Understanding Spiritual Moments Hugh Gash St Patricks College Dublin Ireland

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1 Understanding Spiritual Moments Hugh Gash St Patricks College Dublin Ireland Abstract This paper provides a constructivist account of some spiritual moments. In earlier papers I have written about those spiritual moments that arise in shifting contextual levels and lead to personal transformation (Gash & Thompson, 2002) and about epiphanies that may arise contemplating the gap between the known and the unknown (Gash, 2004). The purpose of this paper is to examine further how the spiritual can be approached from the psychological perspective and to begin to specify the conditions under which spiritual experiences may emerge. Keywords: spirituality, constructivism, uncertainty, Introduction This paper provides a constructivist account of some spiritual moments. In earlier papers I have written about those spiritual moments that arise in shifting contextual levels and lead to personal transformation (Gash & Thompson, 2002) and about epiphanies that may arise contemplating the gap between the known and the unknown (Gash, 2004). Spirituality can be distinguished from religion since the first refers to an immediate, intrinsic and direct experience whereas the second alludes to extrinsic, institutional and conventional religiosity as a mechanism of social affiliation and control (Moncayo, 2005 web reference). While I have argued that there are interfaces with the spiritual domain at transformational moments and in contemplating the uncertainty signalled by these gaps, I would like to be clearer about this way of looking at spirituality. At a time when organised religion is loosing its appeal to alternatives I believe it is important to provide a psychological basis for spiritual experience. The purpose of this paper is to see what aspects of the spiritual can be approached from this psychological perspective and to begin to specify the conditions under which spiritual experiences may emerge. I begin with a description of thinking that has its origins in Piaget s model. Learning and thinking. An individual observes and understands what is experienced based on what was known that is on what was retained from past experience. We see, for example, a word and we recognise it. I have just done a crossword and met a new word ashlar. I did not know this word, so I observed the letters and did not understand its meaning. What is experienced is filtered by what is known. Indeed, not just at a cognitive level, but also at an emotional level people experience in ways constrained by emotions and expectations. For a striking contemporary illustration of this, look at the perceptions of the ideas and emotions of contemporary Bush supporters in the USA. People do not experience the world directly but through the lens of anticipation based on existing categories. The remainder of the paper arises out of this account of thinking. draft: Baden Baden Hugh Gash 1

2 Learning and play. The filtering just described provides a cognitive focus and efficiency that probably gives an evolutionary advantage. Understanding and intelligence are related. It is important for survival to have good understandings of our world and it is an advantage to be flexible. These ideas underlie Piaget s notion of intelligence as adaptation. On a number of criteria, the human species is intelligent and flexible in comparison to other species. Ethologists describe this flexibility as neoteny. Strictly speaking this means retaining childlike features in maturity. In the human case, neoteny refers to our extended capacity to be open to learning, to be playful, to be humorous even in childhood and later. So humans and our cousin-primates have an extended period of infancy to learn. Much of this learning is a result of play. Play may be defined as a quality that allows us to learn, through relishing uncertainty. Humour is closely allied. Learning and novelty. A feature of the account of knowing just described focuses on what happens when learning or accommodation occurs. Accommodation takes place when an individual notices something new. This is a biological model analogous to what happens when food is taken in from outside, it is transformed and fits into the organic requirements of the organism. This moment of noticing something new can be trivial or extraordinary. It is a challenge in this paper to see if I can specify or explain why some moments are trivial and some amazing. I want to suggest that the criterion for amazing moments has to do with the freshness or novelty of the world-view the surprise value. This depends on the experiences of the individual experiencing. So for a baby, putting her hand through cigarette smoke is a matter of amazement because most objects do not allow such movement. We have probably met adults who are amazed by . Many of us might react with similar amazement with holographic images or in an experience of virtual reality. Having well founded expectations violated can produce amazement. In this as in play, certainty-uncertainty is central. Learning and the world. The second key idea in this account of thinking that I want to highlight is that there is something inherently mysterious about the world because all we ever get is a filtered version. As far as I can see this is what Lacan says about the Real which we cant get at because we can only operate in language. We grow up in a culture that makes many assumptions including that things are pretty much as they seem, that science tells us about this world and religion tells us important truths about a world that we don t see and that truth is valuable. Now what this account of learning says is radically discrepant with these assumptions. This is why Glasersfeld (1974) introduced the phrase radical constructivism. Piaget s psychology implies that what we know of reality is a fiction. Objectivity and the truth it implies are problematic: there is usually a degree of uncertainty about phenomena. Vico (1710) was particularly clear on this issue. Vico said that we can know things that we have made, but not things that we have not made. So we can possess truth in mathematics, for example, because people made mathematics and it doesn t model reality (points in geometry are unreal for example location but no extension). The models we develop in physics and chemistry are made by us too, but they refer to phenomena that we did not make and so can only know imperfectly (Gash & Glasersfeld, 1978). We forget often, of course, about the limits to what we know. There is probably an evolutionary advantage to this also: it is inefficient to reinvent conceptual wheels all the time. In fact, I am sure draft: Baden Baden Hugh Gash 2

3 we have all experienced the annoyance of having our world-views challenged. Living in a cultural context with shared assumptions helps us avoid noticing the limits. But once we meet a problem the limits become apparent. This may happen within our culture of shared assumptions, or often happens when we meet a person who does not share our assumptions. Now lets notice (3) something else. All observation is from a particular perspective. If we begin to describe experience we could begin like Maturana (1988) with observation. We all observe and we may comment on what we observe. Different points of view allow different versions of the phenomena we observe. So we may have different accounts of some phenomena, different realities. These differences may be trivial, or they may be profound. The ethics of difference. If we are aware that what we know is a model of our experience of reality, and that it is based on what we knew when we came to (or made) our understanding, then these differences are the result of our understandings due to our psychological perspective. So where there are differences between individuals these differences present opportunities to think about how these differences arise and how we may talk about them and understand them. This is an ethical opportunity for mutual respect and understanding of difference. So one s epistemology implies a way of relating to the world and to others. This becomes even clearer when we notice that if we forget that what we know is a model, differences imply that someone is wrong. One position then is illegitimate, is invalid is wrong! Differences become an opportunity for power assertion. So appreciation of the mystery of what we know and its approximate nature is an invitation to a sort of spiritual awareness. Humberto Maturana once said our greatest spiritual danger was to believe we had a truth which made us blind to our circumstances and led us to fanaticism, and our next greatest danger was to forget our responsibility for our acts or for desiring/ not desiring their consequences (Maturana, 1991, p.51). I consider that the greatest spiritual danger that a person faces in his or her life is to believe that he or she is the owner of a truth, or the legitimate defender of some principle,.., because he or she immediately becomes blind to his or her circumstance, and enters into the closed ally of fanaticism. We need some constants in the flow. A fourth feature of learning I want to emphasise is that learning is a homeostatic or equilibrium seeking process. There are different types of equilibria: these include the personal, social, and conceptual. The equilibria represent moments of personal calm in the turbulence of experience. Well-known conceptual islands are Piaget s examples of conservation of length number and so on. The self concept is another frequently met personal conservation. We each have our sense of who we are, what we like, what we do not do, and what we are interested in amongst our parameters of identity. These are perhaps less easily specified than a test of conservation of number, but clearly these are conservations of identity. To complete this trinity (conceptual, personal and social), there is the person s concept of their social persona, namely how a person interfaces with other individuals in the social networks that constitute their lives. There are balances within each of these equilibria (concepts of self of other and of various phenomena), and of course balances across these equilibria (e.g., self-nature, self-other). We conserve our personal identity in the choices we make to be true to our selves: here the constraint is personal. In the social context we balance our identities with the expectations of the group. Conceptual equilibria: draft: Baden Baden Hugh Gash 3

4 Bateson puts it this way: the nature of matters such as prayer religion, and the like is most evident at moments of change - at moments the Buddhists call Enlightenment. And while Enlightenment may involve many sorts of experience, I think it important here to notice how often Enlightenment is a sudden realization of the biological nature of the world in which we live. It is a sudden discovery or realization of life (1987, p. 74). Personal equilibria: The look on the faces of the winners in Athens this summer and this autumn at the Special Olympics. The confidence of learners who find they can do it (Butler & Gash, 2003). Interpersonal equilibria: What will it take to react to interface in more complex ways? At the very least, it requires ways of seeing that affirm our own complexity and the systemic complexity of the other and that propose the possibility that they might together constitute an inclusive system, with a common network of mind and elements of the necessarily mysterious. Such a perception of both self and other is the affirmation of the sacred (Bateson, 1987, p. 176). Stresses on equilibria are challenging and offer opportunities for personal change and growth. If we look at spiritual moments in terms of personal reconfiguration, then it is shifts in these equilibria that occur at these moments. When there is a reframing of equilibria, a person s expectations alter and there is a moment when this is realised. In this moment there may be a realisation of a new relationship with the other or to the world. This new relationship is full of possibilities. Part of the function of art is to allow us to appreciate the world freshly in a new way: this type of reconfiguration allows this. We may know it in poetry. Perhaps it is this attention to the fabric of their art that makes some creative people find it difficult to cope with the exactness of modern living! If your business is creating new ways of seeing, then there is going to be a blurring of even a loss of - some present boundaries. Here extracts from two poems by Brian Lynch. AT THE END...I was dead inside what things are made of and you came back and were I don t know how not surprised By that kiss those eyes this stare (Lynch 2004, p.44) IN THE TOP ROOM... You are thinking of me, I am thinking of you, And you will do with me As I will do with you... (Lynch 2004, p.26). draft: Baden Baden Hugh Gash 4

5 While these poems have to do with relationships and special moments in the relationship, they also are examples of the importance of the gap. In my experience of interpreting the poem there is a certain switching of interpersonal perspective from I to you to I - that allows noticing the process. So the gap appears between smooth processing and less smooth processing. Another way of putting it is that this type of cognitive switching allows new awareness to appear. (Another example I would like to consider comes from the frustration people encounter when key ideas they have are challenged. What is to be conserved? Should one focus on one s own idea, the relationship, or an examination of the challenge? When the question is put in this way, it is easier to examine the challenge. However I suspect we can all identify instances in which we experienced intense frustration and confusion about where to turn because social constraints made it difficult to know what to conserve and what to change.) I wondered for a while where to put the boundary on the novel so as to distinguish it from the spiritual. Many people feel better about themselves when they have their hair done, or when they buy new clothes, or move house, or buy a new car. Psychologically however these are usually expressions of an existing identity. I think the critical issue in identifying a spiritual moment is whether there is the potential for an identity change. How do people act today when they seek spirituality? I believe they seek some way to change what is ordinary, too ordinary, and what is unsatisfying in their lives. It is a search for a more meaningful way of living. Engaging in meditation, reading, other religions, poetry or sport each may offer heightened awareness. We go on holidays and escape the everyday demands of the job and the home and the everyday social world. I want to suggest that a central part in this is the creation of a space, a gap, where one can contemplate: and further that the critical issue in contemplation is the possibility it offers for reconfiguration of the equilibria between self and other, self and the world, or just simply within the self. For some people it is prayer that allows hope that a way will be found to change. Prayer like the games in the arena has often a special place, a church or a well. So people return to places where they can have faith and so some people will change the ways they approach problems. They may do this by altering their behaviour slightly in ways that signal a difference in their social contexts and these differences may allow the emergence of new patterns of interaction. If they do the prayer was answered and a new context is born: and a spiritual experience has occurred. Alternatively put they may find a way to reconfigure their system by empowering hidden or forgotten parts of themselves and becoming new people. Where do I go from here? This account has implications for personal growth. It invites us to examine the ways we relate to ourselves, to others and to the world. The word spirit comes from the word breath. What enlivens us? draft: Baden Baden Hugh Gash 5

6 References Bateson, G., and Bateson, M.C. (1987). Angels Fear: An investigation into the nature and meaning of the sacred. Rider: London. Butler, D., & Gash, H. (2003) Creative learning and spiritual moments. In G.E. Lasker (Ed.) Advances in Sociocybernetics and Human Development. Vol XI. pp International Institute for Advanced Studies: Windsor, Ontario. Gash, H. (2004) Spirituality, uncertainty and tolerance. At the 16th International Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics, Baden Baden Germany, July. Gash, H., and Thompson, M. S. (2002) Constructivism and Celtic Spirituality. In G.E. Lasker (Ed.) Advances in Sociocybernetics and Human Development. Vol X. pp International Institute for Advanced Studies: Windsor, Ontario Gash, H., and von Glasersfeld, E. (1978) Vico ( ): An early anticipator of radical constructivism. Irish Journal of Psychology, 4, Glasersfeld, von, E. (1974/1987) Piaget and the radical constructivist epistemology. In (Ed.) E. vonglasersfeld., The construction of knowledge: Contributions to conceptual semantics. Intersystems Publications, Seaside CA. Lynch, B. (2004) New and renewed: Poems New Island: Dublin. Maturana, H. (1988) Reality: The search for objectivity or the quest for a compelling argument. Irish Journal of Psychology, 9, (Special issue: Radical constructivism, autopoiesis and psychotherapy. Ed. Vincent Kenny.) Maturana, H. (1991) Science and daily life: the ontology of scientific explanations. In F. Steier (Ed.) Research and reflexivity. Sage: London. Moncayo, R. (2005) Psychoanalysis and postmodern spirituality. From Vico. G. (1710, 1988) On the most ancient wisdom of the Italians: Unearthed from the origins of the Latin language. Tr. L.M. Palmer. Cornell University Press: London. draft: Baden Baden Hugh Gash 6

The Nature of Time. Humberto R. Maturana. November 27, 1995.

The Nature of Time. Humberto R. Maturana. November 27, 1995. The Nature of Time Humberto R. Maturana November 27, 1995. I do not wish to deal with all the domains in which the word time enters as if it were referring to an obvious aspect of the world or worlds that