‘The Universe of Being’: Some implications of an idea

ABSTRACT

This article reflects and builds on the notion of a ‘non-personal Universe of Being’, a parallel realm of all essences in nature and human beings, with which we are connected via what William James called ‘the higher part’ of our soul. After reviewing that idea, its root in the inexplicability of evil and its advantage of not requiring a theodicy, there follow reflections on its implications for the daily life of any person who believes in a higher power acting in the world, but does not understand it as a personal God or Father. From that notion derives, first, the urge to look at things and humans around us for their content in being (essence) behind their appearances. On that content are grounded, on the one hand, a deep respect for nature and for its messages and, on the other hand, the need to reach out to the inner life of fellow humans (empathy) and to create being/good in daily life. Second, the notion encourages the efforts of the human soul to reach out to the Universe of Being itself, with the qualification (stressed by James) that attaining such connection depends on the self-surrender of the former to the welcome ‘invasion’ by the latter, rather than on the works of the human intellect or will.

KEYWORDS:

• Substance
• essence
• being
• existence
• good and evil
• conversions
• spiritual but not religious

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Glauco Frizzera was a Professor of Pathology at three Medical Schools in the USA: the University of Minnesota; New York University; and the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York City. He has authored/co-authored 135 articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed chapters to 14 medical books. Now retired, he continues to look for answers to essential questions about the human condition, first from a Catholic perspective, then from that of a ‘spiritual but not religious’ person. He is interested in the nature of religion, wisdom traditions, ontology and natural theology.

Notes

1 See Despland (1974) which includes a translation of Kant's On the Failure of all Attempted Philosophical Theodicies (1791).

2 For one thing, he believes that, beyond providing ‘the religious man's experience of union’, this God ‘needs to enter into wider cosmic relations to justify the subject's absolute confidence and peace’: He ‘should be the absolute world-ruler’ (James 1990, 462). Secondly, James affirms that in the believer's prayer, He is a real being from whom a response is expected. The intercourse between the believers and ‘the higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related’ is ‘both active and mutual’: ‘The conviction that something is genuinely transacted in this consciousness is the very core of living religion’ (James 1990, 416–417).

3 Nature, of course, may also be a bearer of death and suffering and her messages might also be grim, but these outcomes and their significance within the framework I propose are worthy of a separate treatment.

4 See especially Maritain's Seven Lectures on Being (1971) and Existence and the Existent (1966a).

5 Based on personal experience, I would single out for mention The way of Zen (Watts 1957). In this philosophy of life, the take-over by the Universe of Being corresponds to a state of the mind outside itself, ‘un-self-grasped’, or ‘nirvana’ and this ‘can only arise unintentionally, spontaneously’ (Watts 1957, 49–50) by a ‘sudden awakening’ or ‘satori’ (Watts 1957, 83). I lived such unusual experience once, during a sabbatical leave in Japan. Walking from the train station to the Cancer Center along a footpath cutting through a stunning orchard of cherry trees in full bloom, I know I only remember leaving the station and arriving at the Center and nothing in between: an elating span of about ten minutes lost to any formed thought or feeling.