Coming to terms with Reality

Reality is one, many dimensional, not separated

At birth, most of us received five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. These senses gradually enable our brain to sort out ways to understand reality. The world as we know it is constructed in our mind through the use we make of our sensory perceptions. One of the principal ways in which this happens is through rational thought. It is generally thought that the rational process kicks into action beginning around the age of seven. However, even before this, we are able to make sense of the world around us largely through another capacity called feeling. This is not exactly the same as emotion or sentiment. It is an intentionally driven faculty that allows us to sort out and interact creatively with the world in order to meet our needs and those of others. It will continue to play an important role in knowing throughout our life. Poets and artists build on this capacity to create their art; religion is largely grounded in this dimension of our capacity to relate to the world.

Reality is one. There are not separate realities. Reality, as we perceive it using our five senses, is the only one that exists or, more specifically, the only one we can know anything about. That does not mean that reality is one-dimensional or that there is only one way to understand and know reality. History is one way of understanding; psychology is another; physics and biology are still others. They do not study different realities but rather different dimensions of the same, one reality. For religion, there are not two realities: natural and supernatural. There is one reality that can be understood in religious terms based on the identical sensory perceptions used to develop other forms of knowing. This grasp of complementarity in knowing is extremely important for our contemporary world, which has to a large extent tried to distinguish different realities to be dealt with rather than recognizing that different sciences are always dealing with the task of understanding the one same reality using the same method inscribed in our mind but with different techniques.

Since there is only one reality, the same “event” can be examined by any of the sciences from their own point of view. So, what religion or poetry speaks of can be considered by psychologists, sociologists, historians and biologists – and vice versa. Ideally, each will enlighten and assist the other.

Knowing in poetry, theatre, art, can draw significantly on imagination to move us toward new ways of knowing. Sometimes these new “truths” may be difficult for us to accept and push us beyond our limited horizons. As is the case with the best in religion, the goal is not to comfort but to challenge. Imagination can also turn to fantasy. However, even fantasy can also contain a kernel of meaning that helps us engage with reality.

Religion, like art and poetry, has a particular significance in that it makes a very different use of sensory perceptions in order to engage the level of feeling (of “heart”) in knowing and responding to the reality around us and, in fact, also in us since we too form part of the reality we try to know and engage. To say that we know through feeling does not free us from the arduous task of “verifying” our convictions. We still have to examine whether our knowing is consistent, for example with other beliefs. But, more importantly, we need to assure that what we know through feeling does not contradict what we know through other channels or disciplines. Just as a biologist who took a position that contradicted what is known in physics would be hard pressed, so also for those who voice religious beliefs. There is one reality and our knowing of it needs to be coherent.  Otherwise, we are dealing with magic and, while magic has its own allure and fascination, it cannot replace dealing with reality. 

(I have spent most of my life thinking about this question. My response here draws from people like Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, Henri de Lubac who, though being religious, refused to separate the natural from the spiritual.)

Journal #6: Spirituality and the Planetary Crisis

 (Continuation of the "Journal" series: July, 1993)

     Religious spirituality does have an irreplaceable role to play in the transformation of Western
civilization to a more biosphere-centred consciousness. It is possible, though by no means obvious, that religion itself, religious institutions, could play a positive role....
     It may be true to say that we need to find a whole different rleigious foundation. Perhaps, however, as Bernard Lonergan said,  this means that there is need for a "change of horizon." All the traditional elements might still be there afterwards but in an entirely different setting of inter-relationships.
     Horizon changes usually come about when some new but unintelligible element is serious added to a consistent pictukre. Because it cannot be integrated into the old order, the whole begins to come apart, come to chaos. Out of that chaos comes a new ordeer. One of the new elements in the picture of the latter part of this (20th) century is that of the "finite planet."  Taking seriously the finite character of our planet - which we have yet to do -  makes the whole consumer enterprise collapse. It also puts some serious questions to our Christian tradition.
     While belief that God created the universe, that God cares for it, that God is revealed in all the universe are important elements of our Christian tradition. But, I am not so sure that the specific finite character of our planet in its capacity to sustain human life had ever been addressed. (At most we can say that we were directed to care for the earth.)  ....

Hildegard of Bingen Liber Divinorum Operum

     Hugh of St. Victor, in the 13th century, tried to find the relationship between the microcosm of the human and the macrocosm of the universe. The search for an integrating relationship with the earth was part of the journey of St. Francis of Assisi. Perhaps we could learn something from those ventures.
     Certainly we need to acknolwedge the serious contribution of modern science, of physics, chemistry and biology, to a reformulation of the questions. What is important in the questions raised by both religious spirituality and science today ultimately are the subjects. It is not science that will ultimately pose the questions or find the answers but rather subjects: the scientists. Scientists and theologians can begin asking the same questions and finding common ground, not just because of what theology and science are but rather, among most importantly, because they are both subjects and, as such, can ask both theological and scientific questions.
     The gift of modern science has been its extraordinarily creative and effective method. The problem with the development of science is that sometimes it has thought it could provide all the answers to all the questions including the theological questions. (Even art, theatre, literature have been relegated at times to a purely private "aesthetic" experience that has no public relevance. We forget that the experience of art is public and has very public implications.) .... Some of the worst horrors of our century are due to the conflusion (between the various methods by which a question can be addressed by the subject who poses it. Economics is an example. It attempts to address a question about  experiential and political relationships with methodological tools of mathematical science.)