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The
Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience (continued)
Life is, then, a unique
phenomenon and the concept of mechanism is inadequate for its analysis. Its
‘factual wholeness’, to use an expression of Driesch - another notable
biologist - is a kind of unity which, looked at from another point of view,
is also a plurality. In all the purposive processes of growth and adaptation
to its environment, whether this adaptation is secured by the formation of fresh
or the modification of old habits, it possesses a career which is unthinkable
in the case of a machine. And the possession of a career means that the sources
of its activity cannot be explained except in reference to a remote past, the
origin of which, therefore, must be sought in a spiritual reality revealable
in, but non-discoverable by, any analysis of spatial experience. It would, therefore,
seem that life is foundational and anterior to the routine of physical and chemical
processes which must be regarded as a kind of fixed behaviour formed during
a long course of evolution. Further, the application of the mechanistic concepts
to life, necessitating the view that the intellect itself is a product of evolution,
brings science into conflict with its own objective principle of investigation.
On this point I will quote a passage from Wildon Carr, who has given a very
pointed expression to this conflict:
‘If intellect is a
product of evolution the whole mechanistic concept of the nature and origin
of life is absurd, and the principle which science has adopted must clearly
be revised. We have only to state it to see the self-contradiction. How can
the intellect, a mode of apprehending reality, be itself an evolution of something
which only exists as an abstraction of that mode of apprehending, which is the
intellect? If intellect is an evolution of life, then the concept of the life
which can evolve intellect as a particular mode of apprehending reality must
be the concept of a more concrete activity than that of any abstract mechanical
movement which the intellect can present to itself by analysing its apprehended
content. And yet further, if the intellect be a product of the evolution of
life, it is not absolute but relative to the activity of the life which has
evolved it; how then, in such case, can science exclude the subjective aspect
of the knowing and build on the objective presentation as an absolute? Clearly
the biological sciences necessitate a reconsideration of the scientific principle.’22
I will now try to reach
the primacy of life and thought by another route, and carry you a step farther
in our examination of experience. This will throw some further light on the
primacy of life and will also give us an insight into the nature of life as
a psychic activity. We have seen that Professor Whitehead describes the universe,
not as something static, but as a structure of events possessing the character
of a continuous creative flow. This quality of Nature’s passage in time
is perhaps the most significant aspect of experience which the Qur’«n especially
emphasizes and which, as I hope to be able to show in the sequel, offers the
best clue to the ultimate nature of Reality. To some of the verses (3:190-91;
2:164; 24:44)23 bearing on the point I have already drawn your attention.
In view of the great importance of the subject I will add here a few more:
‘Verily, in the alternations
of night and of day and in all that God hath created in the Heavens and in the
earth are signs to those who fear Him’ (10:6).
‘And it is He Who
hath ordained the night and the day to succeed one another for those who desire
to think on God or desire to be thankful’ (25:62).
‘Seest though not
that God causeth the night to come in upon the day, and the day to come in upon
the night; and that He hath subjected the sun and the moon to laws by which
each speedeth along to an appointed goal?’ (31:29).
‘It is of Him that
the night returneth on the day, and that the day returneth on the night’
(39:5).
‘And of Him is the
change of the night and of the day’ (23:80).
There is another set of
verses which, indicating the relativity of our reckoning of time, suggests the
possibility of unknown levels of consciousness;24 but I will content
myself with a discussion of the familiar, yet deeply significant, aspect of
experience alluded to in the verses quoted above. Among the representatives
of contemporary thought Bergson is the only thinker who has made a keen study
of the phenomenon of duration in time. I will first briefly explain to you his
view of duration and then point out the inadequacy of his analysis in order
fully to bring out the implications of a completer view of the temporal aspect
of existence. The ontological problem before us is how to define the ultimate
nature of existence. That the universe persists in time is not open to doubt.
Yet, since it is external to us, it is possible to be sceptical about its existence.
In order completely to grasp the meaning of this persistence in time we must
be in a position to study some privileged case of existence which is absolutely
unquestionable and gives us the further assurance of a direct vision of duration.
Now my perception of things that confront me is superficial and external; but
my perception of my own self is internal, intimate, and profound. It follows,
therefore, that conscious experience is that privileged case of existence in
which we are in absolute contact with Reality, and an analysis of this privileged
case is likely to throw a flood of light on the ultimate meaning of existence.
What do I find when I fix my gaze on my own conscious experience? In the words
of Bergson:
‘I pass from state
to state. I am warm or cold. I am merry or sad, I work or I do nothing, I look
at what is around me or I think of something else. Sensations, feelings, volitions,
ideas - such are the changes into which my existence is divided and which colour
it in turns. I change then, without ceasing.’25
Thus, there is nothing
static in my inner life; all is a constant mobility, an unceasing flux of states,
a perpetual flow in which there is no halt or resting place. Constant change,
however, is unthinkable without time. On the analogy of our inner experience,
then, conscious existence means life in time. A keener insight into the nature
of conscious experience, however, reveals that the self in its inner life moves
from the centre outwards. It has, so to speak, two sides which may be described
as appreciative and efficient. On its efficient side it enters into relation
with what we call the world of space. The efficient self is the subject of associationist
psychology - the practical self of daily life in its dealing with the external
order of things which determine our passing states of consciousness and stamp
on these states their own spatial feature of mutual isolation. The self here
lives outside itself as it were, and, while retaining its unity as a totality,
discloses itself as nothing more than a series of specific and consequently
numberable states. The time in which the efficient self lives is, therefore,
the time of which we predicate long and short. It is hardly distinguishable
from space. We can conceive it only as a straight line composed of spatial points
which are external to one another like so many stages in a journey. But time
thus regarded is not true time, according to Bergson. Existence in spatialized
time is spurious existence. A deeper analysis of conscious experience reveals
to us what I have called the appreciative side of the self. With our absorption
in the external order of things, necessitated by our present situation, it is
extremely difficult to catch a glimpse of the appreciative self. In our constant
pursuit after external things we weave a kind of veil round the appreciative
self which thus becomes completely alien to us. It is only in the moments of
profound meditation, when the efficient self is in abeyance, that we sink into
our deeper self and reach the inner centre of experience. In the life-process
of this deeper ego the states of consciousness melt into each other. The unity
of the appreciative ego is like the unity of the germ in which the experiences
of its individual ancestors exist, not as a plurality, but as a unity in which
every experience permeates the whole. There is no numerical distinctness of
states in the totality of the ego, the multiplicity of whose elements is, unlike
that of the efficient self, wholly qualitative. There is change and movement,
but change and movement are indivisible; their elements interpenetrate and are
wholly non-serial in character. It appears that the time of the appreciative-self
is a single ‘now’ which the efficient self, in its traffic with the
world of space, pulverizes into a series of ‘nows’ like pearl beads
in a thread. Here is, then, pure duration unadulterated by space. The Qur’«n
with its characteristic simplicity alludes to the serial and non-serial aspects
of duration in the following verses:
‘And put thou thy
trust in Him that liveth and dieth not, and celebrate His praise Who in six
days created the Heavens and the earth, and what is between them, then mounted
His Throne; the God of mercy’ (25:58-59).
‘All things We have
created with a fixed destiny: Our command was but one, swift as the twinkling
of an eye’ (54:49-50).
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