Reflections: Week 5

October 6, 2010

LS800

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things c. 55 BCE

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 398 CE

Hildegard von Bingen, Canticles of Ecstacy (CD) c. 1150 CE

This week’s books contained a series of surprises for me. To start, I had no idea it was Lucretius who wrote On the Nature of Things (I always associated the title with David Suzuki); St Augustine of Hippo had a far greater effect on the world over last 1800 years than I ever could have imagined; and Hildegard von Bingen was not the feminist trailblazer that I had assumed (she compared her lower-class sistren to farm animals to justify not allowing them to sing with her in the church).

Augustine was a self-centered fantasist and an earth-centered ignoramus: he was guiltily convinced that god cared about his trivial theft from some unimportant pear trees, and quite persuaded - by an analogous solipsism - that the sun revolved around the earth. He also fabricated the mad and cruel idea that the souls of unbaptized children were sent into “limbo”. Who can guess the load of misery that this diseased “theory” has placed on millions of Catholic parents down the years, until its shamefaced and only partial revision by the church in our own time?

- Christopher Hitchens

“To such heights of evil are men driven by religion”

- Lucretius

[My views prior to the class]: “I must say that I did not think much of St Augustine’s Confessions. I thought that the book was long, too drawn-out and repetitive and was the autobiography of an uncompromising religious enthusiast who never would have found peace without the crutch of god. I found it ironic that he was using the very techniques of rhetoric that he criticized the Sophists for using to convince others (and convince himself?) that he had found the one true god.

“Compared to other works we have covered, I found Mencius’, Lucretius’ and the Stoic’s more nature-based outlook on life much more realistic and relevant to homo sapiens. Augustine’s outlook is fascinating because it shows how misguided humans can get even when practicing “reason” and applying arguments that are seemingly sound. The difference between Aurelius and Augustine, in my view, is that Augustine’s foundation is made of sand while Aurelius’ foundation is somewhat more concrete. However, having said that, the story provided interesting insights into how one lived in the 4^th century.”

From the class, it was a shocker to learn the extent to which his work - particularly Confessions - had an impact on the western world, an impact that still reverberates to this day. His ideas were highly influential in the Reformation, in psychology and the psychology of addiction as well as political science. His theory of evil, too, is apparently the all-time most influential theory on the topic. It made me feel small for jumping to conclusions about the book and seeing our presenter's enthusiasm for this book almost makes me want to reread it.

The main difference between Augustine’s conception of god and Timaeus’ Demiurge and the Gita’s Krishna is that Krishna and the Demiurge are less involved with the lives of humans. Somehow, I don’t think the Demiurge, the creator of the universe in its entirety, would care if I stole a few pears from a tree as a teenage prank. With Krishna, everything has been written and the outcome of one’s life and fate is predetermined so, again, Krishna is merely a witness to events unfolding. She provides guidance and prescriptions on how to live life from a distance and states consequences to living certain ways. However, neither she nor the Demiurge are wrathful in the same way that Augustine’s god is. Neither laughs at his human creations as Augustine sees his god doing (examples on pps. 107, 121, 134). Augustine’s god is far more irritable, chastising and constantly in the individual’s thoughts.

On that note, St Augustine seems a little insecure. At least three times he talks about god laughing at him and he himself (Augustine) wishing to make laughingstocks of astrologers. To me it seems rather immature, petty and frankly pathetic for an elderly cleric to want to do this and to be so loving toward a god who would laugh at him for being human. The idea of insecurity also crossed my mind when I read part 4 of Book IV and the account of his close friend (“lover?”) dying. Was Augustine insecure in his sexuality? The language he uses with respect to his friend is the language of sensual love, not brotherly love.

I can’t understand why Augustine’s unending questions on metaphysical topics. He would be the first to admit, for example, that god is all-powerful and that his creations, taken as a whole, are beyond the scope of human understanding. So why does he try to understand them and explain them with human reasoning? Why not just have faith and admit that not everything can be conceptualized by the human mind? For example, with respect to Augustine's exploration of "time" in Genesis (the puzzle being that “temporal” and “eternal” do not mix). The idea of an all-powerful eternal god is a far bigger puzzle than that of understanding how such a god can create a temporal universe. Augustine explains all by stating that the act of creation is both “instantaneous and eternal”. This is acceptable because god’s eternalness remains unsullied by ‘time’ ('time' being something that only humans suffer).

Another example, part 1 Book VII, Augustine tries to fit God into his conception of the universe. I found it incredible that Augustine could be so hung up on such a relatively small-time intellectual inconvenience while unquestioningly embrace the far more astounding claim that there's a god in the first place. To conceptualize and place a spirit that is a mental construct (and for which there is no evidence) is one thing, but to accept that idea unquestioningly is another. "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." (Augustine did not say this.)

The concept of Original Sin seems to be one more layer of guilt to be thrust onto the believer; one more way to remind us that we are deficient and inherently not Good. The metaphor that each of us is a "house divided" is appropriate and summed up in Romans 7:18-20: "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the disire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I d not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." From this, one can see what is meant by "house divided". Another aspect of original sin that makes me question religion is that parents transmit their sins to their children. The idea itself is so cruel. Deuteronomy 5:8-10: "...for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." Hmmm, all the more reason to love this god. I'm not that religious myself and don't keep up with edicts issued by the Pope, but would suspect that much PR has been done by the church to distance themselves from this believe. I could be wrong, though. Apparently the church did not officially pardon Galileo until 1992. I would like to learn more about Original Sin, though... as well much else that Augustine wrote about. I'm fascinated particularly with how his writings had such an historical effect. How did his writings end up changing anything beyond church doctrine? How might our world today be any different if Augustine had not lived? Was he partly responsible for the onset of Europe's decline in the middle ages?

I really liked Augustine’s idea of time and how it is “stretched” for humans as a result of their distance from god. I thought of Brahman at this point because Brahman resides where timelessness and oneness exist. Also, if one is truly living in the present, there is no time, there is only “now". From the last few weeks it seems clear that many sages over the ages are in accord with the idea that there is something spiritual about living in the present. It is "there" where desires cease to exist and where anger and other negative feelings disperse. It is a "natural" state of being, where one truly is living on earth rather than a mental world, past or present.

This is an interesting place to end before next week’s class which will include a study on Rumi’s poetry. Augustine exits the world at the start of Europe's descent into dark days. The East, meanwhile, is flourishing with the development of Islam and the study of astronomy, medicine and math.

I read a lot of Augustine’s book with Hildegard’s Canticles of Ecstasy playing in the background and through the music could appreciate Augustine’s deep connection with god. Hildegard's poetry goes hand in hand with her music as the music soars to the heavens and takes the musical form of a cathedral that was built to awe, to reach to the heavens and to glorify god. Not to say that her poetry is not beautiful but her music adds so much to it. It is angelic in its own right and its twists, turns and leaps seem to contour the spires of a cathedral. However, when I think of the ascetic lifestyle adopted by Augustine after the debaucheries of his youth, I think a Gregorian chant is more appropriate. Chants of that type is the style of music he would have heard in his day and, compared to Hildegard’s compositions, Gregorian chants are far more restrained, narrow and repetitive.

The idea of language and its limitations was brought up in class. In a recent blog I mention how in some of us there seems to be an inherent ability to understand the meaning of music or at least to attach meaning to it in a way that cannot be done using words. In so much of what we hear and read in the media, there is a dumbing down of language. News "on-the-go" provides us with 15-second or 15-word news items meant to sum up an entire story. Let’s take a recent headline as an example - “NY bomber gets life in prison”… not factual, is it? The title implies that a bomb exploded and that people were blown up. I suppose the internet has newspapers cutting corners and needing to save ink, never mind the fact that “Would-be NY bomber gets life in prison” is a mouthful. What does this make of other titles where western soldiers are instigators? “Drone attacks insurgents” (people die, possibly civilians), “Bombers in Afghanistan attack Taliban stronghold”… just a thought. Now I'm off-topic.

Perhaps the church wanted men to be ascetic and to deny themselves the pleasures of the body because the body is the source of the transcendental experience. From the experience of playing music, the feeling of oneness comes from living in the moment, from being in a zone, a space that excludes the past the future and at times the present. When one concentrates so hard there is no room to consider anything but the present. All of one’s senses are wholly engrossed in the moment and in what one is doing. This feeling can be explained without religion. It can be understood physiologically, just like Hildegard’s visions are explained today as the result of possible migraines, theta brainwaves are often credited for producing a numinous, mystical feeling.

In Hildegard’s case, her migraines, which may have caused her visions of the divine, may have produced so much pain or overstimulation that she was thrown into a state where theta and beta brainwaves provided her with her visual and musical inspiration. Whether it did or didn't doesn't really matter though, or does it?