The teachings which are the traditional wisdom of
all peoples in all parts of the world,
have become virtually incomprehensible to modern man although he, too, desires nothing more than
somehow to be able to rise above the whole state of the present life. He hopes
to do so by growing rich, by moving around at ever-increasing speed, by
travelling to the moon and into space.
There is a desire in man, common to him and other
animals namely the desire for the enjoyment of pleasure; and this men pursue
especially by leading voluptuous life, and through lack of moderation become
intemperate. Now in that vision (the divine vision) there is the most perfect pleasure, all the
more perfect pleasure, all the more prefect than sensuous pleasure as the
intellect is above the senses; as the good in which we shall delight surpasses
all sensible good, is more from all alloys of sorrow or trouble or anxiety…
In this life there is nothing so like this ultimate
and perfect happiness as the life of those who contemplate the truth, as far as
possible here below. Hence the philosophers who were unable to obtain full knowledge
of that final beatitude, placed man’s ultimate happiness in that contemplation
which is possible during this life.
The ability to see the Great Truth of the hierarchic
structure of the world, which makes it possible to distinguish between higher
and lower levels of being, is one of the indispensable conditions of
understanding. Without it, it is not possible to find out where everything has
its proper and legitimate place. Everything, everywhere, can be understood only
when its level of being is fully taken into account. Many things are true at a
low level of being and become absurd at a higher level, and of course vice
versa.
From plant to animal, there is an addition of
powers, which enables the typical, fully developed animal to do things that are
totally outside the range of possibilities of the typical, fully developed
plant. These power, again, are mysterious and, strictly speaking, nameless.
Moving form the animal level to the human level, who
would seriously deny that there are, again, additional power? What precisely
they are has become a matter of controversy in modern times; but the fact that
man is able to do_ and is doing_ innumerable things that lie totally outside
the range of possibilities of even the most highly developed animals cannot be
disputed and has never been denied. Man has powers of life like the plant,
power of consciousness like the animals, and evidently something more; the
mysterious power. This power has undoubtedly a great deal to do with the fact
that man is not only able to think but also able to be aware of his thinking.
Consciousness and intelligence, as it were, recoil upon themselves. There is
not merely a conscious being, but a being capable of being conscious of its
consciousness; not merely a thinker, but a thinker capable of watching and
studying his own thinking.
All the ‘humanities’, as distinct from the natural
sciences, deal in one way or another with _ consciousness. But a distinction
between consciousness and self-awareness is seldom drawn. As a result, modern
thinking has become increasingly uncertain of whether or not there is any
‘real’ difference between animal and man. A great deal of study is being
undertaken of the behaviour of animals for the purpose of understanding the
nature of man.
A human being can indeed strain and stretch towards
the higher and induce a process of growth through adoration, awe, wonder
admiration and imitation, and by attaining a higher level expand its
understanding. Some people with whom the power of self-awareness is poorly developed
cannot grasp it as a separate power and tend to take it as nothing but a slight
extension of consciousness. Hence we are given a large number of definitions of
man which make him out to be nothing but exceptionally intelligent animal with
an unduly large brain, or a tool-making animal, or a political animal, or an
unfinished animal, or simply an ape.
What a piece of work is a man? How noble
in reason! Because of the power of
self-awareness his faculties are indeed infinite; they are not narrowly determined,
confined, or ’ programmed’, as one says today. Warner Jagger expressed a
profound truth in the statement that, once a human potentiality is realized, it
exists. The greatest human achievements define man+ not be the common run, not
any average behaviour or performance, and certainly not anything that can be
derived form the observation of animals, all men cannot be outstanding, says
Dr.Catherine Roberts. Yet all men, through knowledge of superior humanity,
could know what is means to be a human being and that they have a contribution
to make. It is magnificent to become as human as one is able. And it requires
no help from science. In addition, the very act of realizing one’s
potentialities might constitute an advance over what was gone before.
The open-endedness is the wonderful
result of the specially human power of self-awareness which, as distinct from
the powers of life and consciousness, have nothing automatic or mechanical
about them. The power of self-awareness are, essentially, a limitless
potentially rather than an actuality. They have to be developed and ‘realised’
by each human individual if he is to become truly human, that is to say, a
person.
A simple inspection of the four great levels of being has led us to
the recognition of the four elements matter, life. Consciousness and self-
awareness. It is this recognition that matters, not the precise association of
the four elements with the levels of being.
Life is either present or absent_ there cannot
be a half-presence_ and the same goes for consciousness and self-awareness.
Difficulties of identification are often exacerbated by the fact that the lower
level tends to produce a kind of mimicry or counterfeit of the higher, just as
an animated puppet can at times be mistaken for a living person, or a
two-dimensional picture can look like three-dimensional reality. But neither
the difficulties of identification and demarcation nor the possibilities of the
four great levels of being, exhibiting the four ‘elements’, four irreducible
mysteries.
The progressive movement from passivity
to activity, which we observe when reviewing he four levels of being, is indeed
striking, but it is not complete. An interesting and instructive aspect of the
progression from passivity to activity is the change in the origination of
movement.
While at the animal level the motivating
cause has to be physically present to be
effective, at the level of man here is no such need. The power of
self-awareness adds for him another possibility of the origination of movement_
will, that is the power to move and act even when there is no physical
compulsion, no physical stimulus and no motivating force actually present. The
progression for passivity to activity is similar and closely related to the
progression from necessity to freedom.
Inner space is created by the powers of
life, consciousness and self-awareness;
but we have direct and personal experience only of our own ‘inner space’
and the freedom it affords us. Close observation discloses that most of us,
most of the time, behave and act mechanically, like a machine. The specially human power of self-awareness is asleep, and the human
being, like an animal, acts_ more or less intelligently_ solely in response to
outside influences. Only when a man makes use of his power of self-awareness
does he attain to the level of a person, to the level of freedom. At that
moment he is lived. There are still numerous forces of necessity, accumulated in the past, which
determine his action; but a small dent is being made, a tiny change of
direction is being introduced.
To ask whether the human being has
freedom is like asking whether man is a millionaire. He is not, but can become,
a millionaire. He can make it his aim to become rich; similar, he can make it
his aim to that the power if his freedom exceeds that of his necessity. It is
possible to imagine a perfect being who is always and invariable exercising his
power of self-awareness, which is the power of freedom, to the fullest degree,
unmoved by any necessity. This would be a Divine Being, an almighty and
sovereign power, a perfect Unity. There is also a marked and unmistakable
progression towards integration.
Man has obviously much more inner unity
than any being below him, although integration, as modern psychology
recognises, is not guaranteed to him at birth and remains one of his major
tasks. As biological system, he is most harmoniously integrated; on the mental
plane, integration is less perfect but is capable of considerable improvement
through schooling. As a person, however, a being with the power of
self-awareness, he is generally so poorly integrated that he experiences himself
as an assembly of many different personalities.
Integration means the creation of an
inner unity, a centre of strength and freedom, so that the being ceases to be a
mere object, acted upon by outside forces, and becomes a subject, acting from
its own ‘inner space’ into the space outside itself.
The degree of integration, of inner
coherence and strength, is closely related to the kind of ‘word’ that exists
for beings at different levels. Inanimate matter has no ‘world’. Its total
passivity is equivalent to the total emptiness of its world. A plant has a
‘world’ of its own—limited to its modest biological needs. The world of any one
of the higher animals is incomparably greater and richer, although still mainly
determined by biological needs, as modern animal psychology studies have amply
demonstrated. But there is also something more like curiosity which enlarges
the animal’s world beyond the narrow biological confines.
The world of man, again, is incomparable
greater and richer; indeed, it is asserted in traditional philosophy that man
is capable of bringing the whole universe into his experience. What he will
actually grasp depends on each persons’ own level of being. The ‘higher’ the
person, the greater and richer is his or her world. A person, for instance,
entirely fixed in the philosophy of materialistic scientism, denying the
reality of the ‘invisible’ and confining his attention solely to what can be
counted, measured and weighed, lives in a very poor word, so poor that he will
experience it as a meaningless wasteland unfit for human habitation.
