between formal and tacit knowledge. The power of formal knowledge is in its universality. It is true for all times and all places.
The trouble is nothing is true for all times and places. Reality has a habit of flipping real instances on their head. So, we may know how a machine should work but knowing why this particular machine isn't working, is an entirely different matter.
Human systems are similar. We may know a lot about human behaviour and psychology and yet we often find ourselves completely unable to read a real situation, particularly one involving us personally.
But the dispassionate observer is not guaranteed read a particular situation fully. There is always more to know. We encounter tacit or intuitive knowledge, where we see the patterns even if we have difficulty explaining what it is we see.
Tacit knowledge is found through observation and experience. Formal knowledge is no short cut to tacit knowledge and might be a barrier. Ultimately, we have tacit knowledge if we are able to perceive things in the round, as a whole.
This song has always amused me as it highlights this distinction:
Countless times since that day, a more experienced mechanic has pointed out to me something that was right in front of my face, but which I lacked the knowledge to see. It is an uncanny experience; the raw sensual data reaching my eye before and after are the same, but without the pertinent framework of meaning, the features in question are invisible. Once they have been pointed out, it seems impossible that I should not have seen them before.
This is a common observation and many people will recognise it. But it is also something we don't necessarily acknowledge as a matter of course.
To put it negatively we often fail to pay attention and it is being attentive that is at the core not only of working with our hands but also of spirituality. Indeed, spirituality is essentially paying attention. You can have something pointed out to you but someone must have paid attention at some point in order to be able to point it out. Paying attention is hard work, often the experience of being stuck leads to someone paying attention to some detail after hours of frustration.
Paying attention is at the core of prayer. When we pray, it is not God who is revealed to us but reality through God. I think it was Anthony de Mello who said something like, asking God to reveal himself is like asking a knife to cut itself.
Prayer is about encountering reality, as it is, independent of our plans and strategies. It is not hectoring God about what we need in order to do our thing, but simply being aware of what is there and needing our attention. Indeed the god who needs to be hectored is no god, just a fantasy. God is never revealed but always reveals.
In my other blog, Exploring Ecumenism, I have frequently visited the idea of conversation and its power to transform. The mistake we make in too many religious debates, is to expect the world to be final and perfect. What we find is a world not of unchanging perfect entities but of many things in relationships, in conversation, imperfect, sometimes free, sometimes imprisoned, extremely complex and always stumbling across new things. This is what makes the universe the place where we encounter life, because all is in relationship with God.
We are conscious beings and it is through prayer our consciousness becomes disciplined enough to apprehend the genuinely new amongst the pointless frustrations of our fantasies.
One of the debates I've had, with Christians and atheists, is whether Christianity is a materialist faith.
It seems some American Christians are rather touchy about this. Communism is materialist and they're very scared of communism. Such debates can be difficult!
One American Christian explained the Old Testament is dualist (matter / spirit) and not monist (matter), as he thought I was claiming. It seems I had said matter has a spiritual dimension and he was quite certain I had it the wrong way round, spirit has a material dimension. We also disagreed about dialectical materialism. Where, he asked, is the thesis, antithesis, synthesis in Christianity?
Whichever way you look at it, matter has a spiritual dimension or spirit has a material dimension, you have a dualism. The two are set at contradiction with each other. The Christian writer was correct in saying spirit gives rise to matter, at least insofar as it is easier to see how spirit or consciousness, the perceiver, gives rise to the perceived.
However, this contradiction between spirit and matter is not resolved by saying one gives rise to the other. Whichever way round, it implies one is superior to the other. The Christian faith has been plagued by this false dichotomy that seems to reduce to: spirit good, matter bad.
But what we easily forget is Christianity is neither monist not dualist. It is Trinitarian and this is why I reject the view that Christianity is not materialist.
The synthesis that transcends the opposition between spirit and matter is implied in the Trinity, where God does not remain spirit but becomes flesh. Spirit and matter are placed into a new relationship and this is something taking place in our imaginations.
That's the problem for many moderns, we're not prepared to make the effort to imagine how spirit and matter might be married.
One of the most condescending things atheists say about Christians, is Jesus is our imaginary friend. Our faith is in our imagination, it has no reality in the material world.
Well, yes of course it is. Where else can we encounter God other than in our imagination? We create works of art, find our way around our neighbourhood, study the structure of chemical molecules in our imagination. Why should we not encounter God there too?
I'm not saying God has no reality outside the imagination, just that our imagination is where we encounter God. Are atheists really saying the imagination is in some sense not valid? If so, they have a problem. If imagination is not valid, what are the implications for science?
Christians have a problem too. It is hard to claim God has an objective reality outside of the imagination because it is not possible to point to any evidence of God's actions outside of the impact imagining God has on human behaviour.
And that in itself is a big problem. Human imagination is not terribly disciplined - how do we know what we imagine is real, is right, is ethical?
Where the scientist has reality to check results of experiments, the Christian has few things to validate their position. Methodists identify scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Most traditions look to a similar list. But it is hardly surprising traditions cannot agree about everything.
Also our imagination is prone to run away with us. We project our repressed negative thoughts onto others and onto God. We project what we know, kings and dictators, onto God and turn God into a monster. How can we possibly know whether we are imagining the right things?
Sometimes debates between atheists and Christians can become rather tedious. The question of whether or not God exists seems to be endlessly fascinating to some. However, once you clock there's no possibility of proving either way, the argument seems rather pointless.
One argument is science is materialist and doesn't allow for a spiritual dimension to life. This assertion, often accepted by both sides, has always seemed dubious to me.
Science like all human activity is an act of imagination. In an earlier post I explained how all our experiences are subjective. Science helps us agree about what we perceive. Its bedrock is replicable experiments. We can take our local experiences and if they are replicable elsewhere we can add them to a resource of objective observations. It is that they are replicable that makes them objective.
So, when we say science is materialist, what do we mean? Do we mean we have found a means to accumulate tried and tested observations, hypotheses, theories about the universe? A method that is extremely successful. Or do we mean that in some sense science reflects the universe as it really is? It is worth asking whether the success of science, as a materialist approach, reflects the universe as it is.
Whilst the universe may be material, the means by which we wrestle with our observations and interpret them is through the imagination. This is the same means by which we write novels and compose symphonies.
Think of Kerkule, who discovered the benzene ring after dreaming of the Ouroboros, the serpent holding its tail in its mouth. Or the many interpretations of quantum mechanics. The first is an example of a feat of imagination leading to a convergent solution on the specific structure of a specific molecule (although we can't see atoms and so any structure is in some sense imaginary). The second is an example of a divergent system, where speculations about its meaning are unlikely to lead to consensus.
I'm not denying the effectiveness of scientific method. I am asking us to be careful when we assume a materialist approach reflects all we can know of the universe.
Today our imagination is constrained by commerce. This is not say imagination was not constrained at other times and in other cultures. Indeed, Jesus' ministry had the same aim, within the culture of his time, to release imagination from similar constraints.
The powers always want to control the people. In Rome it was 'bread and circuses' and in our time junk food and the market, especially entertainment.
It is as if art has been elbowed aside by the media. What counts is our ability to reproduce things as commodities. I suppose it goes back to early manufacturing. Instead of depending on local craftspeople, it became possible to purchase goods mass produced to common standards.
From the beginning this was both a blessing and a curse. The retail co-operative movement aimed to ensure that food was at a good standard, not adulterated. These co-ops ameliorated the exploitation associated with control of the means of production and also helped mutual societies develop modern transport, wholesale and retail infrastructure. Today, many of the mutual associations, designed to protect the interests of working people, have long ago been absorbed into the world's financial markets.
We have never had access to so much art. Through media whether it is TV, film, DVD or the Internet we have historically unparalleled access to art. This is possible through our ability to reproduce and distribute millions of identical copies.
Art can lose its moorings in our minds when we become consumers of entertainment, no longer able to relate its imaginary worlds to reality. So, we have the example of the recent film Alice in Wonderland, where the book is lost, its anchors in reality cut away so to float it in the hegemonic pabulum of American imperialist culture. It is no longer a work of imagination but something that stands in for imagination. For all its tricksiness, it is held firmly in the teeth of those who would tell us what to think.
This misuse of imagination as a means to enslave, is not restrained to art and media. Fantasies rooted in false consciousness generated by the powers, is always in tension with the art of the day. Art at its best is a means of seeing beyond illusions to something real. Sometimes our eyes are opened and we recognise the real world beyond the magician's lamp.
The problem is the world behind our fantasies is not the world of ideals, such as Plato suggested were behind the shadows projected on the wall of his cave. Today, we see these ideals are themselves an illusion. So, what is real? If we want to answer that question we need to use our imagination.
We naturally think of art when we think of imagination and so it is a reasonable place to start. The thing about the arts is not that they are imaginary but their reality. When we look at a work of art (or listen to it, even taste it) we relate to what we recognise in it. So, when I look at a Caravaggio painting I see something I can relate to. The theme might be biblical, even mythical, but I find real people struggling with real lives. The same themes in a baroque style leave me cold; I recognise less in a baroque painting.
I've always had a fondness for science fiction and so permit me to illustrate what I mean through a brief review of the recent series of Dr Who on BBC 1. I have followed Dr Who, with a break for the period when I was a grown up, since I was 9, when it started in 1963. It is interesting to see how each era is reflected in the stories and in the way they are told.
Recent episodes have made me uneasy and I think the reason is that I am not recognising in them a reality I can relate to. Let me go back to the final episode that featured David Tenant as the Doctor. In that episode he fell out of a spacecraft, crashed through a glass ceiling and landed on a marble floor. He sustained a few cuts but was otherwise unscathed. The problem is, this was lazy writing but you can get away with it, if the story is strong.
The story was not strong. The whole universe was under threat (again). The jeopardy was ramped up to such a degree that the writers only option was to hit the reset button and use what used to be called deus ex machina to restore the status quo ante.
The same problem can be found in the finale of the most recent series. The cliffhanger at the end of the penultimate episode included all of the Doctors enemies ganging up on him, imprisoning him in a prison designed so no-one could get out of it, meanwhile the Tardis exploded, bringing the entirety of space and time to a halt.
The final episode was full of neat tricks but to me was unconvincing. I couldn't relate to the premise of the end of universe (again). Contrast this with an earlier episode about Vincent Van Gogh. Here the Doctor was unable to prevent Van Gogh's suicide. It was written by Richard Curtis and featured reproductions of Van Gogh's paintings as sets. Much of this was convincing even though it was also fantastic. The episode featured a most unconvincing monster and it didn't matter at all. The monster had a function to enable a bigger story to be told.
Now, I appreciate Dr Who is not high art but its popularity suggests it touches on themes that have meaning for people. It is fantastic but also familiar. Works of the imagination function best when rooted in reality. Pure fantasy becomes boring because it has no meaning for us.
Applied imagination can speak to us through art. Imagination left to its own devices, connected to nothing, does not make connections to what we know.
I have been giving some thought to the nature of imagination and in this, and a few posts following, I will share them.
I have suggested (most recently in my last post) there is far more about the universe than is picked up by our senses and perceived after being processed by the brain. This is an evolutionary necessity. Our senses and brains select enough to present a reasonably stable picture of the world around us.
Other species have senses different from our own. So, birds and insects for example, detect different wavelengths of light. They perceive colours unknown to humanity. We cannot conceive of different colours to the ones we know. But we know they exist because they relate to wavelengths of light and some animals can see light we cannot.
One question philosophers have asked, is whether we all perceive the same thing. The answer seems to be both yes and no. Yes because we perceive in sufficiently similar ways to be able to communicate about the things we perceive. I don't suppose we can ever be certain we all perceive, for example, colours in the same way. But the chances are we do because we seem to have a similar response to them. I suspect the major differences are culturally determined. There was a time when colours were not named and so people compared the colours of things, eg Homer, I think, writes of the 'wine dark sea'. Some people have a condition called synaesthesia, where they experience the sense data of one sense from the stimuli of another, eg some people perceive numbers or musical notes as colours.
So, everything we know is inside of our heads. We cannot know the universe as it really is because we have no access to it as it really is. We can use instruments to detect things outside the range of our senses but ultimately everything is processed by our brains.
The odd thing is we can agree about so much. I can describe an object to you and you can locate it and pick it up, I can give you directions to my house, I share a place with my neighbours and we all experience it in a very similar way.
My suggestion is everything we perceive is the work of our imagination. We distinguish what we call 'real' from what we call 'imaginary' through recognition. We carry a picture of a place or person in our minds and name what we see according to that picture. Several descriptions of the same thing will be both different and recognisable.
Theologically, I suggest we think of recognition as love. It is recognition this person and this place is unique, something to be treasured because it is unique. We fall in love when we contemplate the form of a tree, the detail of a beetle, the apparent infinity of the universe. Each of these things has its integrity, each time we look we see more and yet recognise it as the same.
Even the thing we hate has this property. Emotion often accompanies recognition and so it should. The thing we should fear is not our passions but our indifference.
Consultancy for Mission and Ministry This should take you to details of the Consultancy for Mission and Ministry course at the York Insititute. See my post about non-directive consuultancy around 9 September 2009.
Image by joeldinda via Flickr
Recent Comments