Looking back over my blog, which has been running almost 17 years now, I can see a definite rise in the frequency with which I post on the topic of human spirituality. That label was applied to just two posts from 2008 (out of 280). Last year, it was 79 (including 46 across the duration of Lent).
Does this indicate a shifting worldview? Looking for comfort to assuage a subconscious fear of the oblivion of biological death? A need, a calling, a desire for the numinous? All three? Let me sift through in this post.
It's not just me. Church pews tend to be occupied by the elderly rather than by the young.
I remember a TV show from the 1960s called All Our Yesterdays, hosted by Brian Inglis, which featured newsreel footage from the run-up to WW2 and the war itself. His catchphrase, "Twenty-five years ago this week..." prefaced news headlines from the time, which he discussed. The show came to an end in 1972, as it ran into post-war austerity which no longer drew the viewers that wartime footage did. Anyway, Brian Inglis - a serious, respected journalist and historian, then turned his attention to the paranormal. Reading about this (probably in my parents' Daily Telegraph), I concluded that old age and fear of death had prompted him to seek the paranormal as a crutch. Yet... at the time, he was ten years younger then than I am today!
Another Brian – physicist Brian Josephson – professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge, known for his work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, won the Nobel Prize in 1973. Then he turned his attention the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, and the synthesis of science and Eastern mysticism (quantum mysticism), thus drawing criticism from the scientific mainstream. Prof. Josephson is still alive, aged 84; and there are fairly recent interviews with him on YouTube in which he talks about extra-sensory perception and the unity of mind and matter. This, from a Nobel Prize winner in Physics.
Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist, born in 1943, is known his studies of near-death experiences covering hundreds of survivors of cardiac arrests. This work led to him writing Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience, published in 2007 to become a best seller. However, Dr van Lommel's work drew widespread criticism from the medical profession; they said it was pseudoscience, full of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. He is also around on YouTube (and worth a watch).
The fact that these men followed their intuition in face of public ridicule, having achieved success in their field, suggests that the draw of the unknown and the power of their curiosity can be greater than simply wishing a quiet retirement or mainstream popularity.
The rabbinical injunction not to study the Kabbalah until one reaches the age of 40 makes sense. Truly appreciating the esoteric requires a mature mind. Coming back to the seven stages of life, there are times when the key thing is to put bread on the family table, raise children, pay off the mortgage – getting on with it is all. With small children round the house, it's not a time for spending in quiet contemplation of the metaphysical. That time shall come. And once it does, those dreams and visions kept quiet from one's earliest days, need to be explored. They cannot be ignored.
Everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way. For some, regular churchgoing will suffice. It provides fellowship, sense of community, the order and stability of tradition; I can understand the draw of such a way of life far more than spending money on status symbols. That stage of life, the social self, should disappear in the rear-view mirror as one moves towards acquiring wisdom, enlightenment and transcendence.
If your intuition takes to you explore unconventional areas of research that you hold to be the right direction on your path toward the numinous, then so be it. Physicalism, or reductionist materialism, is but an alternative point of view, and not the ultimate reality of the Cosmos. Shrug off the nay-sayers.
Time might feel like it's not on our side as we tread this path, which seems to stretch out further and further upon the horizon; the longer one travels, the further ahead into the distance the destination seems to disappear. The chart below shows that the perception of time should be slowing down, not speeding up the older we get. For a ten-year-old, one year is 10% of their total life experience; for a 50-year-old, it's but 2%. But over the next 50 years, it will only halve. Each passing year should only feel slightly shorter than the past one, once you hit middle age. Yet subjectively, it feels like this graph has been flipped horizontally.
Once living a comfortable life, seek not a life of luxury – dedicate it instead to a search for meaning, purpose, wisdom, enlightenment and transcendence.
Lent 2023, Day 16
Intuition – is it magical?
Lent 2022: Day 16
The difficulties of focusing on the spiritual
Lent 2021: Day 16
This planet is my home, today and tomorrow
Lent 2020: Day 16
My metaphysical journey, as I see it
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