The endowments which distinguish the human race from all other forms of life are summed up in what is known as the human spirit; the mind is its essential quality. These endowments have enabled humanity to build civilizations and to prosper materially. But such accomplishments alone have never satisfied the human spirit, whose mysterious nature inclines it towards transcendence, a reaching towards an invisible realm, towards the ultimate reality, that unknowable essence of essences called God.
(The Universal House of Justice, 1985 Oct, The Promise of World Peace, p. 1)
My first principle was a discussion of Reality, which is unknowable in its essence. But Reality in movement, which I called Reality-as-transformation, is knowable to some extent. The second principle is a discussion of transformation as it relates to human advancement, and for which education can provide the driving force. The discussion will take place within the context of the House of Justice statement above that the “mysterious nature” of the human spirit, whose essential quality is mind, “inclines it towards transcendence”, and Maslow’s prediction, quoted in the last post, that teachers will be “forced to teach spirituality and transcendence.”
What is transcendence? To understand something of transcendence two other words need to be brought into the discussion, one of which is transformation. The other is progress. My perspective is that transformation is a special dynamic of progress and transcendence is a special kind of transformation. First, what is progress?
Progress of any kind is advance toward some goal, whether traveling from New York
In human development progress is the fuller unfolding of innate qualities into new, more evolved forms and complex patterns until a final stage is reached. Individually, this is the process of maturation. But the same principle of spirit expressing itself in material form in the world of matter holds in the building of the human world: "True civilization is where the spiritual is expressed and carried out in the material." (Paris Talks: 22) Again, because spirit is never fully and finally realized, but is ever-advancing, then “all men have been called into being to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.” With human development, though, progress is not just unconscious and automatic, as it is with Nature, but has a quality of self conscious purposefulness to it. It is mind at work. That means that humans can to some extent guide natural and human progress through their essential quality of mind: "If a man reflects he will understand the spiritual significance of the law of progress; how all moves from an inferior to a superior degree." (Paris Talks: 94) The opposite of progress is regress and this brings us to transformation.
Put simply transformation is the progressive or regressive changing of the form of a thing through the dynamic interplay between forces of integration and disintegration, both within its internal environment and in relation to an external environment. If integrative forces are uppermost, then transformation is progressive. If disintegrative forces are more powerful, then transformation is regressive.
Progressive transformational processes are the evolutionary unfolding of a being’s potentiality into actuality by dynamically entering into more complex interactions with an “environment”. These complex interactions generate novel situations which draw forth its latent properties. When qualities are drawn forth they are called emergent properties. But they emerge from somewhere, drawn forth from some deep innate well of potential in response to challenge. Because they are now part of the "environment", emergent properties in turn react back upon what they came out from to change the internal ordering of qualities, putting them in new combinations and form, but do not change the essence itself.
In a progressive transformation, each discrete change emerges from a preceding change and moves into another. One change engenders another by virtue of some potentiality it has for “birthing” another change. “Emerge” and “drawn forth” are the two sides of progressive transformation, emphasizing one or the other depends upon one’s viewpoint. Education is the bringing forth or drawing forth of human powers. All education, material, human and divine, is transformation at work.
All possible transformations composing a condition exist as potential to be expressed, but each transformation comes to life only when its conditions for appearance are met. Progressive transformation ends when all potentials for developmental change are actualized. This is maturity, and it begins the opposite movement, regressive transformation, which was always there in some form and potential, as when the human body over many years slowly transforms back into dust. Maturity is the consummation of the potential for development of a condition, because the process of growth reaches its end. Death for an organic form begins at maturity, but maturity is not the end of spiritual growth, for “spirit in itself is progressive” and spirit is everlasting. As progress is an intrinsic law of the universe, so is transformation to maturity. “According to an intrinsic law all phenomena of being attain to a summit and degree of consummation, after which a new order and condition is established.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace:123) That is, after transformations are consummated transcendence, the last kind of spiritual progress, may occur.
Transcendence happens when one enters into another order; when all is made new and not just renewed. Transcendence happens when one process has reached full maturity, but growth in spirit must still go on. It is not the progressive reorganization of internal qualities and powers, but a new kind of configuration of them altogether to release capabilities that can not be expressed in any other way. It is like what Shoghi Effendi described as that “mystic, all-pervasive but indefinable” change from adolescence to adulthood; same person progressing, but not really the same person because not progressing in the same way.
‘Abdu’l-Baha describes it thus: “The suckling babe passeth through various physical stages, growing and developing at every stage, until its body reacheth the age of maturity. Having arrived at this stage it acquireth the capacity to manifest spiritual and intellectual perfections. The lights of comprehension, intelligence and knowledge become perceptible in it and the powers of its soul unfold.” (Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha: 285)
Maturity, then, is a double-state. It is simultaneously the end of one kind of condition and the beginning of another kind of condition. At maturity physical development is over, but that same “moment” signalizes “the capacity to manifest spiritual and intellectual perfections.” Transcendence, that universal, mystic, all-pervasive, indefinable spiritual transformation into a new state, was described by Baha’u’llah as similar to turning copper into gold through the power of an ‘elixir”, which, spiritually, is the Word of God. He wrote: “(T)he real elixir will, in one instant, cause the substance of copper to attain the state of gold, and will traverse the seventy-year stages in a single moment. Could this gold be called copper? Could it be claimed that it hath not attained the state of gold, whilst the touch-stone is at hand to assay it and distinguish it from copper?...Likewise, these souls, through the potency of the Divine Elixir, traverse, in the twinkling of an eye, the world of dust and advance into the realm of holiness; and with one step cover the earth of limitations and reach the domain of the Placeless….Now, could this gold be thought to be copper, these people could likewise be thought to be the same as before they were endowed with faith.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan:156)
While all education is transformation, only divine education can teach spirituality and transcendence. More on this in the next post.
Please let us know when the book is finished, so timely and wonderful. Reclaiming the joy of learning.
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