But we must now ask whether it is not possible that greater heights of spirituality may be attained by a positive attitude to pleasure and pain in this world. If this is possible, it is clear that religion has no special concern with the life after death and that spirituality has nothing whatever to do with retiring from this world. No one can deny the existence of a life after death, but that it should be a more spiritual life than this one is a wholly unreasonable assumption. If it is true that we are physically reincarnated on this earth or another, the whole picture is changed. But if orthodox Christianity is right in its belief that we have only one material life, then the next life will be psychic because according to our definition there can be no such thing as a spiritual world, spirituality being a quality of life and not a kind of existence in the same category as the material and the psychic.
Spirituality is therefore a way of living in whatever world one happens to be, and is in no way separable from the actual process of living in that world. In other words, there is no difference between religion and ordinary, everyday life; religious ideas and practices (which are no more religion itself than any other activities) exist solely to promote a positive and loving attitude toward ordinary life and what it stands for, namely, God. Unless one happens to be a religious specialist, which is not necessarily the same thing as a spiritual person, religious practices are not ends in themselves. They are means to a fuller and greater life in this world, involving a positive and constructive attitude to pleasure and pain alike, and thus an increasing ability to learn happiness and freedom from every possible kind of experience. In this sense, religion is union with life; whether that life is this present life of physical form, of thought and feeling with brain and soul, or whether it is a future life of purely psychic substance is beside the point. These are only different grades of existence; they are not different grades of spirituality, for the same spiritual laws apply in every grade of existence, and when one has learned union with one of them, one has discovered the secret of union with any of them.
We have suggested that the secret of this union lies in a positive attitude toward the world in which we live. To repeat the question which religion has to answer, we want to discover how we can learn to be united with life in all its expressions, in living and dying, in love and fear, in the outer world of circumstance, and in the inner world of thought and feeling, so that in union with it we may find freedom and happiness. To be united with life in all its expressions may seem a large demand to make on oneself, for those expressions include disease, pain, death, madness, and all the horrors which man can devise, wittingly or unwittingly, for his fellow creatures. In fact the “nub” of the whole problem is the acceptance of the dark side of life, for this is the very occasion of our unhappiness. “Acceptance” may seem a weak word for a positive attitude of love, but it is used because the type of love in question is relaxed. It is positive but not aggressive; it grows in its own way and is not forced. Therefore we may say that it is not enough to tolerate the dark side of life; acceptance in this sense is much more than a “let it be” with a resigned shrug of the shoulders. Let us call it “creative acceptance,” though because this phrase smacks overmuch of philosophical jargon we will write the noun and only remember its qualifying adjective. This is perhaps wise in another way, for a truth oddly comes out of a play on words: to be genuine, acceptance must be unqualified.
3. THE WAY OF ACCEPTANCE
In recent years men seem to have discovered a new virtue and a new vice in the human soul. The virtue is called “accepting life,” and the vice “escaping from life”—two phrases whose meaning, from a strictly philosophical point of view, is most doubtful. The phrases themselves were apparently brought into popularity and given special significance, however vague, by the new movement in psychology which began with Freud, being continued by Adler, Jung, and a thousand others. Of course, neither the virtue nor the vice is new, and psychologists were not the first to become aware of them. Carlyle spoke of them as the “Everlasting Yea” and the “Everlasting Nay,” and though modern psychology has perhaps investigated them with a newer and bolder thoroughness, they have been known throughout history under a hundred different names.
But, save for some isolated instances, the idea of accepting life as understood in modern psychology has been noticeably absent from the philosophy and religion of the Western world. For centuries the symbol of Christian moral endeavor has been St. Michael and the Dragon—St. Michael standing triumphant on the dying body of a villainous clawed and winged serpent, his spear driven into its heart. That serpent was a symbol not only of greed, hatred, lust, and ignorance but of all that is involved in the trinity of “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” At the risk of quoting something that most people know by heart, it is interesting to turn in this connection to the fifth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel.
But I say unto you, That ye resist not eviclass="underline" but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.…Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies,…That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Christian psychology makes an interesting distinction between the man himself and the evil in him. In accordance with the above precepts the man himself, the immortal soul, is to be loved. But for that very love and for the eternal salvation of that soul, the evil in him is to be fought, hated, and slain without quarter. Yet it is questionable whether Jesus had just that idea in mind. Certainly he was referring to what one’s reaction should be to evil treatment from other people, but it is possible, even probable, that the words “resist not evil” carry more meaning than that. It is likely that he told men to love their enemies not only because their enemies were human, but also because love is the only wise reaction to evil of any kind, whether human, natural, or demonic.
An earlier myth than that of St. Michael and the Dragon tells of an encounter with a monster who for every one head slashed off by the hero’s sword grew seven new heads. Indeed, the problem of evil is not quite so straightforward as the accepted technique of “morality by battle” would assume. Those desires, feelings, and impulses in the soul which are called evil seem to thrive on resistance because resistance belongs to their own nature, and, as the Buddha said, “Hatred ceases not by hatred alone; hatred ceases but by love.” This seems reasonable enough when applied to persons, but somehow we find it difficult to believe that the impulse of hate can only be overcome by loving it. But, as with fear, the hate of hatred is only adding one hate to another, and its results are as contrary as those of the war which was fought to end war. And yet, if you take a gun and shoot a murderer, the result seems to be clear and satisfactory: a dangerous person, who might have killed innocent and defenseless people, has ceased to exist. Should it not be equally satisfactory when by violence we remove evil from our minds? If it thereby ceases to exist why should we question the means used to remove it?
Today this is not quite so much of a problem as it was to some of our ancestors, for now there is a general inclination to regard as evil only the more extreme vices with which the hearts of normal men are little troubled. Many things that the Puritan would have called deadly sins are now either “natural” or positively “healthy.” But the problem still exists because Satan has assumed a new form. He cannot terrify and ensnare us so thoroughly as of old with our own “fleshly desires,” so he has shifted the emphasis of evil to pain, disease, war, and insecurity—adversaries which we now fight and hate as much as our ancestors fought and hated incontinence, gambling, drunkenness, and irreligion. In one way Satan has the better of us, because whereas our ancestors recognized the evil as something existing inside themselves, something for which each man was personally responsible, we tend to externalize it and make nature or other people responsible. No one (unless a Christian Scientist) need shame himself because of pain and disease; war is the fault, conveniently enough, of Nazis, Fascists, or Communists, and insecurity of an economic system.