Promptings of the Spirit :: Baha'i Perspectives

Promptings of the Spirit

nadim November 9th, 2009

A few days ago my new German flatmate walked into the room with a perturbed look on his face. A Masters student in Finance, he moved to London six weeks ago excited about the prospect of spending a year studying at a top university and experiencing life in one of the world’s great capitals. Yet matters were weighing heavily on him – and all he wanted to do at this juncture was pack up and return home once the year was over.

longing He confessed waking up that morning in a contemplative mood, filled with profound thoughts about meaning and purpose – rather uncharacteristic of him, he added. But these thoughts were not entirely random either. For one, he had observed his classmates devoting every waking hour to their studies, in an almost mechanistic way, without pausing to ask themselves why they were doing it. Was the lure of the job that might follow really worth all the fuss?

Life in London wasn’t as enriching as he had imagined either. Sure, it is pacey, hip and multicultural, but like most newcomers to the city – and even some who have been here for years – he had fallen prey to the paradox of big city life. That acute awareness of being surrounded by masses of people from all walks of life, yet at the same time feeling isolated and alone.

On this latter theme, we tossed some thoughts around for a while. What was it about life in the urban sprawl, or the structure of the education system, or the norms of acceptable dialogue and interaction that give rise to feeling like you may as well be the only living organism on this planet? Surely there are elements of the human condition that are being overlooked here, but what could they be? As I suggested that they might be related to conditions that uplift the human spirit, a palpable expression of acknowledgement appeared on his face, at which point the conversation somehow drifted to other themes.

Yet in my mind, the words “systematic” and “exclude” rang loud and clear, as I recalled the passage from Century of Light that seemed to encapsulate the moment :

…the pressure of a dogmatic materialism, claiming to be the voice of “science”, that seeks systematically to exclude from intellectual life all impulses arising from the spiritual level of human consciousness.

Applying this statement to most tertiary education systems, it is quite an indictment. And another passage from the Prosperity of Humankind (part of a larger critique on contemporary development theory, and well worth reading in its entirety):

For the vast majority of the world’s population, the idea that human nature has a spiritual dimension — indeed that its fundamental identity is spiritual — is a truth requiring no demonstration. It is a perception of reality that can be discovered in the earliest records of civilization and that has been cultivated for several millennia by every one of the great religious traditions of humanity’s past. Its enduring achievements in law, the fine arts, and the civilizing of human intercourse are what give substance and meaning to history. In one form or another its promptings are a daily influence in the lives of most people on earth and… the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable and incalculably potent.

These two passages, referring to the potent longings of the human spirit, help to explain why strictly rational approaches to development would alone fail to yield the inner satisfaction sought by every soul. We might imagine, for example, that putting people of different cultures within close vicinity of one another (the so-called “melting pot”) will magically lead to people holding hands and singing together.

Unfortunately, it’s not so straightforward. This year, the Scottish Interfaith Council produced a document entitled Values in Harmony, containing representations from 10 major Religion and Belief communities, including the Baha’i Faith. In it, one finds this striking quote from Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

Multiculturalism has run its course, and has not led to integration but segregation. It has allowed groups to live separately with no incentive to integrate…Culture is fragmenting into non-communicating systems of belief in which civil discourse ends and reasoned argument becomes impossible.

While multiculturalism has helped to weaken age-old prejudices and contributed to a greater sense that we are a single human race, I can also see where Rabbi Sacks is coming from. How will the motivation arise to genuinely reach out and integrate with other cultures, if not driven by an inner belief system that encourages it? And how nice would it be if more welcoming neighbourhood communities started to spring up across our cities as a result?

As I come full circle to my flatmate’s sentiments on that day, I am left with two conclusions:

That at some point, every individual will experience those inner promptings that lead to the question “why?” and we can scarcely predict when that point will be.
That to be an effective antidote to alienation in the big city, multiculturalism has to be infused with a big dose of spirit…