6. Ascendancy is Spirit
‘… if we want an intensification of spirituality, it might be better to become more intimate with the things of the earth than to build a self in the sky.’
Thomas Moore — The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life
‘The bodiless spirituality that many find comforting I don’t trust. I don’t trust its preference for white light and its assumption that the spirit resides in the sky or in the brilliant stars.’
Thomas Moore — Original Self
As explained in the previous chapter, the terms spirit and soul are used advisedly in this work – borrowed as they are from religion. Spirit is not used to mean that there is any kind of separate and discrete substance within a person that has its own existence. Nor do I subscribe to a literal belief that there is some element of God, such as the Holy Spirit, that can indwell an individual person and partly or fully motivate that person’s actions. The terms spirit and soul are often used almost interchangeably in religious writing. I have chosen to ascribe particular aspects of our behaviour and of culture to each of the terms in order to try to draw out particular concerns. This apportioning as either ‘spiritual’ or ‘soulful’ is not entirely random! I am particularly indebted to the writings of Thomas Moore for identifying the relevance of the terms and applying them in a specific way. Of most importance is the relation of soul to body that we will explore in a later chapter and this is largely contrary to the understanding given to the word soul in its common religious usage.
I am deliberately staying with the terms spirit and soul in this work for two reasons. The first reason is that it continues with our theme of considering the splits within our thinking. We have noted that some splits go unnoticed almost entirely, others are recognised and seen as completely literal, whilst others still are recognised but misunderstood. Whilst considering that all splits are ultimately unreal, we can nevertheless use them in helping us to understand and perhaps challenge the status quo. The second reason for keeping with the terms spirit and soul is that although this is not essentially a religious work, nonetheless so much of what is said relates back to religion and to spirituality. Some authors, Hegel in particular, see genuine desire being met solely through religion, whilst others certainly acknowledge religious faith as being at least ‘useful’ in this regard. As the argument progresses we will see that unfortunately the way religion operates in the Western world unwittingly maintains and indeed reinforces the problems that this work seeks to illuminate and to challenge. Nonetheless, in seeking a community wherein people may find fulfilment of desire, compassion, well-being and flourishing, there may yet be hope that churches and spiritual groups can provide this. The 2012 ‘Occupy London’ campaign, whose aims were perhaps not altogether clear and articulated, was nonetheless prescient in choosing St. Paul’s Cathedral as the centre of their campaign. It was almost as if people were saying, society has failed us, values now need to come from elsewhere. Someone needs to help. That someone needs to be grounded elsewhere than in corporate greed and the politics of spin.
But this is to get ahead of ourselves. Let us return to the idea of spirit and start by looking at how it applies firstly within religion itself. Chapter 8 will explore how spirit — the economy of ascendancy — has come to dominate secular culture. In using the word religion, please take this to refer primarily to Western Christianity. This is mainly because this is the dominant religious influence in the West and its history is so much wrapped up in the development of philosophy, science and culture. I will however refer briefly to other faiths when this is relevant to the discussion.
Heaven is always above us and therefore always something to aspire to rather than something that is already with us. A more fundamentalist faith contrasts heaven not with Earth but with hell. The aspiration thus becomes all the more urgent. There is a strange kind of ambivalence in the image of heaven that is presented. On the one hand it is a wedding banquet — a celebration of all things physical — eating, drinking, marriage and love-making. On the other hand, these things seem often to be regarded as purely symbolic. Physicality is largely if not totally rejected. The perfection of human life, to which we are encouraged to aspire, is one of a disembodied spirit or soul, just as the nature of God is seen as ‘pure’ spirit. Heaven, in these terms, is therefore only reachable by death. It is in this sense that religion very much reinforces the general culture’s obsession with and denial of death. The same ambivalence is played out in the way religion is presented. On the one hand it would claim to be life affirming. However, its chief image — the cross — is of an instrument of torture and death. People are always ‘under’ heaven and ‘under’ God, so we are locked into always having to aspire.
Desire is likewise misunderstood and thwarted. As we will explore later, it is in relationship with others that desire has the greatest potential to be realised. However, whilst this could be offered and embraced by religion, instead we are offered a substitute satisfaction for desire in the form of a ‘relationship’ with a being who is conceived as totally ‘other’ — pure spirit. The only way to reach this satisfaction of desire is to die and become pure spirit ourselves. In a traditional religious context there is an abstract notion of salvation. Creation spirituality writer Matthew Fox contrasts the sin/salvation approach of much of Western Christendom with the idea of atonement or ‘at-one-ment’. God is with us instead of always above us, so there is a horizontal rather than a vertical relationship.
Grace Jantzen, whose work we mentioned in a previous chapter, speaks of religion which is too focused on personal spiritual journeys. She says:
‘Religion can come adrift by becoming personal piety that gives observance and devotion so large a place that attention is deflected from the face of the other.
“Watch out for the peace of private worship! … the artificial peace of synagogues and churches!” It can come adrift in a focus on what might now be thought of as ‘mysticism’ or private religious experience, detached from justice: as Derrida recognises, such private ecstasy easily connives with every form of historical oppression.’
Indeed, the ‘pious’ — as John Gray (Straw Dogs) suggests, may actually be seeking to block out consciousness rather than to raise it to new heights. Perhaps the motive is to avoid seeing the world as it really is, in its vulnerability and its pain. Buddhism, despite recognising many of the problems inherent in religion, is still aspirational to an extent — with Nirvana or Enlightenment replacing heaven. The pre-occupation with this world being essentially about suffering might also lead to an aspirational mindset. Mindfulness often involves focusing on the present moment — a moment that nonetheless is a moment of suffering. Whilst there is clearly benefit in recognising and not denying suffering there is nonetheless much in this world that is to be welcomed and enjoyed. There is a lot that is good about our embodiment and our lives in the here and now. Buddhists of course recognise the paradox. Aspiration towards a world free from desire is itself a desire. Despite Buddhism’s emphasis on suffering, the meditation and silence seem to be good ways to allow a person to recognise and embrace real life rather than to flee from it, deny it or see it as sinful and compromised. Meditation and silence are a means of letting go.
The ascendant makes use of image or representation as part of its aspiration. Of course heaven itself is a very powerful image above all else, whether it is regarded as a projection of earthly values into a rarefied form or some kind of realm of pure spirit (whatever that might mean). Spirituality more generally might aspire to a notion of perfect peace but conceived of as some kind of perfect state rather than as an acknowledgement that of course we are already ‘at one’ so in fact have no journey to undertake.
Our culture is also spiritual in a more general way in that it is unfailingly aspirational. The aspirations now however are more to do with evolution and the search for a ‘theory of everything’ in science, materialism and infinite economic growth in politics and career, comfort and body image in the personal realm. We are a culture that is always looking for progress and not content just to be. This will be explored in Chapter 8.
Ascendancy fails to recognise any boundaries. Ascendancy needs to be balanced with the ‘descendent’ aspects of life. There needs to be an economy of descendancy that recognises and sets limits on the tendency of Eros to seek unrealisable goals. The energy of Eros needs to be channelled into the reality of our embodiment.
