“When I speak to my students about God, I invariably tell them: If anyone should say to you, ‘Do you believe in God?’ the only appropriate answer to that question is: ‘tell me what you mean by God and I’ll tell you if I believe in that God or not.’ Is this the New Yorker cartoon kind of God, that sits in the clouds, an old man in a caftan? Is this a Spinozist God that we are talking about? Or the God of the Jewish naturalist Mordecai Kaplan: the power that makes for salvation, or is this rather a Maimonidean God: the God that is “knowing” or knowledge itself?”
Rabbi Neil Gillman, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the Jewish Theological Seminary
Introduction
When we say the word “God,” what precisely do we mean? How do we define and construct “religion” and “spirituality” and towards what ends do we employ them? These are the two questions which I hope to address in this post. It should go without saying that I am only able to speak from my own subjective perspective and that there will be as many different answers to the aforementioned two questions as there have been human beings. As always in these posts, my primary aim is to stimulate a thoughtful and engaging conversation so that all of us may benefit from each others’ insights and experiences. Though this post is not exhaustively researched or particularly well-written, I will address these questions progressively under the following headings: Whence Spirituality and Conceptualizing the Divine. Through these distinct yet interrelated discourses I hope to limn my own take on new possibilities in Islamic thought, Islamic spirituality, and Islamic Humanism.
Whence Spirituality
In order to discuss religion and spirituality in the present we need to examine humanity and our evolutionary past. Towards this end, the discipline of archaeology is the primary lens through which we draw our insights. I rely almost exclusively here, in the form of extended paraphrase and quotation, on the art historian and archeologist Nigel Spivey of Cambridge University.[1] In conveying and interpreting one of the professor’s orations on the topic, I attempt to describe my understanding of spirituality as an aesthetic and experiential dimension of the human experience, irrespective of the existence (or non-existence) of any supernatural forces or entities.
From what is determinable from the disciplines of evolutionary biology and population genetics, the species of Homo sapiens have existed for upwards of 200,000 years. It was only 40,000 years ago, however, in the Upper Paleolithic to be precise, that human beings became, as it were, “religious.” A radical development has been observed in our cognitive systems at that particular period: as a species we started to make things for the sake of beauty and not utility, we started to paint pictures, to carve sculptures, and finally to use symbols. As a corollary to the introduction of symbolic forms, we likely began in this period to talk to one another and to play music. In archaeology, this period is referred to as the “creative explosion,” it was a quantum leap in our human capacities. Perhaps the most salient feature of this period, for our purposes, is that humans started burying each other properly, placing flowers and gifts at the site of deceased. These offerings are indicative not only of an attempt at consolation, but also possibly a belief in some form of an afterlife or existence after death.
Sigmund Freud argued that the earliest developments in religiosity were indicative of the advent of a coping mechanism, a means by which humans were able to conceptualize forces and realities outside of our control for which we had not the emotional apparatus with which to contend. This is, however, impertinent to my anthropological interpretation. What is important in the “creative explosion” is the broadening of the human experience to include a “spiritual” aspect of our lives, for lack of a better term. For better or for worse, the appreciation of beauty, art, and music, and the human yearning for transcendence became indissoluble facets of humanity. Wassily Kandinsky, in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, eloquently articulates spirituality as the confluence between these two facets: that the spiritual experience is an “inner resonance” towards beauty that transcends physical appreciation of color and form. For the secularly-minded, one need not be alarmed by the religious overtones associated with the word “spirituality;” the erudite atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling utilizes the word spirituality to describe, among other things, “our enjoyment of beauty and our desire for love.” Spirituality does not, ex vi termini, denote the presence or participation of a supernatural being or agent. I argue that spirituality should rather be thought of as a dimension of the human experience. At this juncture I will add that I frame “religion” as the cultivation of spirituality, of this lofty aspect of humanity. Given that spirituality is a dimension of the human being, religion thereby exists as the process of becoming fully awakened to our human capacities for love and for appreciation of beauty in all its forms. Put differently, religion becomes integral to the actualization of our human potential.
Conceptualizing the Divine
Outside the putative triumvirate of contemporary Jewish-American communities of interpretation, the Orthodox, the Conservative, and the Reform, exists a numerically minute movement which self-identifies as Humanistic Judaism. The late Rabbi Sherwin Wine, a founder of the movement, initiated the term “ignosticism,” roughly synonymous with theological noncognitivism (to be described momentarily), which I find illuminating in discussions about the Divine. The ignostic understanding asserts that other theological positions (theism, agnosticism, atheism) have built-in assumptions about the identity, nature, and characteristics of God. Put differently, a lucid explanation of what one means by “God” must be offered if there is to be a worthwhile discussion of said concept. In recalling the opening quote, it would be of no benefit, for the purposes of this discourse, to discuss God without first specifying what I intend with the word.
I will be candid in saying upfront that I find arguments in favor of God as a supernatural agent or entity, who created the world and human beings, who answers prayers and invades the world to accomplish the divine will – presumptions that are built into the Qur’an and some other scriptural texts – to be of exiguous merit and persuasiveness. I do not rely here on the arguments of scientistic certainty from Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (whom Terry Eagleton has collectively dubbed ‘ditchkins’), rather there are now theologians (Paul Tillich, John A. T. Robinson, John Shelby Spong), ‘ex-theologians’ (Bart Ehrman and Michael Donald Goulder) and atheist philosophers (such as A. C. Grayling, to name one contemporary example) who, for those interested, argue against such God definitions in a more nuanced and philosophical fashion. There may indeed be such a God but it would certainly be beyond my ability to discern. Hopefully, however, Rabbi Gillman’s quote (from the beginning) has alluded to the plurality of possibilities in God definitions. As this post is about my own spirituality, I shall continue towards the understanding of “God” which I find to be most efficacious.
A Zen Buddhist once told me that in Buddhism, one can come to experience that which other traditions would call “God.” In this model of the Divine, God is not a being “out there,” rather God is a dimension of the human experience. God can be understood as a metaphor for the awakened spiritual capacity of a human being.
The poet Jalal al-Din Rumi offers a congruous understanding of God, the sage writes:
“I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only ‘anqa’s habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet’s experience of a great divine manifestation only a “two bow-lengths’ distance from him” but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.”
God is to be found thus at the core of humanity, in the heart which is awakened to love. The search for the Divine outside of ourselves is also addressed by `Ayn al-Quzat Hamadani in the following passage:
“You! Always traversing the world, searching . . . tell me: what benefit has come of it? That which you are seeking is with you; and you seek elsewhere.”
Recalling the aforementioned definitions offered for religion and spirituality, “God” is the radical and transformative love (`ishq) that can exist in the human heart. The attestations to this effect from mystics number as many as those mystics themselves. Attar, for example, devotes The Conference of the Birds to the religious process of discovering God within. I argue that religious practice and ritual should be conceived not as a means to appease a deity but rather a means to cultivate a particular spiritual experience that is characterized by radical, universal love.
John Shelby Spong stands as one modern mystic who has devoted his life towards the elucidation of this concept: “There is a God experience. This God experience calls us out to the edges of our humanity, where we experience, sometimes in ecstatic moments, a sense of mystery, a sense of otherness, and a sense of transcendence, and we call those experiences God. [However, these experiences] can only be described in terms of our cultural prejudices and predispositions.” It is for this reason that I, like Spong, recognize no inerrant scriptures or all-knowing prophets. Of the latter group, none was able to see through a lens that was isolated from his or her own time and place in history.
A pertinent example would be Muhammad who awakened in himself a deep spirituality that fostered a profound sense of empathy, a willingness to forgive, and a desire to improve the lives of others. There is no doubt in the Qur’an that the Prophet felt a deep love for all of humanity and he toiled his entire life to create a just society that reformed the treatment of women, the scorn for orphans, and the neglect of the poor. Muhammad’s system advocated justice and forgiveness above all else. It is also clear, though, that Muhammad took for granted, among other things, an anthropomorphic and supernatural God and the existence of such religious phenomena as heaven and hell that were uncontested and unquestioned in his day. Nonetheless, Muhammad’s love for humanity and for God was an inspiration for later writers and mystics who would re-interpret God, expand upon these themes, and who would boldly declare that the Divine could be found in the hearts of humanity.
I have attempted to illuminate religion as the process of becoming fully human and of cultivating the dimension of the human experience that is characterized by a connectedness with all life and the cosmos, a universal love, and an overwhelming aesthetic response. As humanists we benefit tremendously from the religious language and symbolism whose efficacy augments such experiences. This is the spiritual dimension of humanity, whether we are religious or not, and whether some form of transcendent reality exists – in the way most humans have conceptualized – or not. Without solving that previous question, I think of God as the awakened spirituality, the `ishq that can exist in every human being.
“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
- First Epistle of John, Chapter 4 Verse 8, New Testament
[1] The following has been derived mostly from a brief lecture by Dr. Spivey. For a more detailed presentation of these thoughts one can consult one of the author’s books: How Art Made the World
-John Miller
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