In everyday life I act as though there is a power beyond Nature, that brings luck, answers prayers and sometimes sends miracles. When catastrophe strikes, I assume that in some way it is all for the best, at least in my own life and the small circle of those I know well. I accept that illness, physical or mental, comes to stop us in our heedless tracks, and help us focus on our life’s purpose. I take it as read that when we are unsure of direction, we have only to ask for signs, and they’ll be shown us, as if a guardian angel is ceaselessly working on our behalf.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
It seems absurd in a world which has always been troubled by man-made or natural disaster to find meaning in such a sentence, but like millions of others I do, even without worshipping God. I’m the same stock as those in devout and humble congregations. We are brothers: I cannot say I don’t understand them.
I find meaning, but I don’t believe. Feeling is deeper than belief. Our capacity to believe is a cultural thing. We should not take any belief too seriously.
I accept most of science, apart from vivisection and non-holistic approaches to medicine. So I accept that my lineage is passed down through DNA, and that I am cousin to a snail, as well as being brother to every human being in the world. That’s a truly spiritual connection, which satisfies my soul.
But is my soul like a wine that is poured into the container of my body?
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I throw empty wine bottles into iron tanks for recycling: brown, green or clear glass. Is flesh but a husk left behind when the precious grain has been harvested? The Latin “spiritus” meant “breath”. When breath finally leaves our body we are dead. So where has our breath gone? Put it like that and it’s a naïve question, but still our culture encourages belief in the immortal soul.
No! Though the question is of crucial importance, we don’t have a unified culture on this issue, but a vacuum. In my lifetime, 60 years in England, all remembered clearly (I arrived as a four-year-old) there was first a ubiquitous Church of England, held together by congregations of old ladies and a fewer number of soldierly survivors of the Great War. They clung fast to the old ways! The Book of Common Prayer impressed itself upon me. I followed its tables to calculate the date for Easter. I felt uncomfortable with having to stand facing East reciting the Apostles’ Creed, because I did not believe. I was impressed by the sonorousness of priestly invocations, without knowing whether to let them flow over me as a hypnotic ritual, or consider the words and be guided by them:
Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting.
These days a prism has split such innocent certainties into a spectrum of beliefs, with sceptical materialism at one end and a New Age manifesto at the other.
I’m brother to every worshipper of God, every atheist, and every New Age fluffy thinker. We all stand on the same earth, sharing the same facts, however we view them.
But there’s no use in belief any more: not as a supplement to ignorance, nor as a glue for social cohesion. Let us clear this baggage out, and while we are about it, let’s cleanse the doors of perception as Blake proposes, and believe what happens to us, without embroidering it with theories.
Yet
I am on the side of the angels
At the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 25th November 1864 Benjamin Disraeli, later to become the UK Prime Minister, delivered a speech entitled Church Policy, a transcript of which which was put into print the same year. The speech was rather long and included Disraeli’s views on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution laid out in the recently published On the Origin of Species:
What is the question now placed before society with a glib assurance the most astounding? The question is this – Is man an ape or an angel? (loud laughter) My lord, I am on the side of the angels (laughter and cheering).
The meeting was chaired by the Bishop of Oxford and the audience was largely made up of clerics – hence the loud cheers indicated in the citation. Disraeli stirred up considerable debate by his comments and a rather satirical cartoon of him portrayed as an angel was published soon after the debate.
So, the meaning of ‘on the side of the angels’, as indicated by Disraeli, was ‘supporting the view that man was divinely created and refuting Darwinism’. This meaning is now almost forgotten and the expression is now used colloquially to mean ‘with the good guys’.
From this site
a wayfarer’s notes 
Wonderful! Go on … I think you've hit a lode in your reflections-writing!
Your gentle tolerance is also so wonderful.
Thanks for making the crucial distinction between belief and feeling. Just before reading your piece I was remembering Salinger's distinction between perfection and flawlessness. And I was thinking about which is more important: perfection or purity.
Breath – you put your finger on it! That's all that there is, BREATH, which comes from the great beyond, and goes back to the great beyond, after a momentary ingestion by the breathing, living body-soul, with everything of that living body-soul being merely contingent upon and consequent to being animated after breathing. When we simply breathe, and are conscious of just THIS – that is when we really ARE! This is what Vipassana tries to teach, this is the Buddha's teaching on the Full Awareness of Breathing. Thanks for your ear! Best, rama
LikeLike
Thank you Rama, but I cannot unfortunately share your enthusiasm for conscious breathing. I did in fact practise it for thirty years. After that it was quite hard to give up the habit. I felt that it held out a promise but did not deliver. I'm open to the suggestion that it did me good, but it has no attraction for me now. Since it did not deliver the feeling, I now see it as just a belief, albeit one enshrined in venerable scriptures. Breath is Brahman, Sat Nam, the Holy Name, Spirit and so forth.
Does breath come from the great beyond? Or is it consequent upon the bellows action of the lungs, a necessity for all living mammals which can be safely left unconscious>?
My belief in the satsang of the Guru and perfect wisdom of Scripture has gone too, as you'll see from the above.
LikeLike
i like this. Thanks.
we are all made of the same stuff, even plants and rocks. what makes things animated? DNA molecules. a star that is born also dies. energy flows through everything! what is soul? can it be proven? just thoughts that run through my mind.
LikeLike
I can't say for another, haven't clarified it yet for myself. My 'belief' tho, is more like your 'feeling', than it is like 'bookwork', even tho I back it or add to it with the old Hebrew Torah Text. First came the 'impression' of 'more', I felt that, saw that, heard that, it was a 'full living experience' but not in full waking consciousness time, but in full consciousness itself which was (at the time) obviously never ending, a great unbordered continuity, yet conscious. That 'experience' felt and sensed out side 'here consciousness' led me to 'believe', when I had not believed before that. At that moment, and since, I believe. But it is independent of 'learning to believe'. Maybe your 'feeling' is kin to this, albeit unconscious?The 'Soul', for the moment I am saying it is Pure desire for life. Even in the body, it remains Pure, no matter how corrupt one gets. This Pure Soul (desire for Life) comes from that continuity that I spoke of experiencing, it is a 'portion' of that whole. Here in my body-shell, it is me, yet sometimes not me, that depends on 'me'. Part of it does breathing, along with the mechanic systems that accompany it and help it 'live' the body.I better quit, it is easy to get carried away, and this is a non-seeable subject and so, subject to confusion. Great post Vincent, good thought being inspired.Somehow (one more thing), I do think that each person is universal, and that what is true for one is in some way true for all, so to this subject, so one cannot have 'better' as to comparison, all have to be equal, tho different. Thanks Vincent.
LikeLike
Hi Vincent, I appreciate your comments. My experience is its difficult to retain the Pure Awareness of Breathing all the time, in the midst of pressing worldly duties, and especially living in metropolitan cities. But as an exercise, accompanied by the focus, insights and feelings from ongoing meditation / introspection and spiritual quest – one can realise a state of liberation, an awareness, that is unforgettable; this experience also then works within, in a process of titration, producing inner transformation.Its not about reaching somewhere or getting something – its about emptiness, a void, that nonetheless is also a fullness. But yes, all this is very personal; what works for one person need not be relevant to another.Breath – we can see this as BOTH the physical process of movement of the bellows, or as a metaphysical process, of something “beyond” animating the physical body.Ultimately, whatever one believes or rejects, or does or discards, the germane question is how is the person living his / her life, and what his / her relations to other human and living beings is!Best, rama
LikeLike
Thanks for your comments, Rama, Kathy, Jim. Yes, the next topic will be, “What is Soul?”
It's so refreshing when we come with questions but no ready-made answers; especially if we have been accustomed to consider these issues to be ancient and stale, or the preserve of authorities better-informed than ourselves.
LikeLike
[…] September 3rd “On the Side of the Angels” December 23rd December 28th “Divine Anarchy” December 31st […]
LikeLike