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PREAMBLE
The word "secular", like many other important words, has a range of meanings. Consequenty, it is very important to emphasize, especially in
India, that this term has quite different primary connotations in India from what it has in America or Europe, or even Japan. The dominant recent use of this word in India has revolved around the issue of India's
constitution. Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of the Congress recognized India as including other religious traditions than the Hindu, and wished to be more inclusive in their understanding of Bharat than Hindutva. Of course, the question also arises as to what constitutes Hindu religion. Is it
indeed, a single "religion", or is the very notion "religion" foreign to it, and imposed upon it from the outside? Are Vaishnavism and Shaivism the same religion? Are only the six Orthodox
schools of philosophy, which explicitly recognize the authority of the Vedas, Hindu, or are the two unorthodax
ones, the Jaina and Buddhist traditions, also Hindu? What about the Sikh heritage? It is clearly identifiable as a Bhakti tradition - but does that make it Hindu? Most importantly, at the time and in the context, what about the Moghul heritage? Though clearly and indubitably Muslim is it not also and unassailably Indian, and thus properly belonging to the heritage of India? It was exactly on this issue that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was such a staunch political and cultural opponent, to Gandhi and his circle, since he tinie and again denied that he is or feels "Indian". And though he prevailed in achieving partition, so strongly opposed by Gandhi, he did not succeed therewith to shift the Congress' vision that the real India is inclusive of all its spiritual heritage: even the tiny Jewish minority in the South, ancient and more recent Christian traditions, the Parsis, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, as well as Islam who have rooted and flourished, or struggled, as the case may be, but are and are to remain cherished elements of Indian culture, its adherents valued and fully recognized citizens of India, with full political and economic rights. Opposed to this was a more narrow nationalistic vision, which, especially in the light of the establishment of the declaredly Islamic state of Pakistan, longed for a more narrowly defined Hindu homeland, politically committed to the priorization of Hindu values in light of the double claim that these are the oldest and numerically dominant elements of India. Although resistance to this narrower perspective claimed Gandhi's life, it has remained a significant and troublesome feature of India's national and political life. Hence secularism is associated in India with tolerance and a more generous view of the national spirit of the country. Its positive connotations are associated with the reverence and respect for the spirit of such giants as Gandhi and Nehru, and, indeed, many others including Ambedkar, Tagore and Radhakrishnan.
In the West, however, the notion of toleration is not associated with the word "secular". Rather, toleration was developed within the
intra-Christian tensions between Roman Catholicism and the varieties of Protestant traditions which developed in the Reformation. Thus the separation of church and state, enshrined in the American Constitution was a
Protestant demand for freedom of interpretation of Biblical teachings and Christian tradition. In England, it was the spirit of Protestantism that forced the disestablishment of the Anglican church from making
membership in that community a precondition for certain political rights in Britain. Accession to rights for non-Christian religious traditions rode in on the coattails of the Protestant demand for freedom of
conscience. Indeed, it was not an immediate temporal consequence of the doctrine of "freedom of belief" that non-Christian religions gained acceptance and respectability in the West. It was only in 1893,
at the first Parliament of World Religions, organized in Chicago, that senior Christian leaders sat down as equals with spiritual leaders of other religious traditions. But that meeting, organized by religious
liberals, was attacked and disclaimed by more conservative Christian clergy, who could not countenance such an openness toward "pagan" religions. Nonetheless, that event marks a significant change of
attitude in the West toward religious pluralism. The issue is far from resolved even as yet, as a significant turn toward Christian fundamentalism characterizes the socio-political climate of North America, and that
group is not characterized by either tolerance or respect for difference.
Secularism was another matter. It was never associated with tolerance and respect. Rather, it arose as a response to the skeptical aspects of the
Enlightenment. That, there are supersitious aspects to various folk traditions has been long recognized. That some of these superstitions came to be embodied in an associated with some religious practices was noted,
but not always strongly opposed. Examples might be the following: that one is in danger of expelling one's soul in a sneeze, and hence the need to bless the person who just sneezed; that black cats crossing in front
of one are bad omens, and hence to protect oneself from the negative consequences of it, one needs to make the sign of the cross after a black cat crosses one's path; and the more vicious notions about witches, how
they can be identified, and what is to be done to them.
That such matters were to be corrected rather than encouraged, accepted, ignored or tolerated characterized Enlightenment thinkers. Further, the
question as to what aspects of religion were superstitions, by definition, false and pernicious beliefs, was an open one. An ever widening body of thinkers, and indeed, common folk as well, came to think of many
religious claims as mere superstitions. That "pagan", that is, non-Christian, religions were all just that went without saying. Hence they were worthy neither of respect nor of being examined for anything
of value nor were they considered to have any privileged access to any truth whatever. At best they were to be studied as objective anthropological, sociological descriptive phenomena. Indeed, Christianity and its
claims were also thought of as mere superstitions, that had to be replaced with sound scientific truths. This was the characterizing feature of European and American secularism. And so secularism was not a species
of tolerance and appreciation of a multiplicity of heritages, but rather, the abandonment and disvaluing of all forms of religion. The secular spirit regarded all religious tradition as nonsense, reducible to some
form of primitive fear, neurosis or resentment. Separation of church and state, inspired originally by the demand for toleration of minority Protestant interpretations and variations, came to mean that religion has
no stake in education, it is unnecessary to the formation of a well-developed person. The secularists believe that while religion cannot be forcibly eradicated from the private sphere, its withering is socially
beneficial, culturally neutral and psychologically healthy. Religion is the propagation of falsehood for the sake of exploiting people economically, suppressing their intellect, and repressing their vital instincts.
It is not surprising, then, that from this context the word "secularism" is not welcomed by the religious, and the question of tolerance and
toleration is reversed from how the term "secular" works in India. A dominantly secular culture, it is feared, will not tolerate or value any religious heritage, nor transmit its perspective, its Weltanschauung,
as a vivial option. It will at most preserve it as an objective historical heritage, now outgrown.
ARGUMENT
The objective of my paper is to distinguish and differentiate secularism from secularization, and while arguing for the rejection of the Western sense
of secularism, defending the notion of secularization. In being critical of Western secularism, I do not mean to reject the desirability of a secular constitution for India, nor do I in any way advocate the
entrenchment of any specific religious tradition into any constitution, or mixing up either ethnicity or nationality with any religious belief or practice.
Let us then focus for a moment on the contrast between the words "secularization" and "secularism". The word
"secularization" means "turning toward this world". It implies that another, a sacred world, or a supernatural world, has been given priority or too much priority over "this" mundane
world. Secularization, as a programme, intends to restore a proper balance between the valuing of this world in relationship to valuing the other, the sacred. It becomes an important social agenda when this world is
deemed to have been undervalued and trivialized, by disdaining its transiency, its temporariness and its situatedness. In contrast the permanence, unconditionality and transcendence of the supernatural or sacred
realm is given predominance. Those who call for secularization find it the case that within the religious perspective an other-worldliness, a world-rejection, a world-negation and a world-indifference has been
developed and accepted, that is counterproductive in overcoming injustice. It is this failure to celebrate the here-and-now that is challenged and rejected by those who promote secularization.
In advocating secularization as a spiritually legitimate and important activity, I am critical of the approach to this world by some of the right-wing
churches and their leadership, who would restrict the life of the church to issues such as salvation, redempilon, belief, observance of ritual, and avoid and disdain political and economic issues which focus on
justice and well-being in the temporal domain.
In this context I believe that the Bhagavad Gita is an instance of advocating secularization. Arjuna, who recognizes liberation, moksha to be the supreme goal of life, seeks it by wanting to remove himself from the field of Kurukshetra, abandoning his dharma or social duty, to become a sannyasidevoting himself to ascetic practices. Lord Krishna shows him that the search after moksha cannot be at the expense of one's dharma.
Only by doing one's duty in the world, and doing it skilfully that liberation is to be won. Arjuna is reminded that he must attend to his situatedness, cannot properly abandon his svadharma, and give proper
recognition to the fact that it is this temporal, multiple world in which Lord Krishna is lord, determining the victor and the vanquished, dancing its awesome and majestic multiplicity that is to be recognized as
none other than the divine. This is the secularizing teaching of the Gita ... reminding its readers that even if some "higher" paramarthika truth proclaims the non-dual character of the ultimate, as is taught in many of the Upanishads, one must not undervalue or abandon the duties and responsibilities
with which one is faced in the everyday here-and-now. Indeed, only by undertaking these with the appropriate attitudes can we discharge our responsibilities to the Divine.
Another important instance of secularization in the history of human spiritual development is the origin of Buddhism. Because the famous mahavakya that "Brahman is Atman, and that art Thou also", sometimes has persuaded people to disregard multiplicity and consider it more illusion, and thus of no concern religiously speaking, there was a tendency to not pay sufficient attention to worldly issues of injustice, exploitation, poverty, suffering. Thus, Gautama Sakyamuni's denial of Atman in his doctrine of anatta can be seen as no so much the negation of a substantial ego, or a seeker after enlightenment; but rather, the direct consequence of the First Noble Truth that all is dhukka. Dhukka means not only "suffering", but also, "impermanent", "transitory" and "unsatisfactory". The "all" which is dhukka is the here-and-now; the process of coming-to-be and cessation, which is all there is. It is this same "all" that is to be the locus of agency; that is to be freed from its unsatisfactoriness, or suffering-producing tendency, not by escape from it into some presumed otherness, or by denying its reality in favour of some eternal being that is beyond it in a transcendent realm, alleged to be permanent in contrast to the world's transiency, but rather, by the development of the right kind of dwelling within the secular domain, through living according to the elements of the Eightfold Path.
In contemporary North America and Europe, secularization is the attempt to involve religious life and religious institutions in the approaches to
solving world problems which are political economic and social. It is the insistence that problems of the world cannot be adequately addressed in merely political and economic terms. The human values of justice and
equity, respect for rights and for the needs of life must be given priority over mere preservation of property and traditions associated with the acquisition and distribution of wealth. The role of the institutions
of religions is seen by the secularizers as serving human needs of community and succour, rather than being only for the worship and ritual which focus one's attention on transcendence and hereafter. Of course this
does not mean that such functions are to be wholly negated, but rather, that concerns with the secular should not be ignored or rejected.
We have defended and championed secularization; let us now turn to secularism, a position of which we wish to be critical. While secularization is a
process which takes place when the relative role of the domain of the "sacred" or the "transcendent" has become overvalued, or, better, the here-and-now world of transiency is not given
sufficient value, secularism is a position of denying the reality of any transcendence whatever. It may indeed be the case that if secularization succeeds too well, secularism will result: but it is our contention
that valuing the here-and-now need not negate the need to recognize and also value that "otherness" which can be called the transcendent, the supernatural, the complementary contrast with the
"here-and-now". Of course the secularist will be skeptical about such a reality, and spurn the claim that it either is or is important. Yet the wisdom heritage of all the major traditions recognizes such a
domain, and considers our human awareness of it and our respect for it of fundamental importance.
Let us try to understand how secularism is possible. For this it is necessary to construct an account of how the tradition of the being of more than
one world might have arisen in the first place. The conventional modern person assumes that one's ordinary sense of reality informs one only of this world and of no other; and that if some transcendence is
recognized, it is to be accounted for by some cultural influence such as the domination of some oppressive class which has established its power and control over the rest by playing on their credulity. So any
traditional non-secularized society is understood as dominated, oppressed and controlled by those who have arrogated to themselves the authority of speaking for another world, interpreting its nature, and outlining
the demands it makes on those who know little, perhaps nothing of its reality and character.
But if the claim for transcendence were such an authoritarian swindle, it would be hard to believe that the notion would have gained the widespread
credence that it had, and to an extent still has. Rather, it is the case that human beings have some "inner senses" in addition to the five external ones easily recognized, and that a variety of cognitions
are due to the functioning of these. Aristotle recognized some of these; others were identified by Avicenna. These are sources of cognition; indeed cognition of an immediate sort, not mediated by external
experience. Thus, whether or not there are external sensibles associated with it, for someone to recognize the presence of the Divine, be it in a burning bush or a sacred place, such as a mountain-top, a river or a
fire, means that there is a "more" recognized in the situation which is at the same time a mere worldly phenomenon. Such a "more" is accorded an ontological status even if it were the case that
it is merely the product of the imagination. The skeptic, who requires a proof, or further evidence before accepting the legitimacy of this "more" does not realize that such a proof or corroboration was
not required by the initial experiencer because the experience itself was self-certifying; it was more vividly valid than any proof that might have been manufactured in its support. The fact that we have gotten away
from recognizing inner senses simply testifies to our inattention to the way human beings experience. The lockean naiveté that the mind is a tabula rasa on which experience imprints itself should have been replaced
in our popular consciousness by the much more profound insight that consciousness participates actively in the structuring and interpretation of what is given; and that such "structuring" is not given by
the experience itself. Thus in the act of structuring the given of experience consciousness discloses its access to the structures which are made use of in the constitution of the experienced. These structures
themselves are not part of the world from which the experience that needs to be interpreted originates; they are aspects of some transcendence to which we have access. Thus, a careful attention to how we know what
we know discloses our being citizens of at least two realms; the here-and-now and the transcendent, in terms of which the here-and-now is understood and evaluated.
The secularist, however, is quite unaware of this process. He sees our involvement with the here-and-now as exhaustive of our experience. He denies
transcendence and seems incapable of examining its experiential source. It is this intolerance and opaqueness toward transcendence that makes secularism a natural enemy of all the religious traditions, which hinge
on the fact that we humans can indeed be in touch with such "otherness", and that our very being is not simply "natural". The fact that we can be conscious of values in terms of which we judge
and evaluate the world, react to it either with celebration, acquiescence or condemnation shows that a realm of values is real to us, which open up the possibility of meaningful and meaning-giving action. While the
secularists have used the prescence of evil in the world as a principal argument against the existence of a God who is both good and powerful, a theological image which may very well need modification and
reconceptualization, I would argue, to the contrary, that the very fact that we are scandalized by what we encounter as evil in the world is the instance when we encounter the call in response to which we create our
significance. It is the response to the offense of evil and injustice that gives us humans the occasion to live significantly. Thus our contact with the Divine is the moment of scandalization. The offensive event or
situation is the "language" that addresses us and calls us to creative and resolute activity in the service of the good, the just, the transcendent. Our work is to reduce the distance between the ideal and
the actual; and if thus the ideal can be of practical influence in the workaday world, we have evidence of the interaction and interconnectedness of the here-and-now and the transcendent. If the realm of values is
the original "sacred", the introduction and realization of these values in the world of transiency is what hallows, makes sacred, the secular. Hence the naive view that there is nothing other than the
secular realm robs the secular of its meaning and its context. Secularism denies the reality of values, and sees them only as a process of happenstantial socialization. Thus, to be committed to values is simply to
be unaware of their conventional character; and awareness of their relativistic nature removes the possibility of taking them seriously. Yet without values there are no criteria for significant action, and life
becomes tedious, resentment laden and despair-evoking. It is that kind of nihilism which characterizes much of secularism. And even if one attempts, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, to ascribe some kind of humanistic
heroism to the creator of values against a value-free objective universe, which attempts to overcome the despair of nausea of meaninglessness, I believe it is much more salutary to develop a philosophical
anthropology which helps us to apperceive that we are participants in both a here-and-now domain, and another, which may be considered a source, a matrix, a complement to the temporally actual, enabling us to act,
to create, to transform significantly, even if only temporarily, the here-and-now world, which gains its own sacredness by being seen in the light of the need for interpenetration between the temporal and the
eternal, each lending to the other some of its own distinguishing features. The fact that humans are capable of two kinds of love, a devotion or bhakti that is "vertical" and a compassion and fellow feeling that is "horizontal" discloses our participation in both realms. All this, of course, does not resolve the question of what is our ultimate identity: immanent or transcendent. My firm intuition is that it is the "or" which must be denied; as well, perhaps, the absolute separation of the "two" domains. Nonetheless, most secularist stances do not acknowledge sufficiently our human openness to transcendence. It is the secularism of contemporary; Europe and America, and indeed, of contemporary Japan that constitutes one of the major stumbling blocks to political, economic and social progress; and the relative awareness of the transcendent which characterizes the culture of contemporary India that gives humanity hope that its influence on the rest of the world will be salutary. That is, unless the influence of the rest of the world on India will eradicate its awareness of transcendence. Thus, while secularization is an important process against a devaluation of the here-and-now: secularism is a negative stance as regards meaning, value and a criterion for exercising human freedom and creativity.
Our point is to persuade you that inference and recognition of the non-secular world is consequent to some kind of self-knowledge, and
self-consciousness. If this is so, then the species of secularization which denies any world other than the world of the sensorily accessed is a stance which may have a sophisticated consciousness, but it lacks a
developed self-consciousness, since the access to the "other" world is through a developed self-consciousness rather than mere consciousness, to which the world that the secularist recognizes is the
only world.
If this is so, then indeed secularism is philosophically problematic, for it characterizes a relatively un- or underdeveloped awareness, relative to
which even the earliest animists were more advanced.
One could demonstrate that all wisdom traditions, including Indian Chinese and Western assume a level of self-consciousness in which the transcendent
domain is taken as self-evidencing, and hence undisputed, or else its reality is covincingly disclosed by some persuasive account. Most of the spiritual, religious traditions take the former position, but
pre-enlightenment philosophers, and the non-secularist post-enlightenment ones take the latter.
To persuade secularists of the truth of this claim, let me cite three Western examples: Plato, Hegel and Jung. In the famous cave analogy of "The
Republic", Plato postulates some bound prisoners who see flickering shadows on a cave wall and take that to be reality, since they are unable to turn around and perceive behind them a flickering flame and a
parapet in front of which objects are drawn whose shadow is cast on the cave wall. This latter is accessible to one who has somehow broken from his shackles and has managed to turn around. Now what does this
turn signify? It is a metaphor for becoming more aware of the significance of empirical experience than those are who have not turned. To them the empirical experience signifies simply the disclosure of the world as
it is opposite them, as it confronts them. But this same experience discloses something not only about the world out there, that sits opposite us, to the more developed one, it also discloses something about the experiencer, and of another and different reality. That "something" is in the first instance the realization that how that which is "opposite-us" is experienced depends not alone on the opposite-us, but is an interplay between it and the "flame" of our own being. But this "freed" former prisoner is not just freed to seeing the "other side" of the cave; he is eventually able to get outside. This "outside" represents the world that is inaccessible to the secularized. Yet Plato claims both that it is real, and more important than the world of the cave. And access to the light, initially as the flame in the cave is fundamental to it. Thus the world of the cave is not exclusively the world that confronts our senses, the world of objectivity. That world is always and already a world to the subject, in which the subject participates actively, even though not self-awarely. Thus, the subject thinks of the whatever confronts him as the real; and eventually reduces his self-awareness, if there is some, to the level of having it, his self "confront" him. This is tantamount to understanding oneself entirely as a natural entity, in and of the world, a part of the saeculum. The "turn" symbolizes the recognition that to be a subject is other than being an object for the subject; and that all objects are always and already merely objects-for-subjects; that there is a dichotomy in the very structure of experience which discloses another world than the ordinary world of experience. The subject, the flame, has something of the sacred associated with it; the only in the cave it signifies nothing more than the recognition of subjectivity, the supplementation of awareness with self-awareness.
However, getting out of the cave, and seeing the "reality" of the domain that is quite different from the mere empirical experience of the
prisoners, is to see that the "light" which is generated by the flame in the cave is a light that permits us to discover a different from empirical reality; and that this domain is rendered
"visible" to us by a light that is not our own flame, but is the sun, infinitely brighter, and the source of all visibility, but which is "behind" the prisoners, outside and above their
"cave", the secular world. Understanding the cave as the secular world rather than the wall of flickering shadows as the secular world is to show two distinct stages of secularism. The more primitive form
is the view that the world, reality, confronts us and is always mere object: we ourselves as physical entities are also mere objects, capable of being used, fixed, discarded or possessed. Consciousness is
objectified into brain process, physical-physiological facts, perhaps complex but at any rate an aspect of the world. The more sophisticated secularism, already in process toward its self-overcoming, realizes that
in addition to the world of confronting objectivity, there is a reality, consciousness, to which the world is the world, and which is never object, but always subject. Thus, this form of secularism is not fully
aware of the realm of the sacred transcendent, but is aware that subject cannot be reduced to object, and it thus always cludes the conceptualization in which the world is the world. Here there is a dawning of the
"otherness" of some reality from the one that "confronts".
Plato shows that the structures of interpretation are not identical with the structures of givenness. The former are always involved with the form of
the good, which acts not only in the domain of description and appreciation, but also in the domain of performance, utilization. In Kantian terms, the understanding is involved also in the formation of the
judgements of practical reason. But the moment that practical judgements are involved, one sees that the factual judgements made by the understanding are themselves insufficient to the making of practical
judgements. These also require a grounding that is not given empirically; namely in the categorical imperative. The Platonic way of showing this is to recognize that the structures with which the "shadowy"
secular world are interpreted are not themselves of the secular world, but in a superior, eternal realm of "Forms" or "Ideas". These in turn are governed by the "Good", which itself is
not a form like the rest of them, but the singular guiding principle of them all. Thus Plato claims that the world outside of the cave is dichotomous: It is made of the domain metaphorically presented as
"visible", and the source of all visibility, which however, cannot be gazed at, since it blinds. Here the metaphor of vision is used to refer to "seeing with the mind", that is Intellection. The
source of intelligibility is not itself intelligible: somewhat akin to the in-cave claim that the source of objectivity is not itself objective.
Of course this same claim is restated in the analogy of the divided link, in which the lower two segments of cognition, elkasla and pistis represent the stance that takes on the secular into account; while the third and fourth segments, dianoia and episteme represent two aspects of awareness of the other, transcendent world, the former in the mode of the knowledge of universals; the latter in the grasp of the mystery as mystery, beyond conventional knowability, but approachable in a mode of love, reverence and awe.
Hegel, who comes after the secularizing impact of the European Enlightenment, argues against it by showing that the world of nature, to which the laws
of Aristotelian logic seem to apply. Is a world that discloses itself to Consciousness in three levels of Sense-Certainty, Perception and Understanding; but that all these are superceded by Self-Consciousness, whose
complex development over time starts off as a self-objectification which results in the insight that the self of self consciousness is not object. This then manifests itself in the famous master-slave dialectic, in
which the self as subject attempts to appropriate itself through the subjectivity of the other: This in turn leads to the partial realization of inner freedom, that is characterizing the Stoic, who becomes the
harshest of masters in overcoming the freedom in self-mastery; that, in turn leads to the skeptic, who recognizes external freedom, and thus refuses the truth claim of conventional knowledge, recognizing it as
always open to new hermeneutics, the product of the freedom of the imagination to re-understand; ultimately leading to the Insight that the truth is the whole, the unsynthesizable and perpetual unfolding of the
manifold in momentarily intelligible and persuasive fragments, which however, contradict each other, and correct each incompleteness with a less than final supplementation that both negates and preserves what has
gone before. While it is perhaps disputable whether Hegel himself presents appropriate reverence for the mystery of the ever-unfolding that pours into the world, but is not the world, but Spirit, there can be no
doubt that his philosophy is a powerful and convincing demonstration of the Insutticiency of mere secularism. Marx attempted to understand Hegel as if it were interpretable from a materialistic set of
presuppositions. This to me seems patently unsuccessful. The historical importance that Marxism has achieved is but evidence that the world in which and to which Hegel was writing was secularist through and through,
and thus attempted to integrate Hegel's contribution into its own hermeneutical stance, seeing it as nothing other than a new-found science of secular history. We can, however, see that Hegel was re-establishing the
transcendent as Spirit, as primary, and exploring the relation of the secular to it, both as its self expression, and its self-othering into what is its complementary opposite. Thus Hegel points to the mystery of
the simultaneity of sameness and otherness, the half-truth character of each of pantheism and of mere opposition, mere independence and contrast between the world of the sacred and of the secular domain. He does
show that ending where modernity starts, with a merely secular approach, needs be superceded, and Indeed, this is achieved by coming to grips with the historical unfolding of Self-Consciousness in human history. He
may have made many omissions; his detailed appreciation of the story is blassed and flawed due to his narrowly European awareness, but he clearly traces a path beyond secularism as he outlines the many structures of
self-consciousness.
Karl Jung is another thinker who opens up the avenue beyond mere secularism. He carefully adapts Freud's scientific approach to the comprehension of
the subject. He recognizes Freud's valuable insight that there is a personal unconscious, into which repressed experiences and rejected aspects of the personality are suppressed, but from which these unconscious
elements continue to exert their influence, often resulting in troubled and troubling aspects of behaviour which are not well understood by the agent. Jung then adds to this concept the notion of a collective
unconscious, which is deeper than the personal unconscious, but which is the source of some fundamental images, directives, inclinations that constitute an ontological interpersonal reality, from which each derives
his or her sustenance. Ultimately it is the Collective Unconscious that Jung associates both with the Divine and the transcendent. The ego is the conscious structure of the individual, which remains relatively
immature unless it integrates the suppressed yet active elements of the personal unconscious. In so doing the individual gains greater access to, and, more significantly, more direct access from the Collective
Unconscious, which Jung also identifies as the Self in contrast with the ego, the center of individual consciousness. Here, then is a Western reformulation of the idea fundamental to the Vedic traditon, namely the Atman,
a transcendent Self which is none other than Brahman, the Divine. The domain of the Sacred and other-worldly is "located" as the source and ground of Consciousness. Yet Consciousness is not itself Atman, it is the more accessible yet not transcendent ahamkara.
Here we see some diverse yet consistent traditions which attempt to persuade us that secularism is an inadequate stance, because it falls to understand
sufficiently the fact that the human is located both in this natural world and has access to and roots in a trans- or supernatural domain. This supernatural is perhaps relatively hidden to the un- or under-developed
consciousness, though it always has access to it; and it becomes relatively more available as the process of individuation is more successfully accomplished. Jung does show that in many instances there is a
dialectical tension between the ego and the Self; and that in that tension eventually the ego has to yield to the Self for its greater health and freedom.
Sometimes Jung has been criticized that he psychologizes religion. His response to such a criticism is that though the critic believes that
psychologization of the spiritual reduces its ontological claim, the critic is wrong. The psyche's ontological status is exactly that in which the most fundamental aspects of the transcendent reality are to be
encountered and recognized.
All of the foregoing is meant to show that the secularists' world-view is fundamentally naive and inadequate. Secularism is forgetfulness of the motto
of Plato and the Delphic Oracle of "Know Thyself!" For in self-knowledge the transcendent offers itself to discovery and encounter. It is also a distancing oneself from all of the cultural traditions, each
of which, in its own way is a disclosure of the role of the Divine or Transcendent in the heart and mind of the human.
We thus conclude that secularism and secularization are two different matters. Too often in the traditions the distance between the Sacred and the
Secular has grown too great. A hierarchical priority is given to the transcendent, which de-sacralizes the profane. World denial, world negation has often characterized the formulation of those traditions which were
aware of the trans-natural dimension. This excess is what is being corrected by secularization. Historically secularization is the process of reaffirming the value of the here-and-now; recognizing that the Sacred is
a least as immanent as it is transcendent.
It remains for us to show that cultural pluralism is but a half-truth. While it was perhaps the case that cultures existed in isolation from each
other, and sometimes even protected this isolation by warding its members off from cultural interchange, the opportunity for the more privileged elements of humanity in this world is to become familiar with a
specific tradition into which one happens to be born, but also enhance and deepen one's understanding of this narrow tradition by being exposed to as many other traditions as possible, since each of these is also
"our own". After all, we are human beings first, and only then Europeans or Asians, Finns or Welsh or Patagonian. As humans, we each are inheritors of the whole human heritage, and to the extent that we
have "ears to hear with" we can learn from all the great wisdom traditions. Of course what we can earn depends not on the traditions themselves, but to our openess and sensivity to what they have to offer.
As Nietzsche echoed Plato, "We can only learn, even from books, what we already know." Be it the Taoist poem or the Buddhist Sutra, the Vedic hymn or the Koranic recitation, these can all enhance and
deepen a Christian's understanding of Christianity, just as Christian interpretations can illuminate and enrich the Jain appropriation of ahimsa or the Jewish sensibility toward justice and the love of learning. Of course every tradition has tendencies to become lop-sided, degenerate and dysfunctional. It is exactly against such realities that the fundamental appreciation of the whole heritage as one's own is of great therapeutic value. There should be no fear of homogenization; of loss of particularity, for each synthesis and each appropriation is going to be as unique and special as one's fingerprint, or one's facial features. We cannot ever appropriate the full many sidedness of any tradition, let alone of all of them. But by appreciation and reverence toward each, one can still maintain a focus and a preference for one through which others can be integrated. It is not a singular "new religion" of some homogenized pap that we dream; rather, we welcome the multiplicity of imaginative, evocative and provocative texts and rites which inevitably enrich our experience if we open ourselves to them. As we grow appreciative of the wisdom heritage we can learn to see that the question is not: "Are they all the same, fundamentally, or are they all different and distinctive?" Rather, we can learn, perhaps to our surprise, that the disjunction, the "or" is spurious. Each in its own way is distinctive and unique, while at the same time reinforcing the fundamental call to compassion, celebration, confidence and peace. Thus, as we learn and inherit our global heritage we can achieve that "Cultural Disarmament" which Raimon Panikkar sees as the way to peace.
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