SPIRITUAL IS NOT HOLY
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/chimpanzee-spirituality/475731/
“The “prelinguistic dance” of wild chimpanzees at a waterfall, then, is religion for Schaefer, who goes further than Goodall in interpreting the meaning of apes’ rhythmic bodily movements in certain natural contexts. When I contacted Schaefer, he underscored in an email message to me the embodied nature of all religious practice: “The really thick, powerful elements of religion seem to come about in a sensory relationship with the world (whether that’s the natural world or the cultural world of stories and communities) that evokes awe and reverence.”
YouTube gives access to plays by George Bernard Shaw and Henry James. The ones I’ve watched in the last few days have been attacks on the righteous hypocrisy of Victorian middle class society, particularly in regard to sex from a religious restriction angle and those who require lying and secrecy. It appears that chimps are capable of both, as well as war and killing. Would a sense of the holy change this?
Would I “break” my ethically principled behavior for the sake of an intimate relationship? I did once and even after I returned to the conventional, it was a mixed experiment. The truth is that after that I never found anyone who was worth it, nor any institution either. Maybe they were momentarily, but then they would change because everything changes all the time. Is the holy defined by being something that doesn’t change? Is the highest value indicated by unchangingness? But there is no such thing.
“Compared to us, other animals, Schaefer told me, “have different life-worlds, different fascinations, different interests emerging out of their complex evolutionary histories. That could be waterfalls, wildfires, storms, or features of the landscapes where they live, work, and play that somehow stick out for them. Their religions will be built out of their fascinations, just as our religions are built out of ours.”
Some will reject this kind of reflection because they want a distinct division between “animals” and ourselves even though we are animals. But what about humans who have no awareness of what is mysterious and are not fascinated except as advertising directs them.
So is “spirituality” — which is often advertised as something to buy, like a book — the same as “holy”? Obviously not, since the “things” that are considered spiritual are not usually remotely like the experience of holiness. “Spiritual” is sociological, something that is allotted by people to be properly put in that category. Holiness is an inchoate, indefinable awareness of something mysterious.
The idea of Spirit is powered by the invention of the secular and the concrete, the belief that reality is indeed real and knowable. Reference is rarely made to Spirit in the Jewish sense of breath or wind, unseen and uncontrollable. Spirituality is a critique and resistance to the Enlightenment idea of control and claims that there is more but it is accessible in some way. that you can buy access. Spiritualism is a racket that claims it controls the only access and uses it to sell ghosts and psychics. This stirs up enough doubt and longing that people will pay money.
Also, it is claimed that spirituality can eliminate violence and spread love everywhere. But these are animal traits, in our bodies, neurochemical phenomena that have been made into “things” to separate us from animals. Violence and “love” (which I request be called attachment) are physical, neurological responses to what’s happening, not entities. No one has ever seen a “violence” — just violent behavior which is mysterious if you don’t know what triggered it. Or don’t want to know because you might BE the trigger, but you don’t want to change. As for love, it’s a junk category. Love and violence removed would result in zombies.
Both violent behavior and attachment can be reactions to the holy, because the truly holy is mysterious, full of awe and possibly terror. It comes from the unknown that can’t even be imagined.
Neither congregations nor rituals can be holy because the holy is neither an organization nor an art form. It is a human felt meaning. What does that mean? It means it is a perceptible felt state of a body, detectable with instruments, that has meaning to the person feeling it. AND that meaning is both mysterious and fascinating. It can’t be defined.
But here are some dictionary definitions, which are nothing like what I’ve been talking about:
FIRST SET is what I’m calling “sacred”:
Dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred.”the Holy Bible”
sacred
consecrated
hallowed
sanctified
venerated
revered
reverenced
divine
religious
blessed
blest
dedicated
SECOND MEANING is used in exclamations of surprise or dismay.”holy smoke!” The idea is to put together something at one extreme with something at the other for the sake of the funny contrast or maybe daring defiance of convention. “Holy catfish” is a fav of mine. For a while people seriously combined Holy with bits of God’s anatomy: “God’s blood,” “God’s toenails.” If any were obscene, I haven’t seen them in print. “God’s dick?” We’re urged to think that people who said such things were simply more, um, used to plain talk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaq0nNXy0ak Here’s a nice lyrical song about two things most people think of as holy: nature and intimacy. Sort of goes off the rails at the end. And becomes conventional in the trope of Holy God. It seems plain to me that the Holy cannot be put into words, that it’s is not just pre-verbal but also pre-conceptual. It so floods the human being that no part or metaphor can be separated out to be discussed. One can’t even point since it is internal.
The purpose of this pursuit is to restore a sense of importance to our lives and to reconceive of a spectrum of consequences that goes higher than travel to national parks or falling in love. When God dissolved, the Holy remained. Maybe it’s pre-metaphorical and cannot be represented in any metonymy, but must be felt in the form of humility and awe beyond patriotism or Ph.D.’s or certified honors or cathedrals.
