Ineffable Stream – Human Filters

September 25, 1966

Plainfield
(rewrite Lakeland 1984)

Ineffable Stream – Human Filters

Today I suggest there are religions and there is religion. Beyond the humanistic emphasis which generally prevails in the way my convictions are formed and interpretations made, I believe a certain resonance sounds within us responding to the great source of all life. Consider the Ineffable Stream of creation and change which to our senses is known only through human filters, particularly religious systems and cultures.

Until last Sunday I was going to quote today as a poetic text those lines by Shelley from “Adonais,”

“The one remains, the many change and pass,
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.”

But last week, John Ciardi, affable and wise, convinced me that one should attempt to communicate in 20th century words rather than 18th or 19th century forms because the older forms do not communicate with modern man. Therefore instead of Shelley, let me quote E. E. Cummings, for I believe he too was reaching for an understanding of the ineffable in those lines he called,

i thank you God

i thank You God for this most amazing
day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

To me, “ineffable” means undefinable but real, unutterable but authentic, nevertheless. While that which is ineffable does not lend itself to philosophical systems or formal composition, there is a reality which the poets have reached for, so I believe. Shelley was feeling for the Ineffable when he wrote of “the One remains, the many change and pass.” E.E. Cummings was trying to slash through the explainable to that which is elusive when he wrote,

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

But we do doubt; we rely on the experience filtered through our ways of human culture. Too frequently the filters screen out the power and beauty of that unimaginable. In the same way that candid theologians have always found it astonishingly easy to say what God is not and staggeringly difficult to express what God is, so I would have you consider how the human filters distort and transform that quality of total existence the poets call the “One that remains” or “the unimaginable You.”

There may be some of you who will recognize that I am attempting to elaborate two basic points of my beliefs. First, that experience precedes interpretation; second, that I respond to Abraham Maslow’s hypothesis of the “peak experience.” To quote him, “all mystical or peak experiences are the same in their essence and always have been the same. They should therefore come to agree in principle on teaching that which is common to all.” And again, “Much theology, much verbal religion throughout the world, can be considered the more or less vain effort to put into communicable words and formulae and into symbolic rituals and ceremonies the original mystical experience of the prophet.” (RELIGIOUS VALUES AND PEAK EXPERIENCES, p. 20 & 24).

Aldous Huxley was on the same search in THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY writing that “The divine ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being.” (p. 21).

The first observation I would offer is that the human filters of creed, tradition, and dogma screen out the reality of the power of this Ineffable Stream, this ultimate reality. But the mythology survives. Human mythologies are never-endingly demonstrated to be myths. By definition, a myth is not true, but points to some abstraction believed to be true. But many believers have trusted the myth to be reality rather than representation.

Consider the myth of the Holy Book – the Bible or the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. The scripture takes written form when scribes or disciples attempt to preserve the spiritual or moral truths uttered by the prophet or poet. But the language forms can only be of the time of the writing. More basic still, no language is adequate to transmit the profound experience which inspired the religious leader. But the impact of such a person is so powerful that continuing sanctity becomes attached to what is essentially static, the book. There is a self-defeating nature to the process because the greater attachment there is to past interpretations of past experience, the less sensitivity there can be to immediate experience. The human filters of one’s immediate experience have much more readiness to be open to the peak experience than the human filters of the past where the screen has become muddied up by the repetition of many interpretations.

This is true of religious dogmas and creeds as well as of a Holy Book. Whitehead wrote that “the dogmas of religion are the attempts to formulate in precise terms the truths disclosed in the religious experience of mankind.” (RELIGION IN THE MAKING, p. 57). When the myth becomes authority rather than illumination, it shadows intellect and deceives emotion.

The orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a pertinent example. Christian theologians are usually candid in admitting that the doctrine of the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – is not a New Testament teaching. There is no evidence that the disciples formulated their faith in any such abstract theology. Confronted by Hellenistic philosophies and Mediterranean religions of dying-rising savior gods, the growing Church developed the Trinity as a theological explanation of their interpretation of the religious feelings of earlier founders of the Christian movement.

The orthodox justify this process of perpetuating interpretations as the best way to preserve and teach religious truth. H. Richard Niebuhr wrote, “without symbols nothing has intelligibility and form for us.” (THE RESPONSIBLE SELF, p. 157).

But Unitarians and Universalists, as well as many others, have moved away from fixed theological formulas and do not accept creeds fixed by tradition or church authority. For one thing there is inevitably huge inconsistencies in the pat answers of religion directed by the past. Rudolf Bultmann, the German theologian who has shaken some of the easy assumptions of the Christian believer pointed out that early Christianity was a blend of several strands of history or tradition; and many inconsistencies were simply ignored as the Church grew and accumulated authority: “The world is the creation of God, who cares for the birds and decks the grass of the field with its beauty (Matthew 6: 26,30). Yes at the same time it is the realm of Satan, the ‘god of the world.’ (II Corinthians 4:4), the prince of this world (John 12:31). The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof (I Corinthians 10:26). Yet creation is subject to vanity and corruption, yearning for the day of its deliverance. (Romans 8: 19,22)....” (PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY, p. 178).

The reasonable mind turns away not only from such inconsistent interpretations, but also observes that the dogma or the symbol tends to become the object of worship rather than the experience the symbol is supposed to represent. Fixed liturgies, rigidly performed sacraments, safe-journey medals, the ritualistic gestures – all these become magic formulas rather than meaningful symbols. The experience has been filtered out by interpretations.

In the NY Times Book Review section, (9/4/66. p. 2) John Bowen writes about an author who “once described some seagulls in one of his novels. He went to Brittany to check its description by observation and was forced to the decision that since seagulls he observed were not much like the seagulls he had described, his seagulls were more real than the real seagulls.” Myths that filter out facts let in a pious sentimentality that may be intolerant of common sense.

Such is the continuing error of those who filter interpretations of new experience through the screen of bygone myth, dogma, or authority. The ancient symbols become more real than one’s own experience. Then the ineffable fails to come through the filters. The sensitive mystic, Meister Eckhart, comprehended this in one sentence when he wrote, “He who seeks God under settled form lays hold of the form while missing the God concealed in it.”

The second observation I would make is that none of us are free from the filters through which experience is interpreted. We may reject religious orthodoxies but nevertheless our experiences are filtered through and expressed in some structure of belief and culture.

We live in a particular time, 1966; we are members of a culture experiencing turbulent social change. What we say and what we do hinges on what our values are, where our self-interests reside, and to what degree we feel sufficiently free to transcend the ways our cultures and subcultures expect us to say and do.

Konrad Lorenz wrote “the best definition of man is that he is the one creature capable of reflection, of seeing himself in the frame of the surrounding universe.” (ON AGGRESSION, p. 295). But man’s vision of himself is filtered through the expectations others have – the cultural framework.

Consider the experience of any international incident; then compare how differently Washington, Moscow, Paris, and Peking will interpret the event. Sometimes of course there is deliberate deceit or double-talk. But often enough differences can be accounted for by the varied interpretations, which are the filtered products of unlike ideological screens and unidentical basic biases.

Let me illustrate by an ancient event and a modern process. In the days of the early Christian movement, there are indications that the apostle Paul was upset as religious fellowship was being disrupted because people separated into divisive groups. The missionary religion had wide appeal, drawing converts from both the rich and poor or slave classes. But seemingly within the Christian fellowship itself, the rich and cultured separated out from the less educated and poorer, refusing to share the provisions of the Christian fellowship meals. Each class experienced this new faith but interpreted it differently, at least insofar as conduct was concerned. Social structures and culture were greatly different. Even the enthusiasm of a new religion did not prevent such separation. It was the separation of suburb and slum, if you will.

A few months ago a scientist was discussing the explosion of new knowledge which rapidly makes textbooks, educational equipment and methods obsolete or outdated. He commented that scientific knowledge was doubling every two years; and then remarked provocatively, “after a person receives his PhD and leaves the University for professional work, he very soon ought to consider himself a dropout because knowledge in the field will have so rapidly advanced or critically changed.”

As knowledge modifies and restructures method and the former achievements, the more up-to-date scientist may be filtering experience through a different screen of assumptions and values than did his predecessor in the university or the laboratory.

Alfred North Whitehead phrased the dynamics of such evolution when he wrote, “Progress in truth – truth of science and truth of religion – is mainly a progress in the framing of concepts, in discarding artificial abstractions or partial metaphors, and in evolving notions which strike more deeply into the root of reality.” (RELIGION IN THE MAKING, p. 127).

My third observation is to emphasize that it is important not to deny or ignore the manner in which our beliefs, attitudes, and acts are filtered through a cultural framework which may differ from the family across town or the nation across the world. Such a recognition will not enable us to escape from our filters, but such a recognition may motivate us to k now ourselves better and to understand the framework which contains our beliefs and values.

I’m sure you all are familiar with the kaleidoscope, the viewing device wherein we observe patterns of colored glass. We see ever-new patterns by turning the kaleidoscope. This summer was my first experience with a taleidoscope, similar to a kaleidoscope, except that at regular intervals in the design end, there are glass lenses which see through the tube to objects beyond it. As one turns the tube looking at a face, for example, we see through the lens, shifting views of the face, punctuated by colorful design creating varying distortions like the changing faces of circumstances as different lenses come to focus.

So with understanding not only our view of others but also our interpretation of experience. The view is our own, but to recognize that the lenses are fitted into our own culture, and within the culture, individual design, [we] will increase our understanding and should strengthen our desire to know ourselves better in order to know reality better.

Does this imprisonment by culture and belief indicate that we cannot be touched by the Ineffable Stream, the “unimaginable You?” There are many who would assert that basic reality is unknowable, beyond any possible reach of human understanding. Many would quote Isaiah (40/12):

“To whom then will ye liken God?
Or what likeness will ye compare with him?”

When quoting such ancient Biblical agnosticism, one must observe that the word “God,” itself, is an image, an interpretation of experience, not the experience itself.

No one can provide assurances that stand the tests of reason or unanimous interpretation. Most persons settle for the security of a creed or the comfort of never brooding about such difficult and tantalizing notions as the Ineffable Stream.

Yet I believe there is an adventure of mind and spirit waiting for those who reach for some taste, touch, or hint of that which was before we were; which will be when we are no more. We can reach for the experience of the Creative Source, that Power which defines matter out of energy and transforms matter to energy is an awesome reality. The words of Christian theology are not illuminating for me but this should not prevent me from reflecting on an interpretation that does put me in touch, however remotely, with what is basic and never-ending.

The experience which filters through for me is creativity – creation, re-creation; new forms, refined values ever emerging from the old. My ideas may be heretical, ludicrous, irrational or whatever to those who use a different filter. But beliefs arise, values emerge, words accrue because of the impact of the basic experience of living upon the idea system and emotional set of the human person.

As an affirmation of belief, I hold that operation of mind and emotion upon experience is not reaching for something that is not there. Symbols change. Rituals eventually fail to communicate, but the basic real force of our Universe abides ever.

The poet, A.L. Lazarus (Christian Century, 8/24/66, p. 1028), says it well in his lines, “Some People”:

Some people say that god is love;
they mean the pass-making kind, perhaps,
as distinguished from the merely passive.

Some people feel in their bones that god is sin
and worship religiously within that shrine.

Some people get tired of waiting for god
but never do anything about it.

For others, up and giving makes their day
and even reactivates their metabolism.

Faith, hope, and charity, sacred or profane:
all these deserve their innocent divinities.

Some few divine the true theology:
creating is all they know, or need to know;
Someone Out There is also doing it.

No one is more conscious than I that this sermon has been difficult to follow. It is much easier to speak of practical problems, of obvious issues, of the values and political choices before us. It is not difficult to take apart the premises, conclusions, and implications of another’s religion.

I have no evidence that reflection on origins and realities we cannot understand will make us better or more effective persons. But even the most pragmatic of persons will concede that the human person is a curious being. He speculates about the force that created us; he wonders whether life is worthwhile; or whether we are more than a spectacular, conscious mixture of accidental life, heedless evolution and compulsive culture. Cosmic curiosity is a unique character of the human family.

Whether or not we ever are touched authentically by the Ineffable Stream of creation is not demonstrable by laboratory experiment or learned dissertation or devout theology or sacred ritual.

But if through the filters of human living one can still surmise that beyond us there is a unified force of splendid energy impregnating all that we call life, then perhaps we may say with Auden (lines in praise of W.B. Yeats):

“In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”