Rescuing the “spirit” Category

Leonardo Boff

04/03/2013

Opinión

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In today's culture, the word, "spirit" has been devalued on two fronts: in the learned culture, and in the popular culture.

In the dominant learned culture, "spirit" is the opposite of matter. We more or less know what matter is, because it can be measured, weighed, manipulated and transformed, while the "spirit" falls in the realm of the intangible, indefinite and even nebulous. Matter is the word-source of the central values of human experience in recent centuries. Modern science has been built on the research and domination of matter. It has penetrated the elemental particles up to its ultimate dimensions, the realm of Higgs, where the condensation of the original energy in matter would have first occurred: the greatly sought bosons and hadrons and the so-called "God particle”. Einstein proved that matter and energy are equivalent. Matter is not real. It is highly condensed energy, and a field rich with interactions.

In the modern conventional sense, the spiritual values are in the super-structure and do not fit in scientific schemes. Their place is in the world of the subjective, left to the discretion of each person, or of religious groups. Stated rather grotesquely, but not too harshly, we can agree with Jose Comblin, a good specialist on the subject: «When "spiritual values" are mentioned, everybody thinks that a bourgeois is talking to a gathering of Rotarians or a meeting of the Lyons Club, after a copious dinner with fine wines and a delicious meal. For the people in general, "spiritual values" equates to “nice but empty words”. Or it pertains to the repertoire of the ecclesiastical speech: moralistic, spiritualizing and in a hostile relationship with the modern world».

As a result, the expression "spiritual values" appears with greater frequency on the lips of priests and bishops of conservative tendencies. It is common to hear from them that the present crisis of the contemporary world is basically found in the abandonment of the spiritual world: not attending mass or having any other explicit relationship with a hierarchical Church.

But given the recent scandals, the pedophile priests and the financial scandals linked to the Vatican Bank, official discourse about "spiritual values" has been devalued. It has not lost its value, but the official entity that announces them reaches very few.

In popular culture, the word "spirit" has great validity. It translates to a certain magical conception of the world, in contrast to the rationality learned at school. For the people, especially those influenced by the Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cultures, the world is inhabited by good and bad spirits that affect different life situations, such as health and illness, the emotional life, success and failure, good and bad luck. Spiritualism has codified this vision of the world though reincarnation. It has more followers than we think.

However, in recent decades we have seen that excessive rationality in all fields and exaggerated consumerism generate an existential saturation and much deception. Happiness lies not in material things, but in the dimensions related to the heart, affection, relationships of love, solidarity and compassion.

New spiritual experiences are sought everywhere, this is, a meaning of life that goes beyond immediate interests and the daily struggle for life. These experiences open a perspective of hope and light in the middle of the market of conventional ideas and proposals, propagated by the means of communication and the so-called "institutions of meaning," the religions, churches and philosophies of life. They have acquired strength through television programs and the big religious shows that follow the logic of mass spectacles and that, for that reason, move away from the reverent and sacred character of all religiosity. In a market society, religion and spirituality have become merchandise available for general consumption. And they produce large amounts of money.

In spite of this commercialization of the religious, fascination with the spiritual world is increasing, although mostly in the form of esoteric and self-help literature. Even so, it may open a path in the world of the profane and in the gray character of mass society. In the Christian media have appeared the Pentecostal Churches, the charismatic movements, and the centrality of the figure of the Holy Spirit.

These phenomena imply a rescue of the "spirit" category in a positive and even anti-systemic sense. The "spirit" is a consistent reference and is no longer under suspicion by the critics of modernity that only accepted that which passed though the sieve of reason. But reason is not everything, nor does it explain all. There is the a-rational and the irrational. In human beings, there is the universe of passion, affection, and feeling, that is expressed through the emotional and cordial intelligence. The spirit does not reject reason, better yet, the spirit needs reason. But the spirit goes beyond that, globalizing it at a higher level that has to do with intelligence, contemplation and the superior meaning of life and of history. In terms of the new cosmology, the spirit could be as ancestral as the universe, which is also the carrier of spirit. Are we now in the Era of the Spirit?

By the author: Fire from Heaven: The Holy Spirit in the Universe, in Humanity, in the Churches and Religions, (Fuego del cielo: el Espíritu Santo en el universo, en la humanidad, en las Iglesias y religiones), to be published soon by Editorial Vozes, Petropolis, RJ, Brazil.

- Leonardo Boff, Theologian-Philosopher / Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by Melina Alfaro, done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/74153