Sense Out of Essence
Sense Out of Essence
Nearly three millennia before John Lennon lived a man known for his wisdom. His name was Solomon. He wrote more songs and proverbs than any man before him, and probably more than most after him. I strongly suspect that if he had lived in our time, he would have owned most of the television stations. He loved the arts. He, too, imagined a world without heaven above or hell below. He just said it more obscurely in the book of Ecclesiastes when he used the phrase “under the sun,” which literally means “with no input from above or below.” He boasted that “under the sun” he had accomplished every dream and hope, every passion and indulgence, every aesthetic and intellectual pursuit known to man at his time. He lived as if there were no heaven to aspire to or hell to shun. And his conclusion was that everything became a chasing after the wind… meaningless.
Solomon was right. I cannot think of a more difficult subject to deal with than pleasure. Every culture exploits some segment of society in order to entertain hungers, either private or public. We are all pleasure seekers, and what gives us pleasure is a revelation of our values. It is not often that one hears the subject being addressed, except as a sociological phenomenon or a psychological description. In a society where pornography has become a multibillion-dollar industry, it is very evident that pleasure is both sought after and for sale. But deep within there always lurks that burning question: How does one define what is legitimate and what is illegitimate? A self-reflective, self-centered New Spirituality has no answers to give. Much of New Spirituality is actually based on psychological theory, and if psychology is all we have on which to base the answer to this question, we are in deep trouble.
Very recently, a professor from Yale, Paul Bloom, wrote a book on pleasure, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, in which he argues that there must be some underlying belief in the value of what one is doing or getting to experience pleasure. If one believes he is buying something once belonging to John F. Kennedy, then the pleasure quotient goes up. Of course, one doesn’t need to have a degree in psychology to know that. But the argument Bloom derives removes pleasure from its sensory dimension and lifts it to its “essential” dimension. So far, so good. He actually has a point. The essence of an act is the determining factor. It’s not just taste or sound or touch that should bring pleasure; the essence of the act should determine the intensity of the pleasure. More strictly speaking, the essence of an act as believed by the participant is the source of the pleasure. This takes us from the rationalist position of “I think, therefore I am,” to “I think, therefore I feel.” It is the utilitarian philosophy of pleasure à la Bentham and Mill (who developed a pleasure gauge) gone postmodern.
But as one reads this exposition on pleasure from a psychoscientific point of view, what happens when matter dabbles in the spiritual and reserves the right to define the spiritual quickly becomes evident. This is a Copernican shift in the way we define our own senses and is, to me, precisely the trap that the New Spiritualists fall into, albeit for loftier goals and hopes. Ask yourself this question: Who would I fear more, a person whose deformity sends me to science and faith to look for answers to their malady, or a person who uses science to advance sadomasochistic behavior to further deform humanity? Academics often miss the larger point.
The reason we search for essence is neither psychological nor ancestral; rather, it is that we are hardwired and spiritually designed to probe into the ultimate nature of all that is real. It is a spiritual matter. We hunger for pleasure that goes beyond the physical because ultimately we are spiritual beings. This is the danger the New Spirituality risks; wresting quantum and physics and psychology to advantage in order to explain the spiritual leaves one vulnerable to the sadomasochist, who lays claim to essence and possibly blames his psyche for the way he thinks.
This is a very important point I am making. When strident atheists like Richard Dawkins vilify Christian belief as irrational, they do so because they do not agree with the metaphysics of those who defend it. When they mock the Deepak Chopras of this world for building a spiritual empire supposedly drawn from scientific jargon, they are refuting it because of the misuse, indeed, the abuse of physics.
Life is a search for the spiritual. Whether in the throes of pain or in the disappointments of pleasure, we strive for an essence that is beyond the physical. Let me give you an example. Suppose you were to raise a little child and give that child everything he needed… love, shelter, education, support, all the way to becoming an adult. Let’s call him Jason. One day, there is a knock on Jason’s door, and an older person standing outside asks to meet him. After a few moments of conversation, the visitor breaks the news to Jason that he is Jason’s biological father. If this is the first time Jason has learned he is adopted, what do you think will happen? How do you think he will cope with it? His sensory emotions will tear him apart on the inside. “Why didn’t you tell me this?” would be his question to his adoptive parents. “Where were you when I needed you?” he would ask the biological father. Essence is far more than belief. Essence is belief based on the intrinsic being of the person. This is the hunger of the spirit beyond mere sensory and belief components.
This is why I believe that the intertwining of pain with pleasure is at the root of the human dilemma. These extremes of feeling at either end of the spectrum that most of us wish to avoid, even as we are drawn into them, are the twin realities that help shape our search. We want to find happiness. We want to avoid pain. We want to know who we are. We want to know what we are. We care about our origin and our essence. Pleasure and pain become indicators along the way on the road that will lead us to our destiny, and they are rooted in the question of our origin.
It is not sufficient to say nice things such as “All religions say the same thing.” Nobody, and I do mean nobody, really believes that. If they say they do, you can call their bluff in moments by exposing the preconceived sovereignty they have exercised in evaluating one religion over the other and by which they have arrived at the conclusion that all religions lead to the same destination, even though the religions all say different things. How can anyone make such an assertion? Even in broad categories they do not say the same thing. Buddha himself rejected Hinduism because of some of its dogmas. And literally just days after his death, Buddhism began to fragment into a series of different Buddhist beliefs. Some even went into hiding, lest they be killed for the challenges they were making to the leadership. And only a short while after Muhammad died, blood was spilled over who his successor would be. The first three of the five caliphs in Islam were assassinated—varnishing such facts with niceties doesn’t do anyone a favor.
Were these divisions for religious reasons? Oh yes, that is what is claimed. It was for reasons of essence, but the apologists of these faiths fail to come to terms with the essential nature of their beliefs themselves. Belief systems must justify themselves. If they cannot, the ever more bizarre will be required to bring the same degree of fulfillment.
We will pick this up again. For now, let me posit three things—relationship, stewardship, and worship—that must define life if the spiritual search as it relates to pleasure and pain is to be understood. Such definitions, then, build into a worldview.