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Beyond
Materialism
I
don’t know who Christian de Quincey is—though by now I’ve
Googled him and discovered that he is a professor of Philosophy
and Consciousness Studies at John F. Kennedy University and
the author of a recent book, Radical Nature: The Soul of
Consciousness. I haven’t read his work, beyond an article
someone sent me from the magazine, Tikkun.
But I found his writing in Tikkun both compelling and
persuasive, though it is—probably for most people—just too
way out there. Which is too bad.
In de Quincey’s article he sees as both tragic and flawed
our unshakable faith in “the consciousness cut”—that our ruling
zeitgeist is the pervasive belief in our separation from matter:
that we, alone, are special, sentient, conscious and uniquely
ensouled, as opposed to the rest of nature, which is unconscious
and unfeeling.
Our current worldview, he writes, based on the materialist
philosophy of modern science, presents us with a stark and
alienating vision of a world that is intrinsically devoid
of meaning, of purpose, of value—a world without a mind of
its own, a world without soul. And this worldview has had
dramatic and catastrophic consequences for our environment,
for countless species of animals and plants, and for the ecosystems
that sustain us all.
He goes on to cite the consequences of this fracturing: ecological
crises, technologies of destruction and a profound alienation
from nature.
He takes scientific materialism to task for promulgating this
world view, “that nature has no consciousness, no feelings,
no intrinsic value, meaning, or purpose. And so we relate
to nature without sufficient respect for its inherent sacredness.”
But the cosmologies of religions perpetuate that same mind/body
duality. The role of the clergy, he says, is not to connect
humans to a mute and distant God, but to be the shaman, guiding
and teaching us to listen to the sacred language of nature—“helping
us open our minds and bodies to the messages rippling through
the world of plants and animals, rocks and wind, oceans and
forests, mountains and deserts. . . .”
He posits that we must tell ourselves an alternative story
to the one that has fractured our lives into a mind/matter
split: the story of a “worldview that tells us consciousness
matters and that matter is conscious.”
Under other circumstances I might have read de Quincey’s piece
and thought it simultaneously both too cerebral and too “out
there.”
But as I come to the end of my stay on Cape Ann, living, as
I have been, a different life and a much less distracted one
than I ever have in my whole life, I am aware of many little
things. And these little things convince me that it is worth
the effort to learn to listen deeply and to feel fully the
small serendipities that have the power to infuse life with
something that might even be called “meaning.”
For example, since beginning my hiatus from ordained ministry
over two years ago, I haven’t attended church, except to lead
worship; in other words, unless I was being paid to go to
church, I didn’t. But for the past dozen weeks or so I have
gone every Sunday to a church here in Rockport.
Yes, the priest is gifted and the music is great. The people
are warm and friendly, though I usually skip the coffee hour.
I’m not here to make chit-chat. I’m here to listen. So when,
this past Sunday, the first one in Advent—the four-week season
leading to Christmas—the reading from the book of Romans says:
“Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the
moment for you to wake from sleep,” I wonder, in a deeper
way than I ever have (since I’ve known these words my whole
life) what ‘waking’ to consciousness really means for me.
And when I’m in yoga class out here and our teacher, radiant
in pregnancy, exhorts us to feel the energy of the tree or
the mountain or the Hindu god or the animal, for which all
the yoga postures are named, I realize that the consciousness
of the body is a more fully-inclusive consciousness than that
of mind alone.
And when I walk on the huge, hard, granite that limns the
shoreline of Cape Ann, I feel a flowing and a beauty that
sounds silly if I try to put it into words. But believe me
when I say this: I will miss that energy when I leave it.
Nevertheless, I’ve learned from it, a learning I can carry
with me, much as I can a deepened awareness of the purpose
of sacred writing, of sacred movement, of a shimmering sentience
shared, in lovely fits and starts, with all of matter and
of all that matters.
—Jo
Page
jopage34@yahoo.com
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