Spirituality and Human Development

I watched with considerable interest on Monday night the Panorama programme dealing with the close friendship over a 30 yr. period between Pope John Paul II and a polish émigré Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The friendship started in the early 1970's before Karol Wojtyla  became Pope (in 1978). He had written a book - later to become in English "The Acting Person", which caught the attention of Tymieniecka, now married in the US and a distinguished philosopher in her own right. She wrote then to Wojtyla suggesting a collaboration in bringing forth a new updated English edition of the book. Then, meeting on a fairly regular basis over the next few years an intense relationship of both an intellectual and emotional nature was forged between them. And this relationship was to continue after Wojtyla became Pope until his death in 2005. The letters which Wojtyla wrote - 350 in all - were handed over by Tymieniecka to the Polish Librar...

I have always greatly valued those precious moments of pure spiritual insight where the nature of life - though still utterly mysterious - is clearly revealed. And in that intimate moment of realisation, all questioning ceases. The latest example of this occurred last week while in deep reflection after receiving the sad news of the untimely death of a close relative. We are accustomed in scientific terms to tracing out the evolution of our Universe in a somewhat linear manner entailing phenomenal space and time. And the present conventional wisdom in this regard is that the Universe started its existence some 13.5 billion years or so as a "Big Bang". However from the spiritual standpoint this is all very misleading! Properly understood from this perspective, the Universe always exists in the absolute present moment. Thus phenomenal notions of space and time have a merely secondary relative validity, that ultimately can always be shown to be circular and paradoxical...

I recently finished reading "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas. Strangely, I remember receiving this book as a present some twenty years ago and quickly concluding - without much study of its contents - that it was too bland for my taste. Well, clearly something significant had changed in the meantime as on this occasion, I read it straight through, remaining enthralled with the unfolding narrative from start to finish. It put me in mind of an earlier book that I had read in the 60's "The Western Intellectual Tradition" by Bronowski and Mazlish. However whereas this was confined to a relatively short period from about 1500 to 1850, Tarnas provides a marvellous perspective for consideration of all major developments spanning ancient Classical Greece right up to the end of the 2nd millennium. Then at the end he summarises his conclusions "For the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its being....

I have been reflecting strongly recently on the utter improbability of the existence of each life here on Earth or indeed anywhere else in the Universe! Even when we concede in the present context of our evolution the inevitably of new human life being born - seemingly at an ever increasing rate - this in no way lessens the enormous improbability of any one of us having actually come into existence. For example without my parents having met I would not be in existence. And then when one looks at the chance sequence of events leading to their eventual meeting I am keenly aware that if any preceding event had unfolded in a different manner (where they did not meet) that I could not exist. Of course in different circumstances both could well have met other partners and had families. However these would represent other human beings (and not me). And then in terms of conception if any other sperm had been involved fertilising the egg in my mother's womb, again a new baby infant wo...

With respect to spiritual experience, I continually have emphasised the complementary nature as between transcendence and immanence. Transcendence implies spiritual understanding as beyond all (phenomenal) form. Thus the truly infinite field which properly represents spiritual reality is necessarily limited in a finite manner through identification with phenomenal notions. Immanence by contrast implies spiritual understanding as a priori to our understanding of phenomenal form. So from this perspective spiritual notions of immanence are already inherent in finite understanding. So strictly all such understanding implies the relationship of finite and infinite notions. Thus conventional science unfortunately, for example, in its approach to evolution gravely reduces the true experiential nature of understanding in merely finite phenomenal terms. Worse still it then so often attempts to ridicule the inclusion of authentic spiritual notions through using such reduced unders...

It was refreshing for once to hear Pope Francis strike a more moderate tone when speaking about gay relationships in his impromptu press conference, on board his plane returning from South America. He said that he wasn’t in a position to judge on homosexuals who try to live a good life seeking God. However on reflection this seemed a somewhat grudging admission that does not really address the key issue. Would he have used the same language for example in speaking of heterosexuals? Of course not! So his attitude, though admittedly coming across as perhaps more conciliatory that his predecessor, conceals a big problem. Francis, indeed was keen to maintain the traditional line that the Catholic Church does not condemn homosexuality in itself but rather the expression of sexual acts by homosexuals. However this begs the huge issue that for persons born gay, in effect he is telling them that they cannot hope to give direct expression to their sexual ide...

Though raised as a Christian, I have often wondered at the lack of precise historical details regarding the life of Christ. For instance remarkably little information is given regarding Christ's formative years. We know from the Gospels that after the birth his parents fled with him to Egypt. The long held reason for this is that Herod (the Great) was coming to the end of his reign. Then hearing of the imminent birth of the Messiah, which had been prophesied, out of jealously had ordered the slaughter of all new born babies. Now though Herod was a particularly unsavoury character with the death of - even - several family members on his hands, it seems that this story is unlikely. However we do know that when Joseph and Mary returned from Egypt with the baby Jesus that they settled in a small village of Galilee i.e. Nazareth. What is now fascinating is that extensive archaeological work has revealed that 4 miles or so from Nazareth was the capital town of Galilee commonly ref...