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| "Watsonville Road Vista in Oils," by Ken Marks |
My poet friend Ralph sewed the seed of this question last Saturday during our river walk in Hillsborough. We had been discussing poetry and I mentioned Philip Larkin. Ralph showed little interest in Larkin, which surprised me. He said that Larkin's poetry was too narrowly focused on small life, too constricting. He preferred "expansive" poetry like that, say, of the Sufis.
"Expansive?"
"Looking out, embracing others, embracing all life."
Sufism is a contemplative branch of Islam, not much in favor among mainline Sunnis and Shiites, who are much more concerned with governing worldly affairs, especially those of women.
I told Ralph that expansive in that sense reminded me of mystical feelings I'd had, in which states I have overflowed with love and been connected to everyone and thing about me, finding them all beautiful, each one related to me, as though that woman might have been my mother, that man my father, or one or the other my sister, my brother, my child, or that animal my cousin....
How could the world not be at peace if all human beings occasionally had such a sense of things?
But then, I'm someone who describes himself as "a sometimes daunted realist who occasionally experiences that deepened sense of significance that William James identified as mystical." How many such people are there, anyway?
A 2009 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 49% of Americans "have had what they consider a 'religious or mystical experience'." In the context I'm talking about here, that's only 49%. And there's no way of knowing whether those experiences were of the same "we are one" sort. I suspect that a good portion of them were simply profound relief after "accepting Jesus" and believing yourself to be "saved." In fact, I experienced that, too, over fifty years ago. I can reliably tell you it's not the same thing at all.
The Pew folks reported that the 49% level was about twice what it had been in 1962, so maybe the portion of people having the "sense of being at one with others" is also growing, and progress is being made.
But as for being at one with animals, the percentage of vegans among Americans is only about half of one percent. If a much larger number are "feeling at one" with each other, they don't seem to be feeling that way with animals, or, if they are, they're still eating them anyway.
Destructive forces are on the loose, Sunnis versus Shiites, Islamists versus everyone else, Catholics versus Protestants, the haves who want to keep what they have (and get more) versus the have-nots who'd like to get some, rising rate of consumption of a growing human population versus Planet Earth.
And even if real progress in feeling at one is being made, is it being made fast enough? Fast enough to save the remaining endangered species? Fast enough to stop and eventually reverse global warming?
As Tom Lowe said yesterday in a political context, maybe we simply can't get there from here? Have we maybe already passed a point of no return, and the best we can hope for is a companionable sense of all being in the same sinking boat together?
Bill Clinton is optimistic. In the October 1 Time Magazine, he identifies "five areas in which there has been concrete, measurable, and reproducible progress": technology, health, economy, equality, and justice. And he writes that he firmly believes
that progress changes consciousness, and when you change people's consciousness, then their awareness of what is possible changes as well—a virtuous circle. So it's important that the word gets out, that people realize what's working. That where there's been creative cooperation coupled with a communitarian view of our future, we're seeing real success.Maybe progress rests with a rising communitarian consciousness, whether or not there's anything mystical about it. Rather than despair, I'll just concentrate on getting the word out.
And I hope to be lucky enough to catch a few more of my own, private immersions in the fragrant bath of mystical feeling.
I wonder if Clinton thinks veganism is "concrete, measurable, reproducible progress."
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as accurately predicting the thinking of such a mercurial personality, but since he has lost 24 pounds, avoided further heart surgeries, and apparently rid himself of the behind-the-scenes mood swings that marked his presidency, yes, I bet he would consider the results of veganism as concrete and measurable progress. And since he now espouses the virtues and benefits of veganism, he probably feels that same progress could be reproducible in others, if they made the effort he has. Of course, Clinton being Clinton, he isn't a 100% vegan - he still eats a small piece of fish on rare occasion.
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