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Abstract
A recent proliferation of writings on the spiritual by scientists suggests
that this may be an appropriate time to re-evaluate the spiritual in twentieth-century
art. This paper looks at three artistic groupings: Kandinsky and the Bauhaus,
the American Abstract Expressionists, and the contemporary electronic
arts, and traces the influences of some spiritual movements on them. The
paper then turns to spiritual in modern science, observing that quantum
theory has been the main starting point for many physicists to write about
God. The question is examined as to whether science at this juncture is
more receptive to the spiritual than the arts; whether art can mediate
between science and the spiritual, and whether the spiritual is antecedent
to both arts and science.
Introduction
What
are you doing young man?
Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business whatever it may be?
It is well against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,
But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion's sake,
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
life of the earth,
Any more than such are to religion.
Walt Whitman, 1852
...
twentieth-century art conceived ideals that in their religious dimension
would have been recognizable to Meister Eckhart and in their workshop
dimension to Leonardo.
Roger Lipsey, 1988
The title
of this paper comes from Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art,
and by expanding it to include science one is clearly attempting to cover
a rather large area of human endeavour. To narrow this down only two of
the possible three relationships between art, science and the spiritual
will be investigated: that between the spiritual and art and that between
the spiritual and science (the interaction between the arts and sciences
is well-documented in Leonardo, for example). The focus will be
on investigating the observation that science, towards the end of the
twentieth century, appears to be more receptive to the spiritual than
the arts. This idea may come as a surprise, but one might reflect that
in recent years one of the few papers in Leonardo that explicitly
deals with the spiritual introduced Buddhism via physics [1]. An additional motivation for investigating
the three disciplines together is a growing intuition that science, or
to be more precise, scientists, are often in need of the artistic or poetic
vision in order to engage with the spiritual. Too often the scientist
assumes that religion is about asking questions about the fundamental
nature of existence: this is one possible response to existence,
but the artist makes another type of response an emotional one, which
may have a closer affinity to the spiritual impulse.
Art and science seem to complement each other; they propose few
mutually antagonistic areas of thought, unlike the boundaries between
art and the spiritual, and science and the spiritual. It is implicit in
the title of this paper, and in the Whitman quote above, that the spiritual
is somehow antecedent to both the arts and sciences. This assumption guides
much of the discussion here, but will be returned to later to see how
reasonable such an assumption is.
The Spiritual: some definitions
The 'spiritual' is one of the trickiest areas of human understanding to
taxonomise, or in any way in which to make definitions that can be universally
understood. It is even harder when trying to find reliable terms that
might be meaningful to both artists and scientists, but without an attempt
we will make no progress. Hence I shall use a simple categorisation which
I hope will be useful: a distinction between the religious, the
occult and the transcendent. For the purposes of this paper
then, the 'spiritual' will be a broad term that covers these three distinct
areas. The 'religious' is intended to convey traditional and organised
religious spirituality such as Christian, Islamic, or Buddhist; the 'occult'
an esoteric preoccupation with such matters as the paranormal, reincarnation,
clairvoyance and disembodied beings; and finally the 'transcendent 'as
dealing with a shift in personal identity from the physical and temporal
to the infinite and eternal, or with mystical union, or with nirvana.
Clearly the boundaries between the religious, the occult, and the transcendent
(as used here) are blurred, and also value-laden in different ways for
different communities. They are also crude in that within them one needs
much finer distinctions, for example between the religiousness of Christianity
or Hinduism; between the occultisms of William Blake or Rudolf Steiner,
and between the transcendences within Buddhism or the work of Krishnamurti,
to give just a few examples. For now it is hoped that these terms (which
will be used in the rest of this paper in this specific way) will give
us a basic tool with which to begin probing the spiritual in art and science.
The Spiritual in Modern Art
Where art of previous centuries reflected mainstream religious concerns,
and indeed for much of history could hardly be separated from religion,
the 20th century strikes out on its own. This was not a sudden departure
of course, in that the 19th century laid the groundwork for the change:
Romanticism replaced God with nature as subject matter for painters, and
Nietzsche summed up the cultural shift in the words of his imaginary Zarathustra:
'Could it be possible? This old saint has not yet heard in his forest
that God is dead!' This is not to say that Christian thought is
not present in Western art in the twentieth century; one only has to think
of the example of Gaudi, the Spanish architect, for example (see Figs.
1 and 2). However, artists who are 'conventionally' religious have probably
become the exception in this century, rather than the norm.
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Fig.
1
The Spanish architect Gaudi used an articulated model of a cathedral
suspended upside down to help in its design. This could also be seen
as an attempt to capture the spiritual sense of 'grace', that is,
whatever stands in opposition to 'gravity' (I have borrowed these
terms from the philosopher Simone Weil). (Photo couresy of Amplicaciones
y Reproducciones Mas) |
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Fig.
2
Gaudi's Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Family embodies a conventional
religious form of spirituality while breaking many architectural conventions.
(Photo: F. Catalia-Roca) |
Examining the spiritual in modern art becomes a difficult undertaking,
perhaps for two reasons. Firstly, when we leave the conventional religious
spirituality we are left with the less widely understood occult and transcendent
spiritualities. Secondly, an art which does not generally deal with the
old religious symbols of crucifixion and so on, and is often dealing with
abstractions or even the totally abstract, may not immediately be perceived
to have a spiritual dimension. This is compounded by the writings of the
twentieth century artists, or perhaps by the lack of them. For even where
the spiritual is central to a piece of modern art, it may be entirely
conveyed in a visual language, and the scholars of science and
theology are not trained in the visual. Conversely the artist is generally
not widely read in the spiritual, and may be unaware of resonances across
cultures and epochs with his or her work, and may indeed by innately suspicious
of possible restraining influences in spiritual traditions or movements.
The twentieth century has seen the development and promotion of alternative
forms of spirituality, some of which have had a significant impact on
modern art. The key movements in Europe at the beginning of the century
include Theosophy, founded by H.P.Blavatsky and H.S.Olcott, Anthroposophy,
founded by Rudolf Steiner, and the work of G.I.Gurdjieff and P.D.Ouspensky.
All three movements had explicit teachings on the arts, though Steiner
and Gurdjieff made the arts more central to the lives of their students
than Theosophy, which focused on the preparation for the new World Teacher
(a conflation of the second coming of Christ and the Buddha). There is
not space here to even introduce the teachings of these three movements,
other than to say that all three have an occult leaning (as defined earlier);
Gurdjieff and Theosophy share some transcendental elements, and Anthroposophy
and Gurdjieff include strong Christian themes.
In examining the spiritual in 20th century art we are indebted to art
historian Roger Lipsey for some ground-breaking work. One of the premises
of his work (and based on Mondrian and Kandinsky's thinking) is that the
arrival of the abstract in modern art allowed a new exploration
of the spiritual. He is also clear that Theosophy was amongst the important
spiritual influences of the time. Roger Lipsey is well-known for his work
on the late Ananda Coomaraswamy, an authority on religious art of previous
eras. Lipsey's book An Art of Our Own The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century
Art is a thorough and fascinating updating of Coomaraswamy's interests
into the 20th century, starting with Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual
in Art. However the tension between the spiritual and artistic is
immediately present in the choice of title, for it comes from a quote
from Brancusi:
In the
art of other times there is a joy, but with it the nightmare that the
religions drag with them. There is joy in Negro sculpture, among the
nearly archaic Greeks, in some things of the Chinese and the Gothic
... oh, we find it everywhere. But even so, not so well as it might
be with us in the future, if only we were to free ourselves of all this
... It is time we had an art of our own [2].
The 'all
this' we need to free ourselves from, and which 20th century Western artists
and writers have done so thoroughly is the religious baggage of
previous centuries. In modernism and later art movements the 20th century
does have an art of its own, but Lipsey is interested, as we are,
in where the spiritual lies within it. If the modern artist rejects traditional
religion, what is the source of the spiritual? In the first decades of
the century the answer, using the terminology of this paper, is in the
occult. In particular it is in the occult teachings of Theosophy
and Anthroposophy. The work of G.I.Gurdjieff may also have played its
part (it seems likely that Brancusi for example met Gurdjieff, and may
well have absorbed some of the influences of his school). We also find
that the transcendent is a strong influence. Using Brancusi as an example
again, we find that one of the books to have the greatest influence on
him was Jacques Bacot's 1925 translation of the thirteenth century Tibetan
Buddhist The Life of Milarepa [3].
Lipsey's introduction asks of course what the spiritual is, and what in
particular it might be in art. He says: "All of this duly noted,
spiritual remains an old-fashioned word of vague meaning. Yet it
is this word that Kandinsky seeded into twentieth-century art, and apart
from any individual, it still speaks. It requires a positive response
from us." [4] Lipsey points out that many intellectuals
of his generation were profoundly influenced by the inevitable conclusion
of 19th century religious failure: "Beyond, there may be a void:
whole sections of modern literature address the perception of a profoundly
unwelcoming void. The generation of which I am a part explored the void
at the earliest possible age, under the influence of Existentialist literature.
We sat on park benches trying to validate Sartre's compelling description
of metaphysical nausea ..." [5]
The void is a key concept in the spirituality of the transcendent, particularly
in Buddhism, but is deeply problematic in the West, particularly to the
artist. While Lipsey does not explore this much, he does draw an interesting
metaphor from Sufi thought; the contrast between 'eyes of flesh,' which
perceive only the material world, and 'eyes of fire,' which perceive only
the spiritual. He goes on: "For such eyes nothing is lonely matter,
all things are caught up in a mysterious, ultimately divine whole that
challenges understanding over a lifetime. ... eyes for art strike
a balance between these sensibilities." [6]
The early part of Lipsey's book traces some of the spiritual developments
on the artists of the twentieth century. He focuses on Theosophy and Anthroposophy,
but only mentions the work of Ouspensky (a close associate of Gurdjieff's)
in the section on Kasimir Malevich, saying: "Suprematism can be viewed
in part as an artist's response to the world-view and implicit challenge
of Tertium Organum." [7] This major work of Ouspensky's was produced
before he met Gurdjieff, but many of the preoccupations in it carry over
into his later work. Its influence may well have been most noticeable
amongst Russian artists.
The strength of Lipsey's work is in its thoroughness and insight into
the lives, concerns, and work of 20th century artists. However, his notions
of the spiritual are not fine-grained enough to deal with the subtlety
of the phenomenon, especially given the difficulties outlined earlier.
In this essay, by starting with the crude boundaries of religious, occult
and transcendent, I hope to point a way to build on Lipsey's work and
take it further.
The influence of Theosophy on Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky, plus
the spiritual interests of Johannes Itten, contributed to making the Bauhaus
a focus for the spiritual in the 1920s. Steiner's and Gurdjieff's work
had no comparable outlet in Europe, but in fact various forces conspired
to diminish the spiritual aspect of the Bauhaus. It lay at the heart of
twentieth century Modernism, and was founded by Walter Gropius in 1919
in Germany, and, considering the interests of many of those involved,
could have developed into an artistic version of Plato's or Ficino's Academies.
(Ficino founded a Renaissance 'academy' based on his translations of Plato
and Plotinus; it had something of a 'cultish' overtone.) It is generally
considered that the first world war and the Russian Revolution turned
the current of idealism (sparked by Theosophy et al.) from the spiritual
in the direction of the social. At best this swing had a democratic impulse,
but the materialistic emphasis of socialism, and the drift towards fascism
in Germany, put paid to the spiritual aspirations of many of the Bauhaus
artists (it was closed by the Nazis in 1933).
Johannes
Itten was employed by Gropius in the early years to teach at the Bauhaus
but eventually left as directions changed. Lipsey comments:
He [Itten]
viewed the Bauhaus as a "secret, self-contained society" with
spiritual goals. In his classes, he offered students the opportunity
to practice relaxation, breathing, and concentration exercises intended,
as he later wrote, "to establish the intellectual and physical
readiness which makes intensive work possible." ... Itten precipitated
the crisis of 1922 by embodying the esoteric and romantic aspects of
the Bauhaus so militantly that he threatened to sever the school from
its moorings in mainstream society [8].
Itten himself
made the following comments about the spiritual underpinning of his work
in Design and Form, one of the coursebooks to emerge from teachers
at the Bauhaus:
I had studied
oriental philosophy and concerned myself with Persian Mazdaism and Early
Christianity. Thus I realised that our outward-directed scientific research
and technology must be balanced by inward-directed thought and forces
of the soul. ... It is not only a religious custom to start instruction
with a prayer or a song, but it also serves to concentrate the students'
wandering thoughts. At the start of the morning I brought my classes
to mental and physical readiness for intensive work through relaxing,
breathing, and concentrating exercises. The training of the body as
an instrument of the mind is of the greatest importance for creative
man. ... Besides relaxation, breathing is of the greatest importance.
As we breathe, so do we think and so is the rhythm of our daily life.
People of great, successful accomplishments always have a quiet, slow
and deep breath. Shortwinded people are hasty and greedy in thought
and action [9].
These extracts
show much of Itten's thinking and character, and the reactions to them
may illustrate the problem that artists have with the explicitly spiritual.
The library copy of Design and Form from the Arts faculty of my
university has a simple pencilled comment in the margin close to the last
point made in this extract: 'Suspicious'. Others have concluded that the
Mazdaznan experiment was a disaster, and it is true to this day that spiritual
practices are rarely part of the curriculum in mainstream art colleges
('Mazdaznan' is a derivation of Mazdaism, better known in the West
as Zoraostrianism, a religion whose main prophet was the historical Zarathustra,
a man quite unconnected with Nietzsche's imaginary figure of the same
name).
Let us turn back now to Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art
as a turning point for Modernism. It was published in 1911, and was deeply
influenced by Theosophy. Kandinsky had 'snapped up' a copy of Thought
Forms (a work by the Theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater
purporting to show pictures of the 'auric' form of thoughts and emotions)
in 1908 and joined the movement in 1909. Kandinsky's Improvisations
series from around 1916 is considered to be directly influenced by
the illustrations in Thought Forms (see figs 3, 4 and 5).
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Figs.
3, 4, and 5
The first two pairs of images show illustrations from Besant and Leadbeater's
Thought Forms, while the third picture is one of Kandinsky's
Improvisation series, Improvisation 33 (Orient I), 1913. Many
of his Improvisations paintings are assumed to be influenced
by Theosophical ideas. |
Kandinsky
himself only devotes a few paragraphs to Theosophy in his book, apparently
quoting from Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy:
Theosophy,
according to Blavatsky, is synonymous with eternal truth. "The
new torchbearer of truth will find the minds of men prepared for his
message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths
he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival, which will remove the
merely mechanical, material obstacles and difficulties from his path."
And then Blavatsky continues: "The earth will be a heaven in the
twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now," and with
these words concludes her book [10].
Kandinsky
shows in Concerning the Spiritual in Art the seeds of the spiritual
dilemma that makes the appearance of the spiritual in the arts so fitful
in the 20th century: the apparent hierarchical nature of it. In
the chapter called 'The Movement of the Triangle' he likens society to
a triangle with those few spiritual or artistic geniuses at its apex,
and, as one goes down, a greater and greater number of artists of lesser
and lesser value; the triangle moves upwards, thus representing 'progress'.
This image fits well with Theosophy, but with the rise of socialism after
1917 it exposes an elitist view of art that sat uncomfortably with the
new order. The shock of the first world war must also have shaken the
faith of men like Kandinsky in Blavatsky's prediction of a heaven in the
21st century, and in the later Bauhaus years he tempered the spirituality
of his earlier period to fit the more materialistic and machine-oriented
aspirations of his students.
Piet Mondrian was only briefly at the Bauhaus, but was just as deeply
influenced by Theosophy as Kandinsky. A triptych of Mondrian's called
Evolution is an example of this period (it is the dominant piece
amongst similar work hidden in the Gemeente Museum, unshown), and has
been criticised for its 'new-age' look (see Fig. 6). His later and better-known
work continued to explore one of the Theosophical themes, that of geometry.
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Fig.
6
Mondrian's Triptych. This painting is rarely shown, and is
cited as an example of the impact of Theosophy on Mondrian's work.
(Copyright 1998 ABC/Mondrian Estate/Holtzman Trust) |
Paul Klee was another teacher at the Bauhaus for a time, and shared with
Kandinsky a friendship with Thomas de Hartmann, musician and close collaborator
with Gurdjieff. Kandinsky met de Hartmann between 1908 and 1912, before
de Hartmann met Gurdjieff in 1916, and for whom both he and his wife gave
up everything. Klee's notebooks, like those of many artists, do not reveal
the kind of spiritual preoccupations that we find in those of a contemporary
spiritual teacher like Krishnamurti for example, and I have not found
so far any mention of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, or even de Hartmann [11]. Lipsey comments:
Paul Klee
(1879-1940)Swiss-born, mature in art by 1914, Bauhaus master in the
great years of the institution, renowned for works of originality, wit,
and depthis the author of one of the century's few unerring statements
on the spiritual in art. With Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art
and Brancusi's aphorisms, Klee's 1924 lecture "On Modern Art"
is all one need know to be certain that twentieth-century art conceived
ideals that in their religious dimension would have been recognizable
to Meister Eckhart and in their workshop dimension to Leonardo [12].
The last
sentiment in this passage, concerning Eckhart and Leonardo, could be seen
as an aspiration at the heart of this essay. However, I think Lipsey is
a little optimistic, particularly in respect of Klee's 1924 lecture, which
makes no direct reference to the spiritual at all. I suspect that the
spiritual in Klee's work has to be approached via the work itself, and
I have no suggestion at this point for an easy method for so doing.
The second influential group of 20th century painters that drew heavily
on spiritual influences in one form or other was the group known as the
American Abstract Expressionists. Coming to prominence after the second
world war, they included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman,
Ad Reinhardt, and many others. A cursory glance at the writings of these
artists leave one again in doubt as to the extent of any explicitly
spiritual references in their writings, but overall there is strong evidence
for a spiritual concern running through their work. Lipsey is similarly
hesitant, though not sceptical. His comments revolve around an exhibition
called "The Spiritual in Abstract Art: 1895-1985" (Los Angeles,
1986; Catalogue Editor: Maurice Tuchman) in which the last two paintings,
one by Ad Reinhardt and another by Mark Rothko had the most impact on
him. Lipsey says: "These works at once 'settled' the exhibition,
brought it home; one could feel again that there is a modern spiritual,
and these works demonstrated it." [13] We are presented here with a quite understandable subjectivity,
shown again in this quote from Lipsey: "Although Barnett Newman (1905-1970)
took keen interest in traditional spiritual ideas, possessed a sense of
scripture, and contributed cogently to the endless murmur of conversation
among American artists of the period, he never succeeded in giving eloquent
pictorial form to his insights." [14]
Lipsey could be referring to a series of Newman's paintings called the
'Stations of the Cross', which contain variations on vertical lines and
delineations, and which are not easily accessible as spiritual in content.
The spiritual nature of Rothko's work may be more obvious, and was first
endorsed by the creation of a 'Rothko Chapel' in 1960 by the Phillips
Collection in Washington DC, where a group of his paintings was arranged
in such a way as to encourage the visitor to contemplation or meditation.
Fig. 7 shows one of Rothko's well-known colour-field pieces, and Fig 8
his donation to the Tate Gallery in London.
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Fig.
7
Rothko's Three Reds painted in 1955. A painting like this,
with no awkward associations with the occult, presents the clearest
example of Lipsey's thesis that abstract art represents a new departure
in the art of the spiritual. (Copyright 1998 ARS, NY, and DACS, London) |
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Fig.
8
The Rothko room in the Tate Gallery, London. Many who are not normally
inclined to the 'spiritual' are affected by these pieces and seek
out works that have a similar presence. (Copyright 1998 ARS, NY, and
DACS, London) |
We should not be discouraged however either by the difficulties in pursuing
the spiritual in the writings of the artists, nor by our subjective responses
to their art. I believe that our whole conception of the spiritual can
be fruitfully softened and expanded by the visual arts: much more work
is needed to understand it, that is all. The American Abstract Expressionists
have a spirituality that is firmly in the transcendent category (as defined
in this essay); the mainstream religious is only nodded at, and the occultism
of the earlier part of the century has vanished. Lipsey points out that
Ad Reinhardt for example was a friend of Thomas Merton, read Coomaraswamy,
attended Suzuki's talks on Zen Buddhism, and was literate in Buddhism,
all of which point to the transcendent rather than the occult.
The third group of artists and practice looked at here include the electronic
arts and the virtual territory that they inhabit: cyberspace. Figs 9 and
10 show examples of computer art from students at London Guildhall University
with an explicitly spiritual component.
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Fig.
9
State
by Jason Cook. Cook's work is influenced by modern dance culture and
cyberspace icons. The term state is a Sufi one (Sufis are an
Islamic sect), and is used in opposition to station; the first
is involuntary, while the second is to be attained. |
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Fig.
10
Tribute
to Pythagoras by Christine Hübner. The series deals with
the Pythagorean ideas of spirituality and geometry, while using
the modern technologies of computer graphics in the production of
the imagery.
Images
courtesy of Christine Hübner.
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The transcendent
may be present again, in a transcendence of the biological organism; many
indeed speak of a post-biological world, or of 'obsolescence of the body'.
This is the theme of the work of performance artist Stelarc. This Australian
artist works with mechanical and electronical devices that provide an
interface to computer-controlled movements of his own body, prostheses,
and industrial robots: he uses his own muscles to send or amplify their
movements to control mechanical systems, and in turn allows computer-mediated
control over his own body via electrical impulses of about 40V (see fig.
11). His visually stunning performances raise all kinds of questions regarding
transcendence of the body, surrender of personal will, and the acceptance
of pain. In interview however he is rather wary of the direct spiritual
implications of his work; even though he practised yoga for twenty years
he does not want direct parallels to be drawn, and one can only respect
this.
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Fig.
11
Stelarc: Event for Anti-Copernicus, 1985. Although Stelarc's
work has continued to push the frontiers of our understanding of the
interface between body and mind, as mediated through technology, this
early image captures much of the intellectual probing and visual drama
of his current performances. (Photo courtesy of Stelarc) |
It is worth comparing the work of Stelarc with that of Fakir Musafar.
He is another performance artist, working without electronics, but is
less reticent than Stelarc about the spiritual indeed he criticises Stelarc
for his silence on this area. Musafar's work turns us back to the occult
(as defined here): it has its roots in out-of-body experiences, shamanism,
and fetishism. (See fig. 12)
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No image for now.
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Fig.
12
Fakir Musafar: Suspension 1964. Musafar's work also challenges
our assumptions about the body and spirit, in particular the issue
of pain in religion and art. Why do both artists and religionists
undertake voluntary physical sufferings in the pursuit of their ideals? |
An overwhelming
spiritual experience at the age of seventeen (after fasting and a form
of self-immolation) led to a conviction that he had lived before in a
completely different culture and time, and that the erotic and bodily
were deeply linked to the spiritual. He comments:
That beautiful
experience colored my whole existence. From that day on I wanted everyone
to have that kind of liberation. I felt free to express life through
my body. It was now my media, my own personal "living canvas,"
"living clay." It belonged to me to use. And that is just
what I have done for the past thirty years. I learned to use the body.
It is mine, and yours, to play with! I wrote a poem after the
experience. It said:
Poke your
finger into Red,
Feel the feeling through.
And when the feeling is no more,
Feel no-feeling too! [15]
Musafar is
significant as an artist who occupies the spiritual territory of the fakir
(usefully defined for us in the work of G.I.Gurdjieff [16]), that is one who's path is through the body rather than
through mind or heart. The transcendent implications in his poem, and
the occult nature of his out-of-body experiences reminds one again that
we cannot apply these categories too strictly however.
Whether the spiritual in cyberspace will have its emphasis on the transcendence
of the body, or more on the collectivisation of mind and consciousness
is yet to be seen. There is considerable interest in the ideas of Teilhard
de Chardin (a Jesuit priest and palaeontologist) in connection with the
Internet; in particular his idea of the 'noosphere'. The work of Roy Ascott
may be the most relevant here: he is a pioneer of cybernetics and telematics
in art, and in a recent presentation at the Tucson II 'Towards a Science
of Consciousness' conference wrote:
We are
moving towards the spiritual in art in ways in which Kandinsky could
hardly have imagined. Teleprescence will be accompanied by teleprescience,
and cybernetic systems will integrate with psychic systems, mutating
into what could be called psybernetics. A noetic infrastructure is forming
within the telematic domain which could lead to a spiritual awakening.
[17]
From the
electronic arts we now conveniently move to an examination of the spiritual
in science.
The Spiritual in Modern Science
As mentioned in the introduction, one of the motivations of this essay
was a curiosity about a strange phenomenon: the recent willingness of
scientists to write about God as if an outcome of their science. Books
(mainly by physicists) have appeared in the last four years with titles
such as The Mind of God (Paul Davies), or The God Particle
(Leon Lederman), or with subtitles such as Science, Religion and the
Search for God (Kitty Ferguson), or Modern Cosmology, God, and
the Resurrection of the Dead (Frank Tipler). Many more are also in
print that relate science, usually the 'New Physics' that arises from
quantum mechanics, to spirituality. It is a reasonable assertion today
to say that the subjective entered science with quantum mechanics
(this is enshrined in a minimal kind of way in what is known as the Copenhagen
Interpretation). Whether the spiritual does or does not is a question
that is highly debatable; the writer Ken Wilber denies it (see below)
while a more cautious approach may be to suggest that it gave the scientists
the first real excuse to talk about the spiritual. In addition to the
approaches based purely on quantum mechanics there is another approach,
called the anthropic principle, which finds wider evidence for
the central role of human existence or consciousness in the structure
of the universe.
Though many scientists, through the confrontation with quantum theory
and other developments in the 'new' physics, were having to re-evaluate
science itself, and in many cases found parallels in religion or mysticism,
it was the physicist Fritjof Capra who first brought the parallels to
popular attention in 1975 with his book The Tao of Physics. Gary
Zukav, trained in the liberal arts rather than physics, followed with
The Dancing Wu Li Masters in 1979. Both books are good introductions
to the 'new' physics, and to the parallels with mysticism, but neither
authors have the kind of depth-exposure to the spiritual that Ken Wilber
(discussed below) has. If we relate the works of Capra and Zukav to our
simple taxonomy of the spiritual, then the parallels they draw are mainly
to the transcendent, with references here and there to the occult.
Ken Wilber
wrote his first book The Spectrum of Consciousness in 1973, while
a graduate student. He has been a prolific and maverick author since that
point, spanning the spiritual, the scientific, and the psychological.
His reading in the spiritual is broad and deep, and as a result gives
a much subtler interpretation of the parallels between physics and mysticism
than offered by Capra and Zukav. Indeed it may be just their work that
he is complaining of in this quote in his preface to Quantum Questions:
The theme
of this book, if I may briefly summarize the arguments of the physicists
presented herein, is that modern physics offers no positive support
(let alone proof) for a mystical worldview. ... It is not my aim in
this volume to reach the new-age audience, who seem to be firmly convinced
that modern physics automatically supports or proves mysticism. It does
not. But this view is now so widespread, so deeply entrenched, so taken
for granted by new-agers, that I don't see that any one book could possibly
reverse the tide. [18]
Wilber wishes
to tread a more delicate path than either the New-Ageists or the conventional
scientist who compartmentalises. ('New-Ageist' is a term generally applied
to spiritual movements originating in psychotherapy and the human potential
movement, sometimes unfairly assumed to be over-credible, come from California,
involve substance abuse, astrology, and in the terms of this paper the
occult.) Wilber's work is more engaged with the psychological or psychoanalytical
than is directly relevant to this paper, but he presents us with an interesting
possibility for the integration of seemingly opposing fields (the spiritual,
the artistic, the scientific) through his concept of levels of
consciousness. His idea is that the apparent contradictions are merely
there because one is debating phenomena related to one level at a level
that is inappropriate to it.
Wilber's Quantum Questions is a good source of the writings of
some of the key scientists on the spiritual this century, perhaps as useful
as Lipsey's An Art of Our Own is on the spiritual in art. However,
in the ten years since Wilber's work science and the spiritual have generated
a quite new debate, bringing physics and mainstream religion together.
John Polkinghorne, theoretical physicist and recently ordained into the
Church of England, has written for many years on science (with the emphasis
on quantum theory) and religion. His premise is that both are 'an enquiry
into what is.' Although his book Reason and Reality includes a
chapter called 'Quantum Questions', he seems unaware of Wilber's book
of the same name and the main proposition in it. Polkinghorne argues for
a form of 'complementarity.' For example, both theology and science are
concerned with the origins or genesis of the universe and life; for both
this becomes a legitimate enquiry, and the traditionally 'exclusive' accounts
can in fact be accommodated by seeing them as complementary to each other
while appropriate to differing contexts of human activity. Valuable as
Polkinghorne's work is, it restricts itself to a narrow band of congruence
between science and religion: that of the 'enquiry' leading to explanation.
(The main problem with this is that it cannot touch on the devotional;
for the devotee, whether ecstatic or sober in their love of the divine,
cannot be said to be pursuing an enquiry, more that of a relationship.)
For Polkinghorne revelation is the religious equivalent to the
scientific procedure that leads from enquiry to explanation, but in the
work of Paul Davies revelation is mistrusted.
Paul Davies is a British-born physicist currently working in Australia.
He won the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1995. This prize,
worth $1m, has previously been awarded to Mother Teresa, Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
and Billy Graham, and went to Davies in recognition of his work which
includes God and the New Physics and The Mind of God (a
reworking of the former title, some nine years later). The title of the
latter book comes from the last sentence in another famous modern physicist's
book, A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking. The Templeton
Prize, larger than any prize in physics, is given to a living person who
has shown "extraordinary originality" in advancing humankind's
understanding of God or spirituality. [19]
Davies' spiritual interests lie clearly in the religious category, according
to the definition in this paper. There is little of the occult or transcendent,
and his reading in theology, though broad for a scientist perhaps, is
limited compared to that of Ken Wilber for example. What is it then that
has made his books best-sellers, and attracted the Templeton Prize? Davies
is a scientist with no faith in the supernatural, as this quote
shows:
I have
always wanted to believe that science can explain everything, at least
in principle. Many nonscientists would deny such a claim resolutely.
Most religions demand belief in at least some supernatural events, which
are by definition impossible to reconcile with science. I would rather
not believe in supernatural events personally. [20]
Davies books
introduce the new physics (relativity and quantum theory and their more
recent developments) in a lucid style, with a running commentary on the
theological implications. He takes a very different route to Capra and
Zukav, by dealing with mainstream (Christian) theological problems, and
even seems a little hostile to Oriental thought:
The popularity
of "holistic science" in recent years has prompted a string
of books, most notably Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics, that
stress the similarity between ancient Eastern philosophy, with its emphasis
on the holistic interconnectedness of physical things, and modern nonlinear
physics. Can we conclude that Oriental philosophy an theology were,
after all, superior to their Western counterparts? Surely not. [21]
Even though
his later book concludes with a brief section on mysticism, Davies avoids
it on the whole, and perhaps this is his popular appeal: a dialogue with
mainstream Western religion. He provides an update, via the new physics,
on the arguments for the existence of God, most of which looks even less
convincing than in the days of the old physics. He makes a nod at some
of the metaphysics emerging from 'new' physics, including the anthropic
principle and holism, but is not that enthusiastic about straying from
'proper' or reductionist science. However his position is weakly anthropic,
as the closing section in The Mind of God suggests:
What does
it mean? What is Man that we might be party so such privilege? I cannot
believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate,
an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.
Our involvement is too intimate. The physical species Homo may
count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some
planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance.
Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness.
This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless
forces. We are truly meant to be here. [22]
This might
be mildly encouraging to the conventionally religious person, but in fact
Davies is not in favour of religion at all, as the closing remarks in
his previous work show:
I began
by making the claim that science offers a surer path than religion in
the search for God. It is my deep conviction that only by understanding
the world in all its many aspects reductions and holist, mathematical
and poetical, through forces, fields, and particles as well as through
good and evil that we will come to understand ourselves and the meaning
behind this universe, our home. [23]
Is conventional
religion so desperate that it is grateful that scientists even bother
to write about God? When mostly the argument is against the very concept?
And to the tune of $1m? This is not to denigrate Davies' work, merely
to emphasise that there is a strange phenomenon here. We can of course
point to Davies' very limited exposure to the religious in all its forms,
and also to pick up on a point in the last paragraph quoted above: let
us indeed have the poetry.
Frank Tipler, another physicist and author of The Physics of Immortality,
represents an extreme reaction of the scientist to the spiritual possibilities
of his discipline. The outrageous suggestions in his book have provoked
the reaction that he should be 'de-frocked' of his PhD. However, I think
the book is an important landmark, and should not be ignored in fact it
might make a useful touchstone for a modern liberal education: its breadth
and challenge need a broad educational base from which to mount any attack
on its central thesis.
Tipler's ideas can be summarised as follows: modern cosmology predicts
the elimination of biological life as we know it, either through the 'heat
death' (lack of energy in fact) in an ever-expanding universe, or its
consumption in the inferno of the 'big crunch' (the final singularity
of the universe as it contracts again). In any case organic life on Earth
has only some billions of years to go before the Sun wipes it out. However,
the anthropic principle discussed above requires that life (consciousness)
is central to the cosmos, and therefore the future evolution of it must
be such as to ensure its existence (in some form or other) for eternity.
From this premise Tipler deduces that we shall all be resurrected by God
to live for ever in the far future: what's more he claims to have the
scientific 'proof' for the existence of God and our immortality. Here
is the conclusion to his book:
The Omega
Point Theory [the name is taken from Teilhard de Chardin's writings]
allows the key concepts of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition now
to be modern physics concepts: theology is nothing but physical cosmology
based on the assumption that life as a whole is immortal. A consequence
of this assumption is the resurrection of everyone who ever lived to
eternal life. Physics has now absorbed theology; the divorce between
science and religion, between reason and emotion, is over.
I began
this book with an assertion on the pointlessness of the universe by
Steven Weinberg. He repeats this in his latest book, Dreams of a
Final Theory, and goes on to say "... I do not for a minute
think that science will ever provide the consolations that have been
offered by religion in facing death."
I disagree.
Science can now offer precisely the consolations in facing death
that religion once offered. Religion is now part of science. [24]
To show that
his premises lead to his (startling) conclusions, Tipler has to make a
number of radical assumptions along the way. Firstly, life, including
the personality of every person that ever existed, can exist as a digital
simulation; secondly that robot 'probes' can colonise the universe (thus
disseminating digitally encoded life) and engulf the universe with intelligence
before its collapse has gone too far; third that this intelligent
life can engineer the final collapse in an asymmetrical way (harnessing
the features of chaos theory) in order to provide huge amounts of usable
energy; fourthly that this collective intelligence (called the Omega Point)
will be benign enough to collect all possible data regarding each one
of us and initiate our eternal simulation on vast computers; and finally
that the last infinitesimally small period of time before the final singularity
will feel 'subjectively' to us like an eternity.
Each of these major assumptions then requires another group of assumptions
to make them work: for example that colonisation of the universe will
be achievable through matter/anti-matter engines (no-one knows at this
point how to build one), and that mind is computable so that we
can be 'uploaded' into computers (Roger Penrose, for one, disagrees with
this [25]). Our resurrection then depends on
the fact that living persons now (and in the past) can be photographed
billions of years in the future from the light-rays bouncing off the edge
of the universe, and that will give the Omega Point sufficient information
to run an exact simulation of us, preferably choosing us in our
prime. Tipler does recognise that there could be a practical difficulty
with this (we cannot even photograph an entire planet even within
our own galaxy at the moment, not even as a spot of light), so
he suggests instead that the cosmic computer could reconstruct us all
knowing that we are 'completely defined' by the four billion-odd genes
in our bodies. This would unfortunately mean resurrecting an inconceivably
large number of people who never existed, but Tipler can be generous:
he has already shown that the Omega Point has infinite computing power
at its disposal.
As if all the scientific odds were not stacked against his theory (putting
it charitably), Tipler also has to show that various religious and cultural
attitudes to immortality are wrong. The most important of these are eternal
recurrence and reincarnation, both of which require lengthy discussions
through philosophy and religion to dispose of.
Tipler supplies a Scientists' Appendix to The Physics of Immortality,
which he claims proves mathematically various elements of his theory.
His strategy, if one were inclined to the cynical, is to argue very tightly
and scientifically small points, and then make huge (but downplayed) leaps
between them, thus stringing together some plausible science in the service
of an implausible conclusion. It is an enjoyable read however, and it
deserves a refutation.
While I believe that the anthropic principle deserves a place in modern
thought, it is undermined in this work by Tipler's obviously emotional
attempt to avoid his own, and others', mortality. The really interesting
part of his work, and of a growing number of other scientists', is their
willingness to use (some would say hijack) the language of religion. In
terms of the categories of spirituality developed above, it is religious
rather than occult or transcendent.
Conclusions
While it is clear that something is happening in the sciences with
an explicit reference to the spiritual, and that no such large-scale detectable
phenomenon is happening in the arts, it may be premature to assume that
science is more receptive to the spiritual than the arts. The development
of quantum theory has brought science up against the brick wall
of the subjective, and from there a path to the spiritual is certainly
possible, if not inevitable. We also see a continual, if less obvious,
engagement with the spiritual in the arts of this century, starting with
Kandinsky and the Bauhaus, through the American Abstract Expressionists,
and into the modern electronic arts. One might say that the equivalent
event in the arts of this century to the discovery of quantum theory in
physics has been the development of the abstract in art. However the beginnings
of abstract art coincided with an explicit concern with the spiritual,
whereas the impact of quantum theory has taken roughly fifty years to
emerge from the Copenhagen Interpretation to the popular spirituality
of Capra and Zukav. We have seen also that artists write diffusedly, if
at all, about the spiritual: it has to be found directly in their work.
Modern scientists on the other hand have taken to writing profusely about
the spiritual.
In both the arts and sciences there are however considerable tensions
and antagonisms to the spiritual. Perhaps the mutual antagonism between
science and religion is precisely because of an instinct that (as Polkinghorne
puts it) both can be an inquiry into what is. To the extent that
science and religion compete to give us a rational account of the universe
and its origins there will probably be no reconciliation: the efforts
of Polkinghorne, Davies, and Tipler are not always convincing. The work
of Tipler is also a clearly predatory move on the territory traditionally
considered religious. There are also clear antagonisms in the arts concerning
the spiritual; mainly from the free-thinking artist's spirit against the
perceived tyranny of organised religion (Brancusi's 'nightmare').
The considerable recent writings on spirituality by scientists is an important
phenomenon however and deserves further study. The impulse arises from,
or was released by, quantum theory, but it is hard to see how a real synthesis
between science and religion may emerge. A sympathetic complementarity
would however be a great step forward in bringing the scientific and religious
communities together, though the danger has to be recognised that some
scientists are merely trying to appropriate the territory of the spiritual
with little real sympathy for it. While contemporary artists write little
about spirituality, it seems that the spiritual is an important undercurrent
of influence in the arts. Whether this entered with abstract art, or merely
changed the nature of the influence from being main-stream religious to
occult and transcendental needs clarification.
What of the idea, stated at the beginning of this essay, that the spiritual
is antecedent to both science and art (as Whitman would have it)? The
anthropic principle allows that consciousness at least is on an
equal footing with matter, but some spiritual traditions place it as antecedent
to matter, while most of science places it as an emergent property of
matter. To say that the spiritual is antecedent to science is therefore
not easily or widely supportable. However, it is easier to assert that
the spiritual may be antecedent to art.
There may be a fruitful line of enquiry as to whether the arts can successfully
mediate between science and the spiritual. Lipsey's quote from the Sufis
regarding 'eyes of flesh' and 'eyes of fire' may be relevant: perhaps
the artist is best attuned to move from one to the other during the course
of his or her work. One might also suggest that science needs the poetic
in order to allow a better understanding of the spiritual, and that the
religious needs the poetic to avoid the dogmatic and reactionary.
References
[1] Boreham, Dominic, "The
Conceptual Framework of my Computer Assisted Drawings: Reflections on
Physics, Buddhism and Transactional Psychology", in Leonardo,
25, No. 2 (119-127) 1992.
[2] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 244
[3] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 236
[4] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 7
[5] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 8
[6] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 17
[7] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 143
[8] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 202
[9] Itten, Johannes, Design
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1964, p.11
[10] Kandinsky, Wassily, Concerning
the Spiritual in Art, New York: Dover Publications Inc, 1977, p. 13
[11] Paul Klee's diaries appear
to go only from 1898 to 1918, see: Klee, Paul The Diaries of Paul Klee,
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1964
[12] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 174
[13] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 326
[14] Lipsey, Roger, An Art
of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art, Boston and Shaftesbury:
Shambhala, 1988, p. 301
[15] Musafar, Fakir, 'Body Play',
in ( Adam Parfrey, Ed.) Apocalypse Culture, Portland, Oregon:
Feral House, 1990, p. 105
[16] Ouspensky, P.D. In Search
of the Miraculous - Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, Arkana, 1978,
p. 44
[17] Ascott, Roy, 'Noetic Aesthetics:
art and telematic consciousness' in Consciousness Research Abstracts,
proceedings of the "Tucson II" conference (Journal of Consciousness
Studies) University of Arizona, p.171
[18]
Wilber, Ken, Quantum Questions - Mystical Writings of the World's Great
Physicists, Boston and London: Shambhala, 1985, p. ix
[19] Guardian, March
9th 1995
[20] Davies, Paul, The Mind
of God, London: Penguin 1993, p. 15
[21] Davies, Paul, The Mind
of God, London: Penguin 1993, p. 78
[22] Davies, Paul, The Mind
of God, London: Penguin 1993, p. 232
[23] Davies, Paul, God and
the New Physics, London: Penguin 1990, p.229
[24] Tipler, Frank J. The
Physics of Immortality - Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of
the Dead, London: Macmillan, 1994, p. 338
[25] Penrose, Roger, Shadows
of the Mind - A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford
University Press, 1994
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