Meditation 55: The Ape and I

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.