How can ‘spirituality’ help us to become happier?
Today’s Post
Last week we began a look at the third facet of the subject of ‘happiness’, this time from the perspective of ‘spirituality’. We noted that from this perspective, we are using this term to refer to what Teilhard called ‘the sap of the axis of evolution’: the agency which increases complexity over time. This distinguishes his use of the term from traditional religious terminology that refers to such things as ‘supernatural’.
In our use of it, we are referring to that which is active in our lives, here and now. Paraphrasing Patricia Albere, author of Evolutionary Relationships, it is the latest evolutionary activity in the long history of rising universal complexity, the recognition of the evolutionary forces that are ready to “optimize what can happen in our lives and in humanity” if we but ‘listen”.
This week we will explore this a bit further.
The Spiritual Ground of Happiness and the Terrain of Synergy
On July 11, we took a look at this ‘Terrain of Synergy’ as the common ground between science and religion, quite small for centuries but as writers such as Jonathan Sacks, Teilhard, Richard Rohr, John Haught and Paul Davies insist, can be seen today as much larger than commonly thought.
The expansion of this ground is one of the consequences of moving the center of understanding of evolution from the biological, Earth-centric scope of the Darwinists to the universal, all-encompassing vision sought by both scientists and religionists today. Not only does the current scope of evolution expand in this enterprise, but the insight into how science and religion can contribute to a better understanding of the human condition becomes clearer. As Brian Swimme, Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, sees it, the study of ‘cosmology’ is focused on such expansion.
“The sciences will just separate the human off and focus on the physical aspects of the universe and the religious traditions will shy away from the universe because that’s reserved for science. So cosmology is an attempt to deal with the whole and the nature of the human in that.”
In exploring this ‘terrain of synergy’ we are really exploring the nature of existence, an integrated understanding of the universe, its unfolding, and if it is to be truly ‘cosmological’, our part in it.
Such understanding is the starting place for situating ourselves into the true context of evolution, which is the same thing as understanding how we fit into the fourteen or so billion years of the rise of complexity: Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’.
As we have seen, such placement also recognizes the consequence of failing to do so, as was recognized by Yuval Harari in his suggestion that we have broken the bond that our ancestors enjoyed with their environment and have hence doomed ourselves to a future of unhappiness leading to a quick extinction. While Harari fails to recognize the recent (by evolutionary standards) trend towards increased human welfare outlined by Johan Norberg (19 July 2018), our current levels of anxiety indicate that at the personal level, we still have a long way to go.
Happiness and the Terrain of Synergy
How can recognition of the ‘terrain of synergy’ be a factor in human happiness?
Consider that understanding the ‘axis of evolution’, the universe’s tendency to increase complexity over time, offers science a way to begin to address the human person on the one hand, and on the other a way for religion to understand the workings of the ‘Ground of Being’ in universal evolution.
Quantification of complexity, therefore, is a filter through which western religious teachings can be strained to remove their supernatural and magical content. By the same token, defining it can extend the more advanced subjects of science, such as quantum physics, into the study of the human person.
The epicenter of the ‘terrain of synergy’ is therefore the common ground between science and religion. It is the recognition that the human person is the latest manifestation of the ‘complexification’ of the ‘stuff of the universe’: evolution become aware of itself. This perspective recognizes both the increase in complexity acknowledged (at least tacitly) by science and the importance of the human person in the scheme of things asserted by Western religion. This perspective emerges when we come at the understanding of the cosmos from science’s recognition that the ‘axis of universal evolution’ is ‘complexification’ and from religion’s intuition that God exists as the underlying agent of such ‘complexification’.
The journey to such an integrated perception is outlined by Teilhard’s description of his own vision of his roots in the ‘axis of evolution’.
Such ‘rootedness’ is essential to our recognition of the part we play in the cosmic sweep of evolution. And this recognition is at the core of Patricia Albere’s assertion that we must become aware of the “evolutionary forces that are ready to optimize what can happen in our lives and in humanity”.
Such recognition is echoed by Teilhard as he describes his experience of the two hands of God:
“..the one which holds us so firmly that it is merged, in us, with the sources of life, and the other whose embrace is so wide that, at its slightest pressure, all the spheres of the universe respond harmoniously together.”
This echoes one of Maurice Blondel’s ‘reinterpretations’ of Western religion’s understanding of God:
“- that God is Father means that human life is oriented towards a gracious future- God is ‘on our side’ “
To a person who believes that they are being held “In God’s hand”, and that the ground of being “is on their side” the possibility of happiness moves from being a possibility to being a probability.
The Next Post
This week we continued our exploration of the ‘spiritual’ ground of happiness, noting that this ‘ground’ can be seen in the idea of the ‘terrain of synergy’. Once we begin to sense that the ‘ground of being’ is ‘on our side’, it becomes possible to build a level of confidence in the process of cosmic evolution as it rises through ourselves.
Having seen a clearer picture of this ‘terrain of synergy’ and its potential for a satisfaction with life that is grounded in a clear-headed, secular perspective, we can take our exploration of it a little further. Next week we will look a little deeper into the structure of this ‘terrain of synergy’ for some signposts to such exploration.