By Stephen Russell-Lacy.
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We notice a seeming random hurt and misery in the world. This suggests there is no life force behind the universe: no power of justice, goodness, or love. Is there no divine source for existence?
Despite the reality of suffering in the world with its decay, disease, and death, a point immediately arises. Is there not also living cells, instinct, growth, healing and beauty around in nature? Some would say these amount to signs of a universal goodness to balance all that is bad.
Living bodies showing a life force
Spiritually minded biologists find an awe-inspiring loving and wise design in the biochemical intricacies of the living cell. They notice the incredible creative functioning of the neurological brain beyond what humans have ever programmed into their computers.
Every day, we are finding out more about living bodies in the natural world. One can write about these creatures but you’ve got to see them in their stunning variety of colour and form. When you look at photographs of life you see incredible things. They are found in the depth of the ocean, under a microscope, on a mountain, anywhere.
In all animals, and also in our own bodies, we consciously taste and swallow food. But then the digestive canal acts without our help in converting the food into energy.
Instinct as a life force
Naturalists have written about instinctive behaviour in nature. The creative force behind the natural world seems to have implanted a love of offspring in all creatures. It has built something into mammals that protects against predators. Birds automatically build nests for their young, which they feed and defend. Without anything teaching them, these creatures navigate unerringly during their annual migration.
Growth and healing
Plants spring to life. Is there not also a stream of creative design into bodily growth? If so, this is an inflow with no human technology to make it happen. The embryo develops during gestation and the body and mind transform from human infancy into adulthood.
Anti-bodies will appear in the bloodstream to counter disease germs. This is an example of how an infusion of healing maintains a balance of organic life.
Counselling and other quality human relationships also show this healing presence. Inspiration to use helpful words encourages hope for those with negative moods. The insight for saying the right thing offers comfort and calm to those suffering from physical pain.
Beauty
Although beauty in art seems to have gone out of fashion, it is still very much around in nature. Like the immense splendour observed by the latest telescopes looking at the night sky. Beauty can be said to be something to do with harmony, balance, rhythm. It captures our attention, satisfying and raising the mind.
Roger Scruton, philosopher suggests that living without an awareness of beauty is like living in a spiritual desert. He argues that the artists of the past were aware that life was full of chaos and suffering. But they had a remedy for this and the remedy was beauty. He reckons that a beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy. It shows human life to be worthwhile.
I would say that beauty is the spirit within the natural degree of existence.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
(John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
Spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg suggests what it is that arouses our feeling that a human face is beautiful. He thinks it is not the face itself, but the affection shining from it. There is a spirit within the natural that stirs our feelings, not the natural on its own.
“Even in some of the most painful moments I’ve witnessed as a doctor, I find a sense of beauty … That our brains are wired to register another person’s pain, to want to be moved by it and do something about it, is profoundly heartening.” (Physician-poet Rafael Campo)
We see what we look for
They say ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. Likewise, perhaps appreciating a life-force of goodness within nature is a matter of spiritual intuition. I would suggest this is why religious and spiritual belief systems advocate self-reflection. We are beset with the radio, television and print media telling us all the negative stuff – natural disasters and disease, bad economic forecasts, and many voices expressing uneasy feelings about all sorts of bad news. So we may need help to appreciate the positive. Not just being aware of hardship and pain but also learning to discover what uplifts the human spirit and offers deeper happiness. Religious and spiritual beliefs can inspire confidence, hope, and persistence.
Life force as a hidden providence
Another way of looking at this life force is noticing a working of providence within our lives. In other words we might see a hidden provision of foresight, good fortune, and care flowing into the world despite all our troubles and difficulties.
So the question arises, ‘If it is true that the operation of providence in life is hidden from view, then how do we know it exists?’ The answer I find helpful is that when we look at the bigger picture then we can notice how events often conspire to create a good outcome in the longer run.
It is often impossible to assess from our limited perspective whether a single setback we suffer is good or bad. Nevertheless, don’t we tend to easily jump to negative conclusions?
There is an ancient Taoist parable that tells of an old man and his son who lived alone in poor conditions. Their only possession of value was a horse.
One day, the horse ran away. The neighbours came by to offer sympathy, telling the old man how unlucky he was. ‘How do you know?’ asked the old man.
The following day the horse returned, bringing with it several wild horses, which the old man and his son locked inside their gate. This time the neighbours hurried over to congratulate the old man on his good fortune. ‘How do you know?’ asked the old man.
The next thing that happened was that his son tried to ride one of the wild horses but fell off and broke his leg. The neighbours were quick to tell the old man that this was a disastrous turn of events. ‘How do you know?’ asked the old man.
Soon after, the army came through, press-ganging young men into service to fight a battle far away. The soldiers took all the local young men – except the old man’s son because his leg was broken.
Like the neighbours, we often don’t notice any presence of providence in our lives because assumptions and disappointments so fill our state of mind.
However:
“We are allowed to see divine providence from behind but not face to face, and when we are in a spiritual state, not in a materialistic state. Seeing divine providence from behind but not face to face is seeing it after the fact but not before.” (Emanuel Swedenborg)
Swedenborg on providence
Swedenborg points out that perception of the working of providence as it occurs would compel belief in God rather than allow us to remain free to think what we please as human beings. Otherwise, we would become like robots.
He wrote that we can still know and acknowledge it in a more general way.
“People who have become spiritual … and have become wise by casting off their sense of self-importance see divine providence in the whole world and in every least part of it. They see it if they look at natural events, they see it if they look at civic events, they see it if they look at spiritual events, in the way things coincide and the way they follow in sequence, in purposes and means and results, in useful events, in forms, in things great and things small.” (Emanuel Swedenborg)
According to this way of thinking, the divine intention is that we act freely and rationally.
I would say that no one can prove God’s providence and its acknowledgement must remain an act of religious faith. We can only notice its results when we look backwards in life.
‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards’ (Soren Kierkegaard)
Only looking back in time can we see blessings in disguise
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Winston Churchill suffered from a lisp being unable to pronounce the letter “S.” He fought to overcome this but never quite succeeded; instead he gradually made it a distinctive part of his oratory, turning a liability into an asset.
He suffered worse from the episodes of clinical depression he had throughout his life. He referred to his dark moods as his “Black Dog”. His parents were aristocrats: his father was a famous politician and his mother an American socialite. He did not have a close relationship with them and was largely brought up by nannies and attending boarding schools. We might wonder whether his recurrent depressive episodes heightened his ability to realistically assess the threat that Germany posed. Was it because he had battled illness and despair during his whole life, that he could convey to others that they could overcome despair, even in the bleak period of 1940?
If so, looking back on his life, his suffering resulted in persistence and optimism. Characteristics he employed to lift his nation in its ‘darkest hour’.
“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” (Winston Churchill)
HELEN KELLER
Helen Keller became both blind and deaf after suffering a nearly fatal illness at nineteen months of age. Seemingly sentenced to a life of isolation, Helen made a dramatic breakthrough at the age of six, when she learned to communicate with the help of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Unlike many disabled people of her era, Helen refused to live in seclusion; instead, she achieved fame as a writer, humanitarian, and social activist with understanding for other handicapped people.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” (Helen Keller)
KHALIL GIBRAN
Khalil Gibran is famous for his writing which is full of lyrical outpourings and expresses his deeply religious and mystical nature.
Gibran was no stranger to personal suffering. His relationship with his father was difficult and often strained; not surprising as the father was a rough man with a bad temper, who alienated his wife and children. This autocratic, temperamental man was hostile to Kahlil’s artistic nature and was not a loving person.
As a child, Khalil experienced the social and cultural disruption of exile in America, when his mother took the children abroad to escape from poverty and feudal corruption. At nineteen years of age, family tragedy struck again, when tuberculosis killed his sister, half-brother and mother. Further trouble came on his shoulders, when he was aged 27 his girlfriend decided not to marry him because of their race and age difference. Yet he was able to share his take on suffering which was positive. He suffered from failing health in his forties when he died of cancer of the liver.
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” (Khalil Gibran)
Summary about the life force
Summing up, I am trying to show there is a life force of what is good. Many believe it is universal love and light behind this. I believe it shows itself in instinct, healing, growth, beauty and providence flowing into the world.
Some people suppose that this ‘life force’ is only a way of thinking: that the ideas of beauty, providence, and love and light are merely human constructions. They think of them as just terms, human beings use but are not a part of the world in the same way that trees and rocks are. In other words, they see them as mere ideals to guide our behaviour.
However, the life force exists outside of individual human thought and action. After all, there was vegetable growth, animal instinct, healing, and beauty well before human beings came along. Hasn’t the spirit of love and light a transpersonal reality?
Copyright 2022 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
