Wars on Earth are initiated in Heaven

About a month back, one of my Kabbalah teachers stated that wars on earth are initiated in Heaven, (as opposed to in the psychological or physical universes ; see my blog posts 'The Four Universes' and 'A Spiritual Cosmology'.)

I have taken a little while to think about this. My teacher was referring, among other things, to the role of Providence, something I’ve already touched on in this blog (see 'Vegetable, Animal and Human People'.) Wars ‘stir up’ ‘vegetable’ people, affording them opportunities to become’ animal’ or ‘human’ people. They move populations around, face them with new situations, speed up the introduction of new technology, and test the mettle of all those involved. Like natural disasters, they provide opportunities for acts of courage and love, and not just towards our family or our comrades, but towards our enemies as well.

And of course, wars are responsible for terrible suffering and loss.

How I long sometimes for the God of my childhood, for ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ (his smashing things up in the Temple in anger was swiftly glossed over). God did not start wars, humans did, in strict disobedience of Him. God was Love.

Of course ‘he’ is, and a whole lot more.

Even as a child I knew that there was something awry with the view of God that my Sunday School teachers were giving me. So a lot of evil might be down to humans using their free will, but what about the natural world? Did it become red in tooth and claw because Eve ate the apple and, if so, wasn’t that a bit ‘unfair’ on animals? Furthermore, if God cared so much, why didn’t He intervene more to stop really terrible things? But it didn’t matter because, when we died, we would all go to heaven and live in bliss and splendour for ever and ever, so that was all right then.

It was via James Hillman’s writings, such as his book ‘The Soul’s Code’ that I first became aware of just how ruthless the soul can be in pursuit of its Divine purpose, and what it can put its various earthly incarnations through in the process. When I came to study Kabbalah I learned that existence in its fullness is manifested between the two opposing poles of mercy AND severity (force and form, see my blog post 'A Spiritual Cosmology') The aim of the kabbalist is to help to keep these two poles balanced, to proceed in consciousness back up through the universes, using a path centred between the two poles, to reunite again at one with the Divine, bringing with us all our experiences of those realms. And while we make our journey upwards, we act to ‘bring down’ the freedom and glory and Divinity of the upper universes to this material one.

Each incarnation is an adventure. Don’t get too attached to it, or anything in it because, like a dream, it will all dissolve. Throughout this life, and many others, you’ll win some, you’ll lose some. It is all simply a process which you can use to become more and more fully human, wiser, more loving, more aware of who you really are. Like childbirth, it’s going to hurt and, yes, you’ll voluntarily go through the whole thing again.

Betwixt and Between

In my last but one post, ‘Mr. James’ Best Friend’, I commented on the convoluted lengths that materialists, i.e. those who believe in physical existence only , are prepared to go to in order to ‘explain away’ certain phenomena.

This leads me onto another personal gripe. I sometimes get very frustrated with the media for acting as if there are only two camps to choose from e.g. science OR religion; evolution OR creationism etc. etc. Furthermore there is often an assumption that if you ‘believe’ in evolution, you don’t believe in anything but scientific materialism.

Like many people, I think the evidence for the evolution of species is overwhelming. I do however have some questions around the mechanisms by which evolution happens, or the circumstances in which evolution of particular types takes place, (which are all to do with ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg?’ type questions.) For scientists like Richard Dawkins, who wrote ‘The God Delusion’, I am committing the heresy of wondering if the laws of nature are as fixed, and if the universe and evolution are as accidental or as mechanistic as he claims. Of course, if you’ve read my other posts you will know that I don’t think they are. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in evolution.

And I also ‘believe in’ the first chapter of Genesis, but as ‘mythos’ not ‘logos’. Nowadays if we refer to something as a ‘myth’ we are usually saying that it isn’t true, but in fact myths are designed to represent truths which are too deep for individual words, via images and stories. Music can do the same, especially when it comes to demonstrating and representing emotions that are hard to put into words.

As a student of Kabbalah, I take the ‘seven days of creation’ story to represent the creation of the spiritual universe out of the Divine. There is a second creation story in Genesis chapter 2 (starting about half way through verse 4 - the New Jerusalem Bible sets this out very clearly) which represents the creation of the psychological universe (the universe of mind) out of the spiritual. Finally the physical universe comes about in Chapter 3 v.21 when Adam and Eve leave Eden (yet another name for the universe of mind), putting on suits of skin;-  I wrote about this process of universes emerging from one another in ‘A Spiritual Cosmology'.

Only a few hundred years ago, many religious people would have been amazed to learn that vast swathes of Christians in the future would be interpreting Genesis literally, and believe the world was created in 7 days. For a start they would point out that there are, in fact, two creation stories in Genesis, as I have pointed out above. I sometimes wonder if this is why a lot of learned people thought that it would be dangerous to translate the bible into everyday languages that everybody would be able to read for themselves….and start to take literally!

But basically it comes down to the big question which is completely outside of science’s remit (though try telling that to Dawkins or even Stephen Hawking) why is there something, rather than nothing?

Oh,- one last thing... I do tend to grind my teeth when scientists (Freud and Hawking included) announce, as if they know, that there is no life after death, but that some of us are too weak, too afraid of dying to face up to that. I think the possibility that there IS something after death also takes real courage to face.

Which Tribe is Yours?

I’ve written before about three different kinds of people – vegetable, animal, and human, - see 'Vegetable, Animal and Human People' and 'Are you Potentially Human?'

All three are present in most cultures (or collective value systems,) that is, you’ll find examples of vegetable, animal, and human people wherever you are or whenever you are.

There are however some interesting theories about how cultures evolve. It would appear that, over time, if a culture is going to change, it will do so in a certain and predictable way.

The idea of cultures evolving is heavily influenced by the work of Clare Graves, and his successors, such as Don Beck and Chris Cowan(Cowan and Todorovic 2005, Beck and Cowan 1996). Now better known as ‘Spiral Dynamics’, these theories are concerned with the innate values of any collective, and how they develop.  Applying Graves and similar theories, Wilber (2001) suggests the following stages  of development, or evolution:

• Cultures, as we understand them, begin as survivalistic, and are preoccupied all day everyday with the practicalities of staying alive. If these evolve, they will evolve into
• Cultures which have developed magical thinking. These cultures are animistic, and very concerned with ‘kin spirits’. Such cultures ‘have a name for every bend in the river, but not for the river itself’. These tribal cultures develop in turn into  
•  Exploitative power seeking cultures, sometimes known as warrior cultures, as represented in the Iliad and the Odyssey, (but also represented today in street gangs, and several City organisations) in which strength takes priority over justice. These eventually become
•  Law ruled cultures, usually referred to as ‘traditional’, or ‘people of the book’ (the Torah, the Ten Commandments, the Koran for example). In organisations these tend to be bureaucracies which emphasise formal procedures. In turn, these evolve into
• Materialistic and rational cultures, usually referred to as ‘modern’, and ‘achievement orientated’. Empirical science takes pride of place, and there is talk of ‘conquering nature’. These evolve into
• Pluralistic cultures, which are often referred to as ‘postmodern’ and relativistic. Nature is cared for, rather than there to be ‘conquered’. All people are equal and all values are relative.
• Flex-flow cultures, the first stage at which a society or community can appreciate all the stages that it has been through, and what it has gained from each of them, rather than denigrating them as ‘inferior’. This level or stage, and the stages above which will not be referred to here (as being beyond most collectives’ experience at the moment,) are also often referred to as ‘Integral’ or post-post-modern.

Each stage is necessary to the stages that follow, and none can ever be ‘skipped’. A society or community successfully moving from traditional to modern will not abandon the rule of law, but will subject that law to rational analysis before legitimising it.  All stages, even the highest we know of at present, have their weaknesses, dangers and paradoxes, the resolution of which is what usually forces a culture or community on to the next stage (Beck and Cowan 1996, McIntosh 2007).

Research undertaken independently to the work of Graves, Beck or Cowan, and apparently with no knowledge of it, by Ray (Ray and Anderson2000) identified three cultural sub groups within the USA, which Ray called the Traditionals, the Moderns and the Cultural Creatives, with the latter being the last to emerge to a significant degree (in the 1970s.) These three groups correspond with Spiral Dynamics’ traditional, modern and postmodern/pluralist stages.

As I mentioned earlier, vegetable, animal and human people exist at all stages, though a number of human people have come to a sticky end in tribal, warrior and traditional cultures; think crucifixion, shot to death, burned alive etc.

How lucky are those of us who live now and in liberal, democratic regimes??

So, having established if you’re a vegetable, animal or human person, which of these cultures would you most feel at home in? And what culture, overall, do you think you’re actually living in?

There is a really good application of these stages by Paul Smith to religion, specifically the organised Christian Church on the Integral Life site here. I think you could easily apply the same sort of analysis to any organised religion.

Your opinions and thoughts, as always, would be welcome.

Mr James' Best Friend

In the Sunday Times Culture Section a couple of weeks back, there was a review of Oliver Sacks’ latest   book “Hallucinations”. Oliver Sacks is the physician and neurologist who famously wrote “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat”.

The reviewer, James McConnachie, summarises the various categories of hallucinations to which Sacks refers, as well as the possible causes. Throughout the book Sacks stresses that the “phantoms are born in our brains” and refers to sensory deprivation, drugs, migraines and stimulation of different parts of the brain as being among the causes.

This is all fascinating and I would personally go out and buy the book, except it would be a bit like buying a book on how a car engine works when one is much more interested in who made the car, who drives the car, and how and why.  What does it mean that there are cars with engines that function the way they do?

According to the review, one of Sacks’ blind patients ‘sees’ “children in bright eastern costumes, walking endlessly up and down stairs. Fascinatingly, her eyes dart here and there, as if she is watching a real event; people who merely imagine visual scenes do not do this.” “One migraineur described seeing writing on a wall that was too far away to read; yet on walking up to the wall he was able to read the text aloud.”

I have absolutely no doubt that one can bring about the sense of a “shadow-person” by electrically stimulating the left temporoparietal junction in the brain as Sacks reports but, as the reviewer notes at the end of his article, it does not consider whether all these ‘causes’ are “simply creating conditions in which we are able to see beyond our accustomed reality.” 

In other words, much as opening our eyes enables us to see, stimulating certain brain junctions enables us to sense presences that we cannot when they are  unstimulated.

I think it would be unfair to hold this against Mr. Sacks. He is only interested in the mechanics of hallucinations. The consideration of why our senses are ordinarily restricted, and what it is exactly that we perceive when some of those restrictions are lifted, is rather a different book.

And maybe some people are born with irregularities in their brains that enable them to see and hear things (and/or smell, taste and feel them)which most of us can't. 

The great early psychologist, William James, made a pact with his best friend that the first of them to die would come back and tell the other about the afterlife. The best friend died first, and James waited in vain for a visit. Are we to conclude from this that the afterlife does not exist?  

Personally, I conclude nothing of the sort but, in my imagination, I envisage James’ best friend, disembodied, jumping up and down in front of him and desperately trying to let James know he was there. But for 

"those who have eyes to see, let them see.” Because not everybody has the ‘equipment’ working to see such things (and think how distracting it would be if we all could) it does not mean such things do not exist.

(For those who have not read my earlier posts about how the mind brings about the brain, rather than the other way around, see my post ‘A Spiritual Cosmology’ at http://seekerinthfoothills.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/i-intend-to-be-little-bolder-and.html.

For a brief account of an attempt to increase my own capacity to see things most people don't, see my post 'Psychic Phemomena' at http://seekerinthfoothills.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/psychic-phenomena.html.)