Published in Le Sacré Aujourd’hui, précédé de Hommage à Michel Camus, in the series Transdisciplinarité.  Edited by Basarab Nicolescu.  Paris:  Éditions du Rocher, 2003, pp. 165-175.

Finding “the Rockshelf “: Rediscovering the Sacred in the 21st Century

Karen-Claire Voss

In a poem entitled Transcendental Etude, Adrienne Rich wrote of “the rockshelf, further forming underneath everything that grows.” [1] She never pronounced the word ‘sacred,’ but I have always been sure that the sacred is precisely what she must have been referring to.  In any case, it must be said that the sacred indeed seems to be difficult to locate in the space/time of 2003 and I cannot help wondering aloud here, at the outset of this article, about why.  I think the main reason the sacred is so hard to see or feel has everything to do with the fact that most of us live in an environment that is continuously bombarded with images generated by the media.  Even if we do not watch television, we are subjected to advertisements in magazines and newspapers, on billboards, on the walls we pass while walking, on public transportation, on the radio, and lately, even when we go to the theater to watch a film.  These images do nothing to connect us with the sacred; rather, they actively function to dis-connect us from it.  They function to discourage genuine, lived contact with the natural world, a singularly unfortunate concomitant, because Nature has provided occasions for epiphanies of one sort or another throughout the history of humanity.  Another problem is that in the minds of the general public, what constitutes true science, which was understood in antiquity to involve the study of the entire universe, has been reduced to that which is produced by science:  rockets, bombs, chemical products, and of course, the ubiquitous computer.  This is a huge mistake, because those things are not science, but technology, which, as Basarab Nicolescu describes, is only “the bastard daughter of fundamental science: she has one foot in knowledge and one foot elsewhere.” [2] Technology per se does nothing to connect us with Nature, whereas true science does precisely that. True science leaves open the possibility of wonder.  Technology tends to finish wonder, and instead, to fill us with the sensation of being proud at human cleverness.  Yet, daily life, at least in a big city, means we are immersed in technology, rather than science, and thus, excluded from wonder. We have collectively arrived at a point where the mere idea of contemplating the sacred can strike one as unrealistic and irrelevant, as a speculative luxury that could only be indulged in by someone who has lost touch with what are generally referred to as “the realities” of the world.  As for myself, I wholeheartedly agree with Nicolescu’s assertion that “Reality encompasses the Subject, the Object, and the Sacred, which are three facets of one and the same Reality.” [3]  

My remarks here revolve around four key ideas that, for the sake of argument, I will assume as valid:  1) the sacred is part of the very structure of human consciousness, 2) the mere fact of our verticality means that human beings organize space around a center, [4] 3) the act of becoming human is a religious act, and 4) Reality is comprised of the potential as well as the actual.    

Let us first take up the idea that the sacred is “an element in the structure of consciousness, not a stage in the history of consciousness, as Mircea Eliade wrote over thirty years ago in his preface to The Quest. [5] His view is that simply by virtue of the fact of our being human, we seek points of reference to help us orient ourselves within spatial and temporal infinity.  Through a dialectic process between our finite selves and the infinite universe, an intersection of the finite with the infinite, an absolute point of orientation, a center, is manifested.  That “moment” of intersection is what occasions the manifestation of the sacred.  He also makes another very important comment:  “On the most archaic levels of culture, living as a human being is in itself a religious act, for alimentation, sexual life, and work, have a sacramental value.  In other words, to be—or rather, to become—a man means to be “religious.” [6]   This powerfully clear statement provides an excellent starting point for embarking on the task of considering the sacred in the world today.  It is true that in every urban environment throughout the 21^st century world, continual contact with Nature is virtually suppressed and that even the mere awareness of it is relegated to the furthermost reaches of consciousness.  It is also true that human beings now occupy center stage.  No longer eclipsed by natural events, no more appearing as insignificant beings against an overwhelmingly enormous backdrop constituted by the natural world, we humans have for the most part succeeded in dominating nature.  Save for the occasional “natural disaster”—a flood, hurricane, tornado, or earthquake—events which seem to shock us more than they did in previous ages, when Nature was popularly perceived as omnipresent, overwhelming—it is human beings who dominate.  It is we who created and maintain the vast array of technologies comprising the framework of this “post-modern” world within which we live and move and (try) to have our being.   Thus, if we are to consider the state of the sacred in the world today, we have to start by considering the state of the human being. [7]

With respect to the significance of our verticality, here is what Mircea Eliade had to say:

So, we are vertical beings.  The earth is beneath our feet, the sky, and beyond it, countless galaxies are above our heads, or curving outwards beyond the limits of our individual bodies, depending on which theory about the nature of the universe is true.  Our experience of being vertical beings in space is perhaps the main reason why we tend to organize space as we do. 

With respect to the claim that to be a human being means to be religious, we are confronted with the question of what being religious means, and for that, must look to etymology.  The word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin religere, meaning ‘to gather up again,’ ‘to collect again.’  What are we trying to do as we live each day?  Each of us, even those who call themselves atheists, is trying, as would any good Kabbalist, to restore the pieces into a whole.  The greatest rift we vertical beings experience is that which we perceive between the finite, where our feet are planted, and the infinite, towards which every human heart and mind soars.  To be religious has little or nothing to do with dogma or doctrine.  It simply means to be in the process of attempting to gather up the fragments, to bind together the finite with the infinite, so both form one great whole.  To wholeheartedly engage oneself in this process of learning what it means to be human is a religious act.  Since this understanding is light years beyond that of understanding religion as the opiate of the people (and it is certainly that when religion is misappropriated, rendered devoid of its real function, and used for nefarious ends; e.g., to obtain power, position, or wealth), it seems that on this view, even an atheist could entertain the possibility of the existence of the sacred.  As Eliade once said in an interview:  “The sacred does not imply belief in God, in gods, or spirits.  It is . . . the experience of a reality and the source of the consciousness of existing in the world.”  And as Nicolescu says: 

The sacred is first of all an experience; it is transmitted by a feeling—the “religious” feeling—of that which links beings and things and, in consequence, induces in the very depths of the human being an absolute respect for the others, to whom he is linked by their all sharing a common life on one and the same earth.” [9]

As for the idea that by virtue of the fact of our verticality we organize space around a center, we have only to look at the spaces of our homes and of our public buildings.  No matter whether the structure is a tract house, or a multi-story steel and glass shopping center, the space is generally organized around a center of some kind.  When we consider this together with the fact that places which are regarded as sacred inevitably function as a center toward which people are drawn and around which stories of the miraculous spring up, it seems one could appropriately comment on an important characteristic contemporary dwelling places and working places—all officially secular—share with places that are officially or popularly regarded as sacred.  It is that the idea of the sacred and the idea of the Center are inextricably linked. [10]   The Center is the point toward which we turn for orientation, that “rockshelf . . . forming underneath everything that grows.”     

With these things in mind, let us turn to Stéphane Lupasco’s work in philosophy of physics and his spectrum of potentialization/actualization.  Following the desideratum that it is worthwhile to try to effect a “reconciliation” between the scientific and humanist cultures, [11] that it is necessary for even ordinary human beings to try and take account of the discoveries of science, so their world view (as well as their experience of the world) is enlarged, [12] I have worked to understand what Nicolescu has to say about Lupasco’s work and have been able to grasp some of its implications.  They are not only profound, but also extremely relevant to the present discussion. The invention of the printing press and the discovery of gravity both revolutionized the way people thought about the world.  Now we have quantum physics. Why do we not yet have a “quantum vision of the world”? [13]  

Lupasco articulates a taxonomy of gradations that occur on a spectrum ranging from absolute potentiality to absolute actualization.  He thus provides us with taxonomy of gradations of being.  It is significant to note that this spectrum does not have being at one end and non-being on the other.  Rather, Lupasco’s spectrum encompasses potentiality and actuality, and both poles are located within the sphere of being.  The number of gradations on this spectrum appears to be infinite, at least theoretically.  However, regardless of whether the gradations are finite or infinite in number one important thing is that this spectrum shows that contrary to popular understanding, that which is potential is as much a part of reality as that which is actual.   In other words, the potential has being, it is.  Secondly, it is very important that the gradations themselves all occur across a single spectrum that entails their interconnectedness in reality.  In other words, to maintain that all things are interconnected is not merely a poetic conceit.  Moreover, it appears that that which is potential is as much a part of reality as that which is actual and that gradations of being are interconnected—have an empirical basis.  It is this aspect of his theory I think is critically important for even non-scientists to grasp. Why? For one thing, we are all accustomed to accord value only to what Lupasco would describe as actually actual.  For another, we are all accustomed to speaking about that which is potential as unreal. Our thinking seems to proceed thusly:  That which is potential is unreal.  What is unreal we deem impossible.  Practical people are not given to pursuing things that are impossible.  Therefore, since practical people will not devote time to thinking about the unreal, because it is impossible, we, as practical people, will not devote time to thinking seriously about what is potentially true, potentially possible.  The current state of affairs leaves us utterly without the possibility of opening ourselves to what Lupasco might call the potentialization of the T-state; i.e., the state of the included middle, the state that is beyond contradiction.   These ideas are not merely intellectually interesting.  They are not simply intended as fodder for pedantic discussion.  They are living ideas.  If we grasp their significance they will actually change our view of the world, and any change in worldview entails a change in our experience of the world.  For that matter, any change in our experience of the world entails a change in our worldview.  There is no getting away from the intimate connection between worldview and experience, regardless of how attached we might be to what I like to call the Myth of Objectivity. [14] Now we can begin to consider what taking account of these ideas could mean in terms of considering the place of the sacred in the world.  More relevantly, more precisely, we can begin to consider what they could mean in terms of considering the place of the sacred in our world today.

It is indeed true that the sacred seems far away from us today, however, that is only an illusion.  The sacred is as near to us now as it was thousands of years ago, when the world was much, much newer.  The question that remains is how humankind can collectively effect what Jacob Boehme and others called a “second birth.”  Even the combined power of the media and the Internet cannot enable an idea like this to reach everyone.  There must be another way. 

The work of recovering the sacred cannot be a kind of program imposed from without.  It must be done individually and must begin from within each and every one of us. How?  One thing we must do is to look to the past.  All of my energy, all of my hope, is going into what has been described as a “quest for tomorrow,” [15] but that tomorrow will not appear full blown, as Athena from the head of Zeus.  It will necessarily emerge gradually, from out of a context of yesterdays, countless yesterdays, and as Lupasco’s spectrum indicates, it is in yesterday, in the past, that the seeds for a future characterized by creativity, rather than destruction, and by hope, rather than despair can be found.  Much of what is needed can be found in the sacred myths and philosophies of the past, for it is in those things we find described a vision of a world without seams, without the conceptual demarcation between the Subject and the Object that has wreaked havoc with our exterior as well as our interior life since at least the nineteenth century. [16]   For over twenty years, my work has been concerned with the origins of, reasons for, and errors in upholding the still prevailing dichotomy between Subject and Object.   I have argued that this dichotomy is the result of a grievously flawed conceptual framework that actually accords ontological status to it.  It is adherence to this conceptual view of the world which underlies all of the problems that plague the contemporary world, and moreover, if this one thing were changed, other changes would be entailed, changes that would be so deeply radical the entire world would begin to look like something very close to Utopia.   It is as though we have developed to the point where we have forgotten our roots.  We need to go back and collect what has been lost—not the dross, but the gold.  Then, and only then, can we go forward to a future comprised of births and beginnings, rather than remain in a present marked by “’deaths’ and   ‘ends.’” [17]   Such a future lies beyond the place where we are now. 

Another thing that is vitally necessary is to gather together devalued words and concepts; e.g., poet, poetry, metaphor, religion, whole, heal, myth, psychology, philosophy, university, and revalue them.  An attenuated list of their real meanings:  ‘poet’ and ‘poetry,’ from the Greek ‘poiein,’ meaning to make, to create, to do; ‘metaphor,’ again from the Greek, ’meta,’ above, and ‘pherein,’ to carry [18] I have already commented on the meaning of the word religion. [19] ‘Whole’ and ‘heal’ are both etymologically related to the word ’holy.’ [20] The word ‘myth,’ now generally used to indicate something that is not true, is derived from the Greek ‘mu,’ meaning ‘to make a sound with the mouth,’ and came to designate especially divine sound.  The role of the mythmaker is to make a sound; i.e., to tell a story about the world. [21]   ‘Psychology’ comes from the Greek ‘psyche,’ meaning ‘soul’ and ‘logos,’ ‘study,’ and thus means ‘the study of the soul.’ [22] ‘Philosophy’ is from ‘filo,’ ‘lover’ and ‘Sofia,’ the Wisdom figure; thus, to be a philosopher means to be a lover of wisdom.  Finally, the word ‘university’ is etymologically related to the ‘universe.’ A university should be a place set aside for the study of the universal [23] as opposed to being a place devoted to the excruciatingly painstaking observation, recording, validating, categorizing, classifying and memorization of minutiae from various ever so well-defined, separate fields, to the exclusion of the universe.  It is more than a little interesting to note that the transdisciplinary vision of the world has much in common with those myths and philosophies, those words and concepts. While grounded in the findings of contemporary quantum physics, these very findings provide empirical grounds for accepting ancient world views that held that the human being emerged from Nature, was in fact a part of Nature, that Reality is comprised of many more levels than the one encompassed by Newtonian physics, and finally, that every level is dependent on every other level for its actualization.  This suggests that we must embark on a process of re-membering that which has been forgotten.  For example, all the great religious traditions tell us the human being is made in the image of God, [24] and there are various teachings about the relation between the microcosm and the macrocosm. [25] If we bear in mind all these things, together with Eliade’s contention that the sacred is not a stage in human consciousness, but part of its very structure, as well as the other ideas that have been discussed here, it follows that the sacred is an integral part of the structure of Reality itself.  Thus, the problem of rediscovering the sacred in the 21^st century is really a simple matter.  We need only to look, and to see, really to see, what is.

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Fatih University, Istanbul

31 January 2003