I’ve said a few things here about “spirit”, but the other day I felt its reality. I was walking up Desborough Avenue to the intersection with West Wycombe Road. People in their cars were waiting for the lights to change. Pedestrians were on their way to the doctor’s surgery or the clinic next door which does blood tests and so forth. Mechanics were fixing cars in a yard. I don’t quite know what triggered it, but it hit me that all of us are more than our bodies and minds.
It is so easy to say, “Oh, yes, I have always believed in that!” or perhaps, “No, there’s no evidence for that!” What hit me was not an experience that I can easily put in words, not something to be debated. It was a demonstration of what I had heard repeated for more than half a century.
Today, like any other day, teachers in classrooms across the globe tell their classes “how it is” and perhaps have textbooks to back it up. But a good teacher needs to know that there are only three worthwhile subjects: history, personal development and personal knowledge.
Euclid’s theorems, Harvey’s discovery that the heart pumps blood, Shakespeare’s plays, the changing uses of a given word over time, where to place apostrophes, the Ten Commandments: all these are history. You might say they are facts, but they are facts only in their historical context. They are records of what people knew, did or agreed upon. They may or may not be current today, but either way, history is very important.
If the teacher says, “We are more than our bodies and minds: we have an immortal soul,” is the telling of it going to impregnate the pupil with personal knowledge? No. Is it the teacher’s personal knowledge? Probably not. What subject does it belong to, then? Perhaps “edifying hearsay”, a major part of the curriculum but a subject of dubious value.
In that moment, near the traffic lights, about 11am on Tuesday 13th June 2006, I had personal knowledge of spirit. My knowing had nothing to do with religion. There are no short cuts to knowing. It was a subtle intimation, but I will never be the same again.
a wayfarer’s notes 