Human beings
tend to be Platonist or Cartesian. Most people opt for the theory of mind/body
dualism as the metaphysics of unreflective choice. Some of the practical and
theoretical ramifications of this metaphysical framework are worth pointing
out. The most striking is the bipolarity of concepts that runs throughout the
Western tradition. A number of them parallel this fundamental division. The
oppositions Pure/Impure, Mind/Body, Angel/flesh, Reason/Feeling, Male/Female,
Form/matter, Permanence/Change, Essence/Accident, Necessary/Contingent, A
priori/ A posteriori, Speech/Writing, and others, figure largely as a
reflection of the ontological division of >what is' into a dualistic framework.
At the top is
the opposition of an immaterial soul to body as pure extension, then arises the
idea of a purity that transcends the dust and dirt of this world, and,
consequently to the opposition Human/Animal and the idea that Homo Sapiens is
superior to other animals on this earth. In each of us, there is an Angel
struggling to get out.
I, too, have
felt the pull of dualism and fallen more than once into "Plato's honeyed
head." Because the mind seems to take up no space, it appeared to me
different from things that do take up space. Hence mind and body appeared to be
different, if not as two substances, then as basic categories. Of course, after
studying philosophy long enough, I realized that no form of dualism does
justice to our experience and reflection on our world and the universe as a
whole. Nevertheless, I had attained a merely theoretical understanding. I could
grasp that consciousness and mind are emergent properties of complex physical
systems, but I did not feel it at the gut level.
Human beings
want to be special. They want to be different from the animals, to have a
future beyond time and space, to live or die eternally. The search for
significance in the dualistic system privileges one side over the other, and we
find the development of one-sided thinking, to the detriment of understanding.
Nevertheless, I still felt that uncomfortable feeling of being set apart as
special, always guilty of not being, or living up to, my best self, which carried
the angelic responsibility of eternity on its back. However, that was before I
had the ape experience I now relate.
It was on a
beautiful Hockney winter morning in Ojai Valley, California, high on a hill
facing the length of the valley, steep hills on both sides, and mountains not
far away. There is something about the light and air in Ojai that can induce a
psychic trance. I had returned to my old high school and was sitting on a stone
wall surrounding the outdoor chapel with the sun coming up on my left, flooding
the valley with light; and I stopped thinking. There was looking out over the
valley, tout court.
Into my mind,
I do not know how, came a vision of a Barbary Ape who lived on the Rock of
Gibraltar. Perhaps I saw a documentary about it years ago. Anyway, there he
was, sitting on a rock and just looking out over the sea toward Africa.
Then we
merged. I became a full ape. It was uncanny. I was an ape and it was liberation
from dualism on the level of feeling. There was no longer an angel struggling
to get out, and there never had been. It was a relief to suffer only human
guilt for things ill done or undone, and no longer a numinous guilt for not
being able to cease being the animal I truly am. We are the apes that can do
better, and no longer the apes that must mistake themselves for, and long to
be, something supernatural.
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