To have any hope of understanding WHAT you are, you must first understand that you are MORE than the “biomedical profile of man” can explain. According to this profile, I AM a body controlled by my genetic program and my chemical-machine brain, which is the source of my consciousness. The energies that animate my presence come solely from the food I eat. I am self-sufficient, and depend little on interaction with others.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of people understand perfectly well that “interpersonal energy” exists and that it is “transmitted between us” all the time. We do not live in a vacuum. The presence of other people certainly affects us. There is no “scientific” instrument that can objectively measure this “energy.” Biomedical experts are unable to determine the exact anatomical location of its organs. These shortcomings serve as a stark reminder of the limitations of the “biomedical model.”
“Science” based on the “scientific method” is a tool that can be applied productively to many practical problems. However, its scope is limited. It can only address issues that are objectively and even quantitatively measurable in the context of certain general metaphors. It cannot, by definition, address in any meaningful way ephemeral, subjective phenomena such as “interpersonal energies.” (33)
Modern science has declared 1000/year old “self-awareness” obsolete. Many authors have written at length about “transhumanism” (34) and the technocratic era that has emerged worldwide during the last century. (35) Its doctrine of “scientific world humanism” implies nothing less than the rejection of “traditional” “religious faith” in favor of “faith in science.” In parallel, a political-economic model of “mechanical capitalism” has emerged in Western societies. It certainly does NOT aim at a peaceful, stable life for humans. Ultimately, it depends on “consumers” hypnotized by mass culture to manipulate their consciousness, having “faith” not only in “science” but also in the “future,” particularly in the trajectory of technological development.
Consumers are asked to take a “leap of faith” into transhumanism/“mechanical capitalism.” In a biomedical context, consumers are asked to ignore their own experiences and reject the hypothesis that “life is Holy” in favor of the self-fulfilling prophecy/alleged “scientific fact” that “life is mechanical,” evolving from millions of years of random molecular interactions.
In my opinion, the vast majority of people understand not only that there are “interpersonal energies,” but that they exist in different forms, and have different natures. For example, most people will understand that “love” is an energy that is fundamentally different from energies such as those involved where someone’s presence “burdens” you or seems to “get in your way.”
In addition to “interpersonal energies,” humanity distinguishes “spiritual energies,” which themselves can be transmitted as “interpersonal energies.” For example, “love,” which can be received from outside, from a “higher power” such as the “love of the Russian people.”
So, as a responsible approach to “self-awareness” (based on your own experience), I suggest you reject the “leap of faith” in “science.” Instead, I suggest you consider the hypothesis that “life is sacred.” What if life on our beautiful blue planet is really all the life there is in a “universe” that is 36 billion light years across and growing? Look at your beautiful son and ask yourself, “Is this really just an insignificant little machine of flesh, or is there more to the story?”
Here, as an aid to self-examination, I wish to present a “Christian” model of the human organism. I take the liberty of using the term “Christian” in this context because the model, as I present it, is consistent with the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Christian Church, of which I am an active member.
The cosmology that explains the “Christian” model is right and worth considering: Now regarding the “big bang,” “science” defines this beginning of the “universe,” but there shouldn’t be the original force that we call “Father (Creator).” “Science” paradoxically asks consumers to accept on faith that the “laws of physics” apply to everything EXCEPT the beginning of the “universe.” If instead we believe that the beginning of the “universe” follows from the same laws, then it necessarily follows that SOMETHING must have preceded this “big bang.”
This cosmology is a little more complex than simply invoking the “Creator.” We say further that the act of conception of the “universe” gave “birth” to a manifestation of the “Creator,” whom we call the “Son,” and that a third manifestation thus arose to “unite” the two, whom we call the “Holy Spirit.” (36) Thus, from our perspective as inhabitants of the “universe,” the “Creator” exists as a trinity, including all three of these manifestations.
In the “Christian model” we say that the human personality is an “image of God,” i.e. also a trinity of which the body is only one part. The other two components are variously represented as “soul” or “mind” and “spirit.” That is, spirit, soul and body!
The term “soul” has been used to mean different things by different people. In ancient Greek, the term was used interchangeably with “mind.” The early church fathers used the term to mean the “vital force” that animates our presence—in this formulation, “mind” is only one power of the “soul.” The pre-communist, effectively 20th-century Russian saint Theophan the Recluse, in his work The Path to Salvation: A Guide to Spiritual Transformation, describes other powers of the “soul” in addition to “mind,” including the “will” and the “feelings.” (37)
The term “spirit” is the most mysterious. It is often understood by different people in different ways. Some have used the term “soul” to describe what we call “spirit.” The Church teaches that “spirit” is the “seed of divine being” that came with you into your life on earth. (38)
The spirit is a striving for the Highest, i.e. for the Divine.
Here I will define “spirit” in a “cyclical” way, as that part of the “human trinity” which is capable of receiving and transmitting “spiritual energies.” Saint Theophan describes the powers of the “spirit” as “prayer,” “conscience” and “the fear of God”. (39)
What we mean by “conscience” is an innate sense of right and wrong that may or may not guide your “will” depending on how much you listen to it. It is not simply learned behavior patterns, but rather something “structural” in your being.
The term “fear of God” usually refers to the fear of being separated from the “love of the Creator.” (40)
“The Love of the Creator” can, in a simplified sense, be considered the “spiritual analogue” of the 3K “cosmic microwave background radiation” that “science” teaches fills all space in the “universe” like a lingering “echo” of the “big bang.” The “Love of the Creator,” which I have heard people who call themselves atheists refer to as “cosmic love,” is always there, pouring out on us. The only question is whether we are aware of it or not, conforming to it, “filling ourselves” with it, so to speak. In “The Path to Salvation,” St. Theophan describes in detail the work we do on ourselves, moment by moment, throughout our lives, to gather “body,” “soul,” and “spirit” together into one, in accordance with the “love of the Creator.”
“Prayer” is one of the mechanisms by which the “spirit” is conformed to and “filled” with the “love of the Creator.”
As for the “spirit,” it is important to note that this component of the human trinity is indistinguishable between “male” and “female,” (41) but the same cannot be said of the “soul” and “body” components. I think it is fair to say that most people’s “spirit” is characterized as good and has an innate desire to gather with other “spirits.”
Of course, my most important first task is to convince you that you do have a “spirit.” Without that, the rest of my presentation will be meaningless. It’s complicated. You certainly don’t need your “spirit” to thrive on a material level in “mechanical capitalist” societies. In fact, it’s probably the opposite – your “spirit” is an obstacle to “success” (as measured by material acquisitions) in such places. And I know that, like many Russians of your generation, you admire the “mechanical capitalist West” precisely because of the material standard of living there. The age of the Internet, mobile phones, WhatsApp and the like tends to steer people toward a “spiritless” existence. Why do I need spirit, I have an iPhone? Certainly, “mechanical capitalism” promotes a “two-dimensional” (i.e., “spiritless”) existence, since it makes it much easier to convince consumers that they are “happy.”
In order to convince you that you do indeed have a “spirit,” I offer here a relatively simple “self-awareness” experiment that you can try for yourself: the Taoist meditation on nothingness. This meditation gave me what I will call the “doorway experience” at a time in my life when I was about your age now. My experience with this meditation marked a definite “turning point” in my life.
The meditation itself is quite simple in principle. The first step to doing it is to work on focusing your attention inside your body. Eventually, the meditation will show you how your “attention” is clearly and “visibly,” independent of your “thoughts.” (42)
You are sitting, perhaps on cushions, but it could also be a comfortable chair. You move your attention within your body, “touching the ground,” so to speak, with the placement of your right and left feet and your right and left arms, legs to hips, arms, shoulder, and so on. Then you work with your attention and very actively, very deliberately try NOT TO THINK. Notice the origin of every thought that arises and try to TURN IT OFF. Simultaneously with this effort, move your attention to your chest, where your heart beats. Then divide your attention and also focus on your nostrils, one at a time, and follow the air through them as it passes down into your lungs.
The ancient Greek Platonists taught that human awareness has two fundamentally different components: dianoia, which is the product of “thinking,” and noesis, which is the product of pure intuition. The mind is constantly changing, constantly moving, constantly producing new thoughts. But when we actively TURN IT OFF, we discover an entirely different aspect of our consciousness, which is the “organ” of intuition, which the Platonists called “nous.” (43)
Well, it is not easy NOT TO THINK. In fact, no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to achieve it 100%. But what you can and will discover in the meditation on nothingness is that you do have a mysterious “other” awareness that is separate from the “molecular mechanisms” of “thinking,” which seems to be separate also from the anatomical location of your chemical brain-machine, and which is clearly connected to the contours of your body. This “other” awareness is your “nous.”
If you look up definitions of “nous,” you will find hundreds of different versions, many of which are completely misleading, and some of which are just plain wrong. For my part, I believe it can be accurately described as your “spiritual intelligence.” Again, using the “circular” definition, knowing that you have “spiritual intelligence” means that you must have a “spirit.”
Notes:
(33) The minority of people who truly cannot “see” the very real phenomenon of “interpersonal energies” will be excellent subjects for “scientific” experiments in which we ask THEM to disprove the hypothesis that these energies exist. I myself have a PhD in biochemistry, and I think that for 0.1% of the annual budget of the US National Institutes of Health we can convincingly dispense with this question, i.e. document on “scientific” grounds, using the “scientific method,” that the very self-selected skeptics who are used as our “guinea pigs” will not be able to disprove the hypothesis. Of course, the “mechanical capitalist” “biomedical” system has no interest in supporting this kind of research, since it will produce results that will call into question its management of the other 99.9% of its enormous taxpayer-supported budget!
(34) Transhumanism is the idea that humans should not stop at what they have achieved, but should use science and technology to improve themselves: Increase mental, physical and psychological capabilities, eliminate ageing, and achieve immortality.
(35) For an excellent overview, see Joshua Stylman’s substack article, “The Technocratic Blueprint: A Century in the Making.” https://stylman.substack.com/p/the-technocratic-blueprint
(36) We say further that the “Son” became incarnate as a human person, Jesus Christ.
(37) To the extent that we collapse “will” and “feelings” into the formulation of “mind,” proponents of the “biomedical model” will try to convince you that they will someday be able to explain “the soul” through a detailed understanding of the “molecular mechanisms of consciousness.” To me, this is laughable—ridiculous, at first glance. But we might politely ask these proponents to please first, before asking us to reflect on their model of “consciousness,” explain the “molecular mechanisms” of “interpersonal energies,” and in particular “spiritual energies,” and then, while they are at it, the “molecular mechanisms” of both the “placebo effect” and the well-documented power of third-party prayer in medical contexts.
(38) In your case, on the momentous day your mother gave birth to you, and at the same time your grandparents’ 15-year-old dog gave birth to puppies, despite the extreme biological and statistical improbability of this event.
(39) It is worth mentioning an alternative formulation developed in the early 20th century in pre-communist St. Petersburg by the “esoteric Christian” writer George Gurdjieff. He describes the “spiritual transformation” mentioned by St. Theophan as “the finding of the soul.” Gurdjieff himself was Orthodox, but had become disillusioned with the church apparatus. He set out to give his own explanation in more “scientific” terms. At first glance, this seems heretical. His formulation is a trinity of “three brains” – “the moving center (i.e., the body),” “the thinking center,” and “the emotional center.” But if you really look into it, what he calls the “emotional center” is ultimately a kind of overlap between what we call the “soul” and the “spirit.” Gurdjieff speaks of “correspondence to the ray of creation” that comes from “our common father, the infinity, the actualizer of everything and everyone that really exists” – this is what the Orthodox call the effort of the “spirit” to “pray” and thereby correspond to and receive the “love of the Creator” that is always pouring out on us. Gurdjieff said of his work at the end of his life that “it began in Russia and it will end in Russia.”
(40) In your case, I can point to a specific event in your life when the “fear of God” manifested itself in you. When you were 15, your grandmother and I took you to the Liturgy at the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Zelenogorsk. Not long after, you became frightened by what was happening and ran out of the church.
(41) The Orthodox call the “spirit” “she”, and all of us “brides of Christ”.
(42) I like to say that your attention is your love.
(43) The word “repentance” as used in the New Testament was literally invented by translators trying to render the original Greek into English. The actual words attributed to Christ were not “sinners, you must repent,” but rather “sinners, you must change your nous.” But since they didn’t know how to translate “nous,” they came up with the concept of “repentance.”
Leave a Comment