“Rather than experience depending on consciousness, consciousness presupposes experience” –Whitehead (PR 83)

I have often wondered about the claim (largely found in Eastern spirituality) that Gurus, for instance, can attain a permanent “state” of enlightenment where they are perfectly in-tune with an Ultimate Reality. I confess that I am in large part an egalitarian; I mean it is one liberal principle that I do sort of resonate with, i.e. I do think all humans are equal in fundamental worth and/or social status. And to be honest I do sort of feel this way when it comes to various forms of “enlightenment” too.

Here is what I mean:

Let’s start with the word enlightenment. It can be thought of a couple ways; It can simply mean “knowledge” or “understanding,” but when used by spiritually-enclined people enlighten usually means something like: to give (someone) spiritual knowledge or insight. Now when I push back on people who want to say that there are “spiritually enlightened” people out there who posses special spiritual knowledge/insight that the rest of us can only get through them, it’s not because I don’t believe that these people have had some sort of unique experience that allows them to understand things a certain way; no, I push back because these unique spiritual insights possessed by this very particular teacher/guru/rabbi/pastor/professor aren’t the final story and won’t give us all ALL the answers. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m of the opinion that each of us knows different things, and we can perhaps say that we each have different lines of development; I’m comfortable with this sort of language for the most part. I’m even comfortable with admitting that, when it comes to theology or knowledge of a particular tradition etc., there may indeed be particular people within particular cultures and particular religious traditions who are perhaps more spiritually/religiously enlightened in some ways than other people who are close in proximity and who reside within those same particular cultures and religious traditions. But to posit, for example, that a very particular person named Mohandas Gandhi (who did many great things for sure! But who was also born in a particular place called India, raised in a particular and relatively wealthy Hindu merchant caste family, and highly educated in London) is more “spiritually enlightened” than a homeless African American man who has been in and out of prison, doesn’t engage in “spiritual activities” of any kind, and has never read any sacred texts due largely to the fact that he can’t read, is some bullshit.

First of all, putting aside the obvious questions of value and moral relativism between cultures, I HIGHLY doubt anyone who is “spiritually enlightened” would go around telling other people this. If they did I’d question that shit right away (especially if they’re charging money for their services ((or books))). Second, if the title of “spiritually enlightened” was bestowed upon someone by a bunch of other people, I’m sure that the spiritually enlightened one would be uncomfortable with this (I would be) and either deny this claim or downplay it at the very least; Jesus, after asking his disciples “who do men say that I am?,” declined to enlighten his followers after all, even after Peter claimed he was the Christ… We are the ones who gave Jesus his title(s) posthumously, we should be clear about that.

Relatedly, I firmly believe that if spiritual people like me are going to claim that we’re “non-dual” (which many “spiritually enlightened” people want to claim) then we should try to be non-dual for crying out loud! That means a whole bunch of things, but one thing in particular it does mean is that “spirituality” or “spiritual knowledge” is not privileged anymore in our post-modern context (post-modern doesn’t mean we leave secular/rational/scientific knowledge/understandings behind, it means we incorporate secular/rational/scientific ways of knowing/understanding into everything else, being cautious to not privilege it either).

Accordingly, it does seem to me like one of the main tenets of non-dual thinking is coming to understand that the physical world is just as “spiritual” as the inner psychic world, and this jibes with Whitehead’s understanding that mental feelings and physical feelings are exactly parallel in their origination and don’t involve “consciousness” or self-awareness. For example, often before one is consciously aware of the feeling of hunger, one has a hungry feeling, and eats. Sometimes consciousness expands and sometimes it seems to narrow; in the case of feeling hungry, once we become aware of the feeling of hunger our consciousness could be said to have expanded. So, as Whitehead says, “consciousness” is peculiarly connected “with the mental functions, and has primarily to do with their product” (AI 271). In other words, to quote Leonard Gibson, “consciousness awakens in the comparison of an immediate feeling with the conceptual prehension of that feeling, which treats only certain aspects of the feeling.”

All this to say that I think the terminology of “states of consciousness” might be a little misleading and confusing for Western, scientifically minded people (it is a Western interpretation of Asian practices after all) because it lends itself very well to a type of Cartesian dualism (a Western problem for sure) which wants to posit consciousness as an unchanging static substance or something (Western people still love to think of organic life as a machine!). William James’ democratic ontological theory that we have varieties of experience is perhaps more helpful here, I think, if what we’re really talking about when it comes to enlightenment is a widening or narrowing with regard to range and intensity of experience (which is what I think spiritually enlightened people are trying to communicate). So we can perhaps affirm that we do not have experiences of reality, our experience IS reality. If we accept this then it follows that a secular, atheistic, materialistic biologist has some pretty darn beautiful spiritual insights that we can all glean. AND, that illiterate inmate, who doesn’t pray or meditate or read sacred texts, probably has a bunch of special insights too. One could theoretically sit at the feet of them both and be (spiritually) enlightened.

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Painting above: Naum Gabo

Tags:consciousnesseastern spiritualityenlightenmentepistemologypsychologystates of consciousnesswhiteheadwilliam james