Inasmuch as the hip operation, which was mentioned in last month’s installment, went off without complications I can keep to the usual schedule and continue the discussion on aspects of life which, under ordinary circumstances, we tend not to consider. Yet they are fundamental to the question what we are as human beings and how we differ from the rest of the animal kingdom.

            The major difference is clearly that we think of ourselves as “rational” beings whose actions are regarded as voluntary and who exercise judgment as to likely outcomes.  Animals on the other hand go through their lives “instinctively.”  They know what’s good for them without weighing possibilities and whatever ruminating is done is limited to the digestive tract rather than the brain. Their vocalizations are mainly related to their needs of attracting a mate or warnings of danger while we have developed not only speech to communicate but also for abstract thoughts to ponder. In addition, we have set out with unbridled pride and optimism to fulfill the biblical injunction to “subdue” the earth “and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth [Gen 1:28].”  The world has become “our oyster” and we have only lately begun to realize that this ruthless exploitation of its resources is beginning to threaten our very survival.

            Our scientific and technologic advances bear no small responsibility for this state of affairs including the idea that we have evolved to our present state through the “law” of the “survival of the fittest.” According to Hobbes, and subsequently to some extent Darwin, the world is a jungle where the strong eat the weak and those who fail in that competition get eliminated. As such they can be regarded as fore-runners of Nietzsche who extended this notion to human beings and divided societies into those with master versus slave morality. These ideas were put in practice during the Nazi era and although the world was outraged it didn’t seem to realize that this outcome was unavoidable when one believes that man has the right to “subdue” his environment, which by extension, includes weaker nations (colonialism) and ethnic groups, for the benefit of the strong.

            The fundamental error, which started with biblical thought, is the non-recognition that nature is not only cruel, in the sense that big fish do eat little fish, but that there is also a tremendous amount of cooperation and interdependence. This applies not only within species but across species. What is bad for one is good for another as the simple example of respiration shows. Without trees we couldn’t live because they produce the oxygen we need and we give them our carbon dioxide in return. This is so rudimentary that it would hardly be worth talking about if the survival of the fittest idea and “subduing” were not so deeply ingrained in our behavior that we don’t think about it. This is, however, a direct result of city living where we no longer have an opportunity to watch how nature really unfolds and cooperates.

            Martha and I are very fortunate that our little property is not fenced in and the backyard is regularly visited by a variety of wildlife which taught me a number of lessons. Among our visitors there is respect for each other and each one knows its place. While the magpies feed first on Martha’s generosity, the blue jays sit and wait and when they are done the chickadees arrive. There is no fighting and even without Martha’s help there’s plenty for all because nature is extremely generous. While this clearly demonstrated the “pecking order” another example of tolerance could be observed between deer and magpies. At times one can see that a magpie descends on the back of a doe and begins picking whatever edibles it finds from its fur. The doe has absolutely no problem with that and only when the magpie gets pesky she flicks her tail and the bird takes off. There is peace among God’s creatures in our backyard and it is only people who create havoc with wrong ideas.

            So, how do we know what we think we know? As the title of this essay suggests we distinguish between what we regard as opposites; we discriminate; we parcel out; we multiply by dividing and we break into parts. This is the Western way of thinking –mechanistically. The world is a machine which has parts and from the parts we think we can learn how it functions. As mentioned in last month’s installment this is fantasy because the organic world differs fundamentally from the inorganic. Instead of creating a human being by taking its various organs e.g. bones, blood, muscle, brain etc. and putting it together, as we would for instance a car, nature always proceeds from an entity which gradually unfolds according to its potential. In the vegetable kingdom the seed makes roots, which gain strength from the moist earth and then raise a stem above it which, with the help of the sun, eventually turns into a trunk with branches and leaves as well as new seeds. But take that seed apart, put it under the most elaborate microscope and you’ll never find the tree in it.

            The same applies, of course, to the development of human beings. The sperm and its DNA is just that, an entity. It meets an egg with its DNA, which is another entity. The two mate, become a “fertilized egg,” a different entity with different potential than the single cells which were responsible for it. From it develops the embryo, the baby, the child and eventually the adult. But during any of these stages we are not dealing with parts which are added, instead there is a constant unfolding of latent potentialities which can be fostered, harmed or destroyed by the environment in which the developing organism finds itself. This is truly so “elementary my dear Watson,” that one wonders why this type of thinking is not in the mainstream of our society and especially its leadership of whatever party. Although lip service is paid to “consensus building,” the attempt by one faction to dominate the other persists.

Furthermore, the concept of unfolding makes, for instance, the abortion argument as to “when does life begin?” totally meaningless. But, of course, so has much of our language become. We don’t talk about people who are for abortions on demand in these terms, they are simply “pro choice,” while abortion foes are “pro life.” Obviously, everybody is for having a choice and everybody is fond of life but since abortion means destruction of a potential human being this unpleasantness has to be camouflaged by meaningless euphemisms and this is how we lie to each other and to ourselves. For the Catholic Church life begins at conception while for the secular segment of society various arbitrary time points are set. They are of course arbitrary and serve only to assuage our moral conscience because once you see a human form in the uterus it becomes increasingly more difficult to rationalize its killing. In fact “life” has neither a beginning nor an end. There are only transformations with inherent different potentialities at each stage. The sperm and the egg had separate lives and only their potential to development was changed by conception. Nevertheless they always were a human sperm and a human egg, rather than those of a pig or a bear, for instance. Therefore, even the question: when does human life begin? is meaningless.

If we then were to redefine the abortion issue as to “when does intelligent life begin?” we are in even deeper water because: what defines intelligence? Reason would answer: thinking for oneself and independent living. But we don’t want to go that way because we could then eliminate the old folks and the “useless ones” who can’t take care of themselves. This is precisely what was abhorred as amoral, utilitarian Nazi practices and now engenders the thoroughly hypocritical debate about “the right to die.” The US Constitution has been stretched in the famous Roe vs. Wade ruling, which made abortion legal in this country, by finding a guaranteed “Right to Privacy.” But assisted suicide, which is obviously also a private decision and should, therefore, enjoy the same guaranteed right, is shunned and for the most part outlawed. Yet, objectively in either case a physician is involved who terminates the existence of a human being, albeit at different stages of development. Is this rational? No; it’s simply a leftover struggle with religious faith which we don’t know how to properly handle.

I have been mentioning these examples only to demonstrate how intertwined what we regard as knowledge and as faith really are. Let us now examine them separately and ask again: How do we “know” what we think we know? In general, we accept something as knowledge because it fits with expectations and follows the cause and effect rule. In addition there is obvious habituation because I know that right now I am typing these letters on a keyboard rather than, for instance, playing tennis. This is what one might call instinctive knowledge which is accepted without question by our mind. But there are exceptions where we can have the same certainty of knowledge but the thought that accompanies this conviction is mistaken.

In the August 26, 2004 essay “Perceptions of Reality” I had already mentioned a life altering experience which brought me face to face with the questions whether knowledge always reflects reality and what is reality? In view of the media frenzy on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) during the late 1970s I had published my views in the medical literature in 1980 and am discussing them more fully in the Chapter: “What is Truth?” in the book on Jesus. It is of relevance there because Pilate’s question to Jesus, as reported in the Gospel of John, deserves a thoughtful answer.

Briefly; in 1953 I had to undergo surgery for a lesion in the right upper lobe of the lung which had been regarded by the radiologist as “probably metastatic” Prior to being lifted onto the operating table I quietly prayed that if the lesion were to be indeed a metastasis I’d be allowed to die on the table. A few more months of misery and burden for my young wife were not a fate to relish. This unique set of circumstances and mindset is important for what followed. At some point during objective unconsciousness from anesthesia I experienced a sensation of tremendous bliss and the knowledge, “It was a metastasis, I am dead, I am free.” It was the most profound experience of my entire life and the mentioned thought was not “belief” but absolute certainty; conviction. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I opened my eyes saw Martha leaning over the bedrail and all I could say was: “let me die, let me die.” This request was totally incomprehensible to her because she was happy to have her husband back even in such bad shape as he objectively was at that moment.

This experience taught me a fundamental lesson which has not yet been incorporated into mainstream thinking. There is a massive difference between subjective and objective knowledge and that we have no right to infer from what we see in another person at a given moment what that person experiences at the same time. What is the essence of human life? Consciousness of self! This consciousness is obviously preserved during sleep in dreams and can be present in a person who is “unconscious” for medical reasons. In medical practice we have what is called the Glasgow scale which provides for the distinction of different levels of unconsciousness and coma. The scale has prognostic value but we don’t appreciate that “level of consciousness” applies only to reactivity to the outside world. That the person can be fully conscious to his inner world, as in the above mentioned example, is not taken into consideration because we have no means to objectify subjective thought processes.

There are other important lessons in this example for our understanding of what we regard as knowledge. One is that emotions and accompanying thought content need not have the same validity. All of us know that dreams are real while we dream but are revealed as dreams only after we wake up. In the dream we can perform feats which we are unable to do in waking life and simply accept this as a fact at the time, while we know upon awakening that these were fantasies. This same sense of “reality” will pervade us in the process of dying and regardless of what the content of our thoughts will tells us, including that we are now dead, we are not dead to ourselves, even if we clearly appear so to others. Subjective consciousness, which is even more important to us than objective consciousness, i.e. measurable by others, can be retained for some time after the last expiration. We don’t know for how long but that is irrelevant because time has no meaning in these spheres. The sense of time which results from perceived changes is simply absent. Since there is no “waking up,” as in the dream, and we are unable to experience subjective unconsciousness, as exemplified by dreamless sleep, we are actually immortal to ourselves, albeit not to others. Therefore, regardless of what the content of subjective consciousness is: be it one’s vision of heaven, hell, limbo or whatever, accompanied by the conviction of having died, that conclusion is illusory because whenever there is consciousness there is life. True death, namely complete absence of awareness cannot be experienced; it is a contradiction in terms. When one knows this, and incorporates this knowledge into one’s life, death has truly lost its sting. Therefore, one can start working on one's daily conduct to keep it as much as possible free from fear, hate and greed, because these emotions may well come to the fore as our last conscious thoughts. But since we are mortal for and to others we can help our “loved ones” not to excessively grieve for us and we can also make arrangements that our physical absence will cause only a minimum of hardship on them.

All of these aspects flow from rational thought processes and do not require faith or belief in whatever kind of afterlife which may or may not exist. The important lesson is to keep the difference between subjective and objective knowledge in mind. Nevertheless, this difference bears further examination. In the previously mentioned article on NDEs I made a distinction between: subjective reality, shared subjective reality and objective reality. With other words: subjective reality is that knowledge only a given individual is privy to. Shared subjective reality is our common experience of this world which is based on the normal structure and functions of our brain, which allow us to agree that a mountain is not an ocean and a tree is not a rabbit. It can also be called “experiential reality.”  A person who would insist on the opposite would be either be regarded as a deliberate liar or mentally ill. Objective reality is measurable by an independent observer and its pursuit is the goal of science.

This was as far as my thinking in the late 1970s had led me to: There is knowledge which may or may not be spurious, depending on the occasion, and there is faith which the scientist stays away from because it can’t be objectified and is thereby relegated to the realm of metaphysic and religion. The unspoken assumption was that the one is valid, while the other is speculation and never “the twain shall meet.” The intervening thirty years have made it clear, however, that this simple dichotomy was an oversimplification because “objective science” also requires a subject – the observer. Whatever phenomena are recorded, even with the most sophisticated instruments, have to be “interpreted” by that observer. Even if the same result is obtained by different observers, who have used the same instrumentation, their interpretation will still be subjective because they are processed by human brains, which allow only certain conclusions which are based on past information. We are, therefore, still in the realm of “shared subjective reality” and as some physicists nowadays admit, true “objective reality” is unavailable to the human being.

This is where faith comes in. But before discussing this aspect further let me make one more distinction which will be helpful. There is not only subjective and shared subjective reality but the content of that reality can either deal with the material properties of this world – those which our sense organs allow us to perceive or, esoteric–what is apprehended directly by the mind, as for instance my “death” experience. With this as background we can now examine what is Faith? Its fundamental nature is unknown but its content can be either directed toward the material world or an existence which is not accessible to most of us but has been experienced by mystics, some of whom have gone on to found religions. Since the latter aspect is even more difficult to deal with it will be discussed in a separate article dealing with religion and the religious experience. This essay will limit itself to the secular aspects of faith because they cut across individual differences and can readily be verified.

In last month’s installment I made the apodictic statement that “Faith is innate, we are borne with it and how we use it is part of our free will.” Let me now illustrate from a personal example why I believe this statement to be true. I have used it, as well as another example, in the previously mentioned chapter on Truth of the Jesus book. In the beginning of December 1957 I took the Specialty Board Examination in Psychiatry and Neurology. In as much as it was held at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital I thought we might use the occasion to stay for a few days with Martha’s mother and give her the opportunity to enjoy her grandchildren. Our daughter, Krista, was five years at the time while Peter was one month shy of his third birthday. After the exam Martha and I took the children on a tour of midtown Manhattan which included a visit to Macy’s Santa Claus. The line was short and when it was our turn little Peter ran up to that man hugged him and cried out “My Santa Claus!” It was an unforgettable demonstration of innate childhood faith and innocence of which his older more world-wise sister deprived him some time later on.

While faith has been given numerous definitions of a religious as well as secular variety I like to look at it ontogenetically and regard it as the “the firm unquestioned expectation that what is hoped for will come to pass.” In the young child doubt does not exist, it matures gradually under the influence of the environment. If the latter is benign, faith, or trust in the natural goodness and truthfulness of human beings, will be fostered. On the other hand if the environment is adverse, either through maltreatment by family members or others, faith will first fall victim to doubt and in adult life will turn into skepticism or cynicism. These terms are not synonymous, in spite of what the Microsoft Word Thesaurus states. The skeptic listens to a viewpoint he does not readily agree to but is willing to examine it for its potential value, while the cynic rejects it out of hand as nonsense. While the skeptic behaves rationally, the cynic shows not only his bias and ignorance but also his unwillingness to learn. While skepticism is to be welcomed there should be no room for cynicism.

Since, as has been mentioned, faith is innate it can never be lost. Those individuals who have “lost faith” in regard to religious matters have simply redirected it to secular aspects and then we see the adoration which is showered on human beings and political ideologies. There were “true believers” among Nazis as well as Communists whose faith was just as strong in Hitler, Lenin, or Stalin for instance, as other people place in religious figures.

What does “faith” mean? Basically it is simply placing our trust in another human being, society, or an ideal which will lead to a hoped for outcome. Without trust society cannot function. But because human beings are fallible our trust is, at times, misplaced and this is why some of us who recognize this fact place our trust, faith, in a “higher power.”  There is, however a hitch. This “higher power” has to go through our individual, biased, brains to reach us and actions based on the perceived advice may still be wrong. A perfect example of this fact is our immediate ex-President. When asked, whether or not he had discussed the planned Iraq invasion with his father, he replied that he was listening to a higher Father. I don’t doubt that George W Bush meant well, even with this statement, but in fact he had listened to the wrong people. If he really had consulted with the Holy Spirit he would have been confronted with questions such as: How many people are you going to kill when you do this? How many people will be forever maimed? How much property will be destroyed? Mesopotamia, Iraq, is one of the cradles of our civilization, what treasures are going to be forever lost? Are you considering only what benefit or losses Americans will suffer or also those of the Iraqi people whom you supposedly want to free from tyranny? If ex-President Bush had really pondered these questions with a spiritual advisor, including his father, who surely had the best interest of his son at heart, the ill-advised invasion would never taken place. Instead we could have concentrated our efforts to build up Afghanistan’s society which was waiting for our help at that time and we would not be fighting a war there now eight years later, with an outcome that is still uncertain.

Human knowledge is and always will be partial and fallible; therefore faith, based on this knowledge, is not necessarily trustworthy either. This is a fact of life we have to recognize and live with. But mere recognition and slothful resignation is not the answer either. Neither is sloppy language which leads to sloppy thinking. Again the Iraq war is a perfect example. Our politicians who wanted the war relied on “intelligence,” which they now claim was in part faulty. But it wasn’t “intelligence” in the first place. It was “information,” a set of data; some of it was correct others faulty, which were presented by the misnamed CIA and other sources, to the leadership. It was their task to intelligently assess the information and to sift fact from fancy. Intelligence is not just data gathering; it is required for correct interpretation of the material. But here we are again at the intersection of faith and knowledge. Since we never have full information especially in regard to the outcome of a given decision we take a “leap of faith” and then hope for the best. This is how world politics proceeds.

On the other hand our secular faith in the continued onward and upward material progress had left some of us unfulfilled and has come under even greater question by America’s inappropriate response to the 9-11-2001 tragedy and its aftermath which we are currently chewing on. That this feeling of disenchantment with material life is actually quite prevalent in most of the “Western World” was driven home to me by a recent article in the Viennese Die Presse, written by Peter Henisch, and sent to me by my friend Professor Petsche.

The title of the article, which does not lend itself to direct translation, was: Was fehlt uns Doktor? When a patient sees a physician with some vague complaint he may ask: what’s wrong with me doctor? While this is an approximate translation it does not reflect the key word “fehlt” which means “missing” or “absent.” In other words: what is absent in our lives which makes us feel as miserable as some of us do? Henisch wrote: “Interest in religion: No thanks. Interest in religious topics: Yes please.” He continued with, that the hunger for spiritual sustenance was intended to be stilled by two recent books about who Jesus really was. These had quite divergent contents, which he discussed subsequently. I shall now translate some key excerpts from his introduction. This will not be entirely literal but reflect what Henisch would have said had he written for Americans.

“Religion is pretty much out; interest in religious topics is totally in. When one reads the newspapers of the past weeks one can find evidence for both of these statements. This is a correct diagnosis at least for the so-called Western World.  Diagnosis sounds a little like a visit to the physician, but perhaps this analogy is useful as a working hypothesis. Was feht uns Doktor? The physician sits behind his computer and doesn’t give us an answer. He puts in data; as is usual nowadays. We are devoid of meaning, of consolation. We are missing a perspective . . . .

There is something in the air, a need one feels unless one is totally insensitive. It is the need to concern oneself with questions, which although eternal, we have never adequately answered. This pertains to religion as well as literature which unites the two domains. We can probably never answer these questions to complete satisfaction but it is important to keep posing them. Where we are from, where are we going and what’s the point of it all? Is our life, our history only a bad joke, a half-way successful satire, an irony bordering on cynicism, or is there a deeper meaning? Man does not live by Big Macs alone. Religion has ceased to be the opium of the people for quite some time; it has been replaced by consumption.” 

The books Henisch discussed don’t answer these questions but this is precisely why I wrote the Jesus book which, hopefully, will be on the market in the fall. It is noteworthy that I have expressed Henisch’s question as,

“. . .  the privilege of the human being is a degree of free will and upon that depends our Weltanschauung (how we view the world). As materialists we may chose to believe Macbeth’s conclusion that life is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” or we can see ourselves as having been granted an opportunity to grow in mental and spiritual stature. The choice is an individual one but this is how we shape our karma (consequence of all our thoughts and actions) for the rest of our life.”

As mentioned earlier an exposition of the esoteric aspects of our lives will be taken up in a subsequent issue which will also provide an answer to Peter Henisch’s question. For now I would like to conclude with one more observation. The Greek New Testament term for “faith” is “pistis.” This led me to, what is called in neurology, a “clang association,” “piston.” Although the two words are not etymologically related I believe that they bear a close relationship because faith is the piston that drives the will and thereby directs subsequent behavior in a given direction. Its content can and does change over one’s lifetime but its existence should not be denied. Even suicide, which at times is regarded as due to a loss of faith, can still be motivated by the faith that an apparently unendurable situation can thereby be terminated. This leads one to conclude that faith should be directed to a better way of dealing with the vicissitudes of life – one which is not destructive and mechanistic but constructive and organic.