About
25 years ago, I was walking through the Art Institute in Chicago
with my wife-to-be. There had been a contest, and the first prize
painting had won $1000. We walked, looking at the different entries
in the contest. When we came upon the first prize painting, and
my immediate reaction was to laugh. I thought to myself, "So
this is modern art; I could have painted this." It was a
canvas, approximately three feet by five feet, painted entirely
black. I thought to myself, "there must be more to the painting
than this." So I looked again, and the painting began to
draw me in. It was like a mirror, not a mirror that showed me
my surface self but a mirror that invited me on an inner journey.
Today,
I want to take you on a journey into that black painting, I want
to take you on a search for the self in philosophy, psychology,
and religion. I have chosen the black painting as part of the
image of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is a journey that begins
in darkness. This is true in philosophy, psychology, and religion:
self-knowledge begins when I realize that I don't know what I
think I know.
In
philosophy, Socrates summed up the beginning of philosophy as
the search for self-knowledge when he said that the only thing
that I know is that I don't know. Socrates was the Athenian philosopher
who was put on trial and condemned to death because he taught
young men philosophy. He was charged with impiety to the Gods
and with corrupting the youth. Both charges reduce to this: He
had taught the young to question values and religious beliefs.
When he was on trial, he explained that a friend of his Chaerephon
had gone to the temple of Apollo, the god of wisdom, to the oracle
at Delphi. Inscribed in this temple were the words "know
thyself." Chaerephon had asked the oracle if there was any
man wiser than Socrates, and the oracle's reply was that there
was no man wiser. When Socrates heard this from his friend, he
was greatly puzzled. How could he be the wisest man if the only
thing that he knew was that he didn't know? He thought surely
there must be men wiser than he. So he went around the city questioning
different people. These people knew about their trades and professions
but when he asked them about values, he discovered that they didn't
know what they thought they knew. The wisdom of Socrates consisted
in this that he knew that he didn't know; the foolishness of his
fellow Athenians consisted in this that they didn't know that
they didn't know. The wisdom of Socrates was not a theoretical,
abstract thing; it was a living, practical commitment. Aware of
his ignorance, he committed himself to trying to overcome that
ignorance. He summed up this commitment in the most famous statement
of all philosophy: "the unexamined life is not worth living."
Philosophers call this the Socratic commitment.
I
believe that we have all made this commitment somewhere between
the age of 1 to 20. Young children are always asking questions:
why do I have to wash my face, why must I brush my teeth; these
questions parents can answer. But as the children grow older,
they ask questions about religious and moral values. As young
adults we all realized that we had to question these things for
ourselves and answer them for ourselves. Only in this way would
our lives be truly our own. We wanted to be free from imposed
values and beliefs and free for developing our own values and
beliefs, and we could only do this by the examined way of life.
I
believe that we have all made this commitment to the examined
way of life. Yet there are times when the importance of this commitment
becomes very clear to us. One of these times for me occurred in
my first year of teaching. I was attempting to present a proof
for the existence of God. I was using a proof that had been carefully
worked out by the best teacher I had studied with. I had gotten
an A in this course. Yet when I presented the proof, I realized
that I really didn't know it. There were assumptions in the proofs
which I had not questioned thoroughly enough. It is true that
people say that you never really know something unless you can
teach it. But my discovery of my lack of knowledge was hard to
accept at first. I learned that I had to deepen my commitment
to the examined way of life. I learned that the first step in
the journey of self-knowledge is the awareness of my own lack
of knowledge.
The
importance of self-knowledge is easy to find in psychology. Psychology
means in the root words, the study of the self. There are many
ways of doing psychology today, but few deny the importance of
Freud. Freud was working with another doctor named Breuer. Breuer
was treating a patient named Anna. Anna had been caring for her
sick father and had begun to suffer hysterical paralysis of her
arm. Breuer and Anna discovered that talking about her emotions
removed the paralysis. Words and phrases that Anna had muttered
in states of incoherence were told to her by Breuer; and when
she talked about her associations to these words, she would become
cured. But Anna fell in love with Breuer. Breuer's wife insisted
that he stop treating Anna. So Breuer decided at her next visit
to his office. But that night Anna went into paralysis again,
and Breuer had to be summoned for the talking cure again. Then
Breuer and his wife went away on a second honeymoon, and Freud
took over the case. Breuer is never heard of again in the history
of psychology. But Freud is. Freud begins to treat Anna. Of course,
she falls in love with Freud. One day in his study, Anna throws
herself at Freud, declaring her undying love for him. One of Freud's
servants happens to enter, and Freud is able to see through the
declaration of love. He knows that she doesn't know what she is
saying. Imagine, the most sacred words one person could ever say
to another, "I love you," and the person doesn't even
know what she is saying. As Freud later explained this kind of
event, the patient was transferring feelings which she had for
her father to the doctor. Parents know that when little children
say "I love you" they are saying "I am dependent
on you, I need you to take care of me." There is a difference
between that dependent love of the child and the unselfish love
of the adult. But the difference is not always so easy to know
when we are the ones involved in a love relationship.
Awareness
of our motivation is never complete; again we learn that the first
step in the journey of self-knowledge is awareness of our own
lack of knowledge. We learn that we have to deepen our commitment
to the examined way of life. Whether we are trying to develop
a philosophy of life or trying to develop our personality, we
have to begin by deepening our commitment to the examined way
of life. The same deepening of our commitment to the examined
way of life is a basic factor in religion. We find that the Socratic
commitment is a fundamental moral-religious truth, a fundamental
moral-religious valued for one of the great leaders in religion
in the 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi. The major commitment of his
life is to live by the truth, and this is to live by conscience.
He once wrote:
God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which
we do not know. To me God is Truth and Love, God is Ethics and
Morality. God is the fearlessness of the morally good man. God
is the source of light and life; and yet above and beyond all
these God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.
Bertrand
Russell tells the story that when he was imprisoned in WWI for
his pacifist activities, the jailer asked him his religious beliefs
and Russell replied that he was an agnostic. The jailor replied
that he had never heard of that religion but that although men
have many different religions, they all worship the same God.
Russell didn't attempt to tell the man that an agnostic does not
worship God but instead affirms that there is no evidence to prove
that God does exist or that He does not. But Russell thought that
the man had made a good point. Both the agnostic and the religious
believer should be living according to their consciences. The
unexamined religious belief and the unexamined agnosticism are
both not worth holding. So, both Russell and Gandhi agree then
that belief in God is and must be primarily belief in one's own
conscience, belief in living according to the truth.
What
Gandhi found out in his self-knowledge was that he was no guru,
no prophet, no saint, no infallible teacher. He was simply a man,
he tells us in his own words, "who blunders from error towards
truth." With this attitude towards truth and towards his
own inadequacies, he found it necessary to accept without qualification
democratic methods of reaching truth, to accept without qualification
persuasion rather than compulsion. He tells us that he had no
desire to conquer his adversaries by force. He wished to convert
them or rather he wished to communicate with them, to persuade
them, to be persuaded by them, of the truth. Gandhi believes that
the truth leads humanity to God, that the truth shall make us
free, but more fundamentally that we must be free to seek the
truth.
Usually
we think that being free to seek the truth means that we shall
be free from compulsion by others in our search, but there is
a deeper meaning. We need to be free from our own inadequate knowledge
and from our own inadequate motivation in religious and moral
practice. True religious belief requires a deepening of our commitment
to live the examined way of life. The truth shall make us free,
but we must be free from our own inadequacies in our search for
truth.
We
have begun the journey of self-knowledge: as we face the black
painting, we are aware of our need to deepen our commitment to
the examined way of life. Yet we must question if philosophy,
psychology, and religion can teach us common truths we must all
accept. In one sense, we have to answer "no" - philosophers
do not agree among themselves; they will never agree. Religions
do not agree; they will never agree. Psychologists do not agree;
they will probably never agree. In our search for the meaning
and value of the self in relation to the world, each one of us
must make the journey alone into the darkness; no one else can
make our decisions; no one else can be responsible for them. The
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre tells a story that illustrates very
well the unique responsibility which everyone has for the meaning
of his life. This story is all the more remarkable since it is
about a man of religion, and Sartre is an atheist.
Sartre
was a prisoner of war of the Germans after the Nazis defeated
the French. While he was imprisoned, he made the acquaintance
of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member
of that order in the following way.
In his life he had suffered a series of severe setbacks. His
father had died when he was a child, leaving him in poverty,
and he had been given a free scholarship in a religious institution,
where he had been made continually to feel that he was accepted
for charity's sake. Later, about the age of 18 he came to grief
in a sentimental affair; and finally, at 22 - this was a trifle
in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup
- he failed in his military examination. This young man then,
could regard himself as a total failure: all these experiences
meant something, but what did they mean. He might have taken
refuge in bitterness or despair. But he took it - very cleverly
for him - as a sign that he was not intended for secular successes,
and that only the attainments of religion, those of sanctity
and of faith, were open to him. He interpreted his record of
constant failure as a message from God and became a member of
the Jesuit Order. Who could doubt but that this decision as
to the meaning of the sign was his, and his alone? One could
have drawn quite different conclusions from his experiences
of failure. He could have become a carpenter or a revolutionary
or an atheist. ("Existentialism is a Humanism")
Only
the individual can decide the meaning of one's life-experience:
we cannot appeal to the agreement of others as taking away our
own responsibility. It is true that talking with others and reading
philosophy, psychology, and religious writings helps us to avoid
self-deception when we claim to know the truth, but we must determine
the meaning of life by ourselves.
Although
we determine the meaning of life by ourselves, there is an area
where others can help us. Others, especially our close friends,
our spouses, our children, help us to know how we live out that
meaning which we have chosen. We might think we are acting in
a loving way to our children, but our spouses and children are
often better able to judge the quality of our behavior. Others
help us to know how well we live out the truth of life as we see
it, and they help us avoid inadequate interpretations of life,
but each one of us is personally responsible for our own interpretation
of life. We can never give up that responsibility by appealing
to truths that all philosophy, psychology, and religion would
agree to. So in one sense, we have to say that philosophy, psychology,
and religion cannot teach us common truths we must all accept.
But, in another sense, I believe that the basic value of self-knowledge
In philosophy, psychology, and religion has implications which
are recognized by those three ways of relating to the self.
When
Socrates appeals to us to deepen our commitment to self-knowledge,
when Freud appeals to us to clarify the meaning of our love, and
when Gandhi appeals to us to have a conscientious religious belief,
all three are calling for an integration of the heart and mind.
They are calling for an integration of emotion and thought, of
choice and understanding. As we stand before that black mirror
which begins to reveal the inadequacies of our knowledge, love,
and faith, we cannot make our journey of self-knowledge as though
we were pure intellects. We must summon the courage of our hearts
and take the risk that things may not turn out the way we want
them to. We have to admit that the conscientious religious believer
must be willing to disbelieve if the evidence would require him
to do so. And so we must be courageous in deepening our commitment
to the examined way of life. We are entering upon a dangerous
journey; we recognize that the totality of life constitutes an
experiment.
Mahatma
Gandhi recognized that life was an experiment. The subtitle of
his autobiography is: "The Story of My Experiments with the
Truth." Working on the assumption that God's truth and love
ruled the world and united all beings in their inmost self, Gandhi
proceeded to experiment with his life. He behaved with love and
trust toward all his fellow humans in his private and political
life. The response of love and trust which others gave to him
strengthened his faith, and this strengthening of his faith enabled
him to continue to love and trust even those who refused his love
and trust. It was his religious faith which animated his leadership
of the non-violent civil disobedience which eventually freed India
from Britain. The name which Gandhi gave to non-violence was satyagraha,
the force that is born from truth and love (truth-force). If the
truth is that God is in all things, if the truth is that God is
love, then one can treat another with love and not with violence,
and that way of non-violence will be more productive of human
good.
The
key life experience which brought this truth home to Gandhi was
the time that he confessed to his father that he had been stealing
money from the family to eat meat and smoke cigarettes.
"I
decided at last to write out the confession, to submit it to
my father, and to ask his forgiveness. I wrote it on a slip
of paper and handed it to him myself. In this note not only
did I confess my guilt, but I asked adequate punishment for
it, and closed with a request to him not to punish himself (by
hitting himself on the forehead) for my offense. I also pledged
myself never to steal in the future. I was trembling as I handed
the confession to my father. He was then ill. His bed was a
plain wooden plank. I handed him the note and sat opposite the
plank. He read it through and pearly drops trickled down his
cheeks, wetting the paper. I also cried. I could see my father's
agony. If I were a painter, I could draw a picture of the whole
scene today. Even today it is still so vivid in my mind. Those
pearl drops of love cleansed my heart and washed my sin away.
Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is. As
the hymn says: 'Only he who is smitten with the arrows of love
knows its power.' "This was for me an object-lesson in
love. Then I could see in it nothing more than a father's love,
but today I know that it was pure love. When such love becomes
all embracing, it transforms everything it touches. It is hard
to measure this power."
Gandhi's
interpretation of life, that God's love is present in all, became
truer for him the more that others responded to his love. Gandhi's
love for his father which encouraged him to confess his stealing
permitted Gandhi to discover the power of love. Gandhi's belief
in God which inspired his political movement of non-violence enabled
him to confirm his belief in God as love.
Religious
truth is different from mathematical truth. To know that 2+2=4
does not affect our moral character, but to believe in God is
to affirm a truth that should inspire our moral character and
cleanse our heart when sincerely held. Religious truth is something
that becomes more true; it verifies itself by its consequences,
by the way it cleanses our heart and leads others, as Gandhi discovered
in his experiment with life, to a life of love and non-violence.
Consequently, a religious belief is not held by our intellect
alone; it needs to take root in our heart, cleansing our heart
and leading us to God's love. But there can be great risk in giving
oneself completely to God's love, especially when we seem to be
surrounded by darkness in our lives. So we need to deepen our
commitment to our basic religious hypothesis, just as we need
to deepen our commitment to the examined way of life. Moral and
religious truths do not come to us without risk.
Only
the courageous commitment of love can reveal the basic truths
of human life. I cannot know the potentiality of a child by studying
the child with a neutral emotion, with only my intellect. My positive
interest in the child, my love for the child, is a creative force
that helps to release the potentiality of the child I want to
know. The same positive interest, the same love, which helps to
create the meaning of the child's life, is in Gandhi's term the
truth force that creates the meaning of humanity, that enables
us to create and discover that the meaning of our lives is love.
In all our lives, we seek lasting value for ourselves and for
our families. Gandhi's life teaches us that our values are bound
up with the value of all humanity and that the totality of human
value is bound up with the truth of God's creative and overflowing
love. The statement, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, all thy mind and all thy strength,
is in fact the best definition of God we shall ever possess. God
is that which is supremely worthy of our total commitment, supremely
worthy of worship. Our commitment to the examined way of life,
our commitment to the truth, requires a commitment of love to
realize what the truth of human life is. When we feel totally
alone and surrounded by the darkness, our commitment to the truth
should lead to a courageous love, both deriving from and leading
to the universal presence of God's love.
(c)
Copyrighted by William O'Meara, 1997
Bill
O'Meara is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at James
Madison University. His academic interests include Phenomenology
and Existentialism, American Philosophy and Pragmatism, the
thought of Karl Marx, the social nature of the self and morality,
contemporary Catholic theology, the Christian scriptures, world
religions, computer-assisted instruction, and critical thinking.
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