Opinion | The School Ritual: Spirituality Goes to School

In elementary school, believing or not believing in God was not a problem for me. The children wondered little about it and had more important issues to resolve. Then, in middle and high school, despite attending a school very close to the Catholic Church, my already vaunted atheism was no obstacle to making dear friends. When I went to college, the topic was not up for discussion. The seventies were over, and even in the humanities, they were cautious not to speak publicly about religion, politics, and football (which later changed, in reverse order, by the way). We concentrated on other matters. I definitely do not remember anyone who went around defending God or very hurriedly questioning his existence.

But a few years later, professional life (that is, necessity) brought me closer to science (as a popularizer and disseminator). Although I was already beginning to consider very possible the existence of a divinity, I did not risk talking about it among my colleagues in an environment in which, as we know, God is an unnecessary variable. Without daring to mention the subject, I only risked some allusion to the “obvious” difference between the actual scope of science and the ideal scope that the scientists attribute.

However, disclosure (and my own inclination) repeatedly brought me closer to the artistic and intellectual milieu, where the rejection of everything religious, spiritual, or whatever I wanted to call it, was expressed vehemently: being an atheist was expected; to be agnostic, the same, but more elegant; to speak of God was reckless, and to believe in him… well, outright embarrassing. With tremendous dalliances, what I call “my faith” (one has to call it something) grew in me, along with the clarity that I had to hide it. I latched onto the pretext that “believing in God” is an intimate experience that loses meaning when talking about it (like dreams, which seem fabulous to us until we tell someone, and then they seem absurd). Finally, one day, the forceful statement of the great German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein came to my aid: ” Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.”

However, the readings of other great thinkers have provoked nostalgia in me for what I have kept hidden (one ends up hiding from oneself) and have given me at least a timid courage against that refusal to speak.  G. K, Chesterton, the great English writer, complained with sharp irony about what was happening during the first half of the twentieth century: “Religious freedom could mean that everyone is free to discuss religion. In practice, it means that almost no one has permission to mention it.” Later the Spanish María Zambrano also wondered about it and answered with poetic, painful, and firm reason:

It has only been a short time since man has told his story, examined his present, and projected his future without counting on God. We accept “belief” (the fact of believing), but it becomes difficult for us to relive (those times) when belief elevated human life, burned it, or adored it, taking it through secret places (and) engendering experiences whose echo has perhaps given birth to activities of the mind as essential as philosophy and science. Only risky novelists or ambiguous thinkers have delved into that life lived under the light and shadow of gods already gone. And as for ours – our God – he is allowed to be; he is tolerated.

Science also has limits

One day, invited to write science essays, I realized that not even this “objective and demonstrated knowledge” of reality grants or will ever grant a definitive version. If we consider what physics has discovered, the material world (that grip that gives us all enormous security) is two things at the same time, not only different but opposite: At the sub-atomic level are laws that later the largest objects (such as atoms, molecules, and galaxies) do not respect, and vice versa. Under both quantum and macro laws of physics, however, devices have been built that work perfectly (on the one hand, the laser and magnetic resonance; on the other, space travel and the atomic bomb). As I have said on another occasion – and according to the current situation –, scientists are confident that this contradiction will soon be resolved, just as they are convinced that all doubts about the universe have an answer. They have learned, with Kant, that reason is the very limit of reality and that the vertigo of the absolute – inevitable for humans – is resolved in the ideal of knowing.

The fact that science can potentially have the last word is a requirement for someone to find in it the meaning of their life. Thanks to that promise, the hordes that have joined this point of view are countless. Without it, without that vision, science would have remained something of a tool to explain how things work in relation to each other, and it would not be the most propagated solution we have today to the question of existence.

But the truth is that, to keep that promise, Kant had to renounce something that is most likely not relinquishable: thinking of reason as a limit, he announced a network of knowledge in which all things are perfectly associated with each other; however, to achieve this, he had to ignore a certain number of extreme contradictions that they did not have (nor do they have, nor will they ever have) a solution, thus keeping safe that world of rational knowledge in which everything is coherent.

Among these contradictions, called antinomies, is the irrefutable double truth that the universe is both finite and infinite. This “fact” is demonstrated by principles of complicated logic. Still, the following more empirical reasoning is also valid: What is next if the universe is finite? And if it is infinite, how is it infinite? Can it never end? Obviously, this double antinomic truth exists outside of all that is reasonable, but that does not take away its strength as a possible reality. It is enough to think about it a little, so we have no doubt that the universe we inhabit (that of our daily life) can really be finite and, at the same time, infinite. (If so, we can also conclude that the universe is impossible, and yet at the same time, it is not, since we are in it.)

Finite and infinite, possible and impossible. The reader will agree that, as absurd as this may be, it does not describe entirely badly the strange reality we live, the description of which, however exhaustive it may seem, invariably leads to something inexplicable. Not without anguish, one realizes in the day-to-day that everything we consider truth admits an opposite truth. That is why, at the end of the day, we are all willing to pay the most attention to those who tell us no, that there is only one truth, that this reality is not made of the same material with which dreams are woven, as Shakespeare affirmed; nor is it an illusion, as Buddha insisted; nor does it allow as many interpretations as there are drops of water in the sea.

The truth is that no one has managed to deny conclusively that the universe is finite and infinite simultaneously. Even mathematicians go crazy with these questions (Literally! Sadly! Just read Georg Cantor’s story to have an idea). This contradiction is solvable. In the end, we recall what many philosophers refer to when they say that “reality is problematic.” And let’s not think they are talking about our senses deceiving us, that words cannot express what we actually believe, or that there is no proof that our ideas reflect reality. All these “problems” exist, but philosophy refers to something much worse, like what we have said: that our fundamental reality, the one we live every day, has not yet been decided as absurd or having a certain coherence.

Shakespeare (i.e., poetry) is not pure fantasy but a valid form of knowledge.  

Spirituality and sanity

Thus, Kant’s idea of the coherent world is as valid as that of the antinomic world. Obviously, this second one lacks something that explains how we can stay sane when experiencing such a reality. The mere fact of not going crazy seems to give reason to the idea that our world is rational and coherent; it also justifies that our first reaction to the irrational solutions of antinomies is to refuse to listen to them. However, we end up realizing that these solutions also have something to say about why it is possible to wander with some sanity through an antinomic reality.

Imagine that the world is indeed confused (shattered, like a crystal), but something transcendental reintegrates it. This something is perhaps our memory of another world we once inhabited, where the finite and the infinite, the possible and the impossible, are the same. Or maybe that something is a unifying thought, coming from another world, that projects its reason and coherence onto ours. Plato and Aristotle debated these two options. One affirmed the existence of a higher plane where real things are, which are projected as an illusion in this world. The other found the coherence we lack here in a chain of causes, the last of which is perfect and explains them all. In that world of ideal objects (and in this other presided over by a perfect and immobile engine), the two Greek philosophers (and philosophy, generally) saw a singular characteristic: we can understand them. Thought can rise to that ideal world or understand the chain of causes until it discovers the original one. These are two ways of seeing things (called idealism and realism, respectively), and the discussion between them continues to this day. Neither is the perfect solution.

At the same time, some opted for another type of solution that moves the axis of reasonableness to another place: They affirm that not only can we understand the transcendental something that gives meaning to the world, but that it also understands us. This solution is called theological. The term frightens because it is associated with admonishing fingers and authoritarian punishments. Still, it is reassuring to know that the great Chesterton has shown that there is room for good humor and even laughter in theology. This solution, I say, adds to the philosophical perspective that the something that we may call spiritual is our interlocutor and that the relationship we have with him is two-way: we can communicate.

This, which obviously belongs to the world of the irrational (or, as Karl Jaspers says, to a world that goes beyond reason without losing reason), is the crucial ingredient that modifies rational thought and turns it into faith, another upsetting word. Faced with it, science (which had already put enough effort into tolerating the idea of a being that endows everything with a rational sense) now cries to the sky: What, a “personal” God? An unprovable being with whom we come into contact through unprovable transcendental telepathy by the supporters of this hypothesis called Faith?

Exactly! Something similar is this spiritual something that many experience, which scientists do not include among their variables. (They do not do it even outside the laboratory because, as I said, they need to maintain congruence so that returning repeatedly to the work makes sense. At least they are not like those “believers” who, as soon as they stop “praying” or “meditating,” they also stop believing and find the meaning of their lives elsewhere). Yes, that is this spiritual something whose existence cannot be proven but is perfectly negotiable and undeniable. However, as we have also seen, this does not mean that the spiritual world is pure irrationality and madness, at least no more so than the world described by science, closed in on itself and entirely rational. Probably (as Erich Fromm says about love), faith is the relay to reason when it reaches its limits. Yes, maybe faith (again: would we dare call it love too?) is a kind of madness rope, sometimes healthier than the idea that the world ends within those limits.

The distance between science and spirituality is evident, and unless one of them is forcibly imposed on the other (how much violence it would take to achieve that!) or both do their part to dialogue, that distance will remain forever and ever.

I propose starting that dialogue as soon as possible, occupying all the communication spaces that exist, including, of course, the classrooms. Yes, let spirituality enter the school again, not in the form of a tyrannous and blind God (as was once intended), but in the more modest place of aspirant (aligned with the current situation). In that dialogue, some will argue why God should be accepted as a regular attendant in the classroom. In contrast, others will say that his present absence only distracts from the conceptual rigor that society needs and that schools are charged with providing for him.

The dialogue will never end, probably, but those of us who believe that the closeness of the transcendent is fruitful will have no problem with being allowed to participate, at least, as an eternal aspirant in our lives.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of Tecnológico de Monterrey.