The Possibility of Life After Death

In his essay entitled “Experience,” Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.” This is what Emerson says, and he is talking about the place of each of us during our lives, between transitional times of birth and death. Stairs below us, stairs above. Extremes—but we do not know them; we do not know what they are like. Are they something? Or are they nothing?

 

Not that people throughout history have somehow fallen down on the job. “In the time of the Buddha,” says philosopher John Hick, “some two and a half thousand years ago, there was as great a multiplicity of rival views as today. Is the death of the body the extinction of the person? Or does a person survive as a continuing consciousness? Or as a resurrected person? With a spiritual body? In perpetuity or for a limited period?” And on and on. From time out of mind, people have been trying hard to find the answers, and none has proven itself to be THE answer. Why, then, take up the seemingly futile task of thinking about what happens when people die?  Why talk about it this morning, when for at least the past two and a half thousand years, or more, the reality of death has maintained an impenetrable ambiguity in the face of public investigation, and in some aspects it has invited belief in life after death while, in others, it has permitted the opposite conviction? Why? I like the answer John Hick gives. He says, “We shall not be able to refrain from speculating about death until we can refrain from speculating about life; for the one is inseparable from the other. … If we wish to think realistically about life we cannot avoid also thinking about death.” True words.

 

So here’s what I want to do this morning. Talk about my journey to a positive belief in the reality of life after death. My effort to peer into the stairs above me, to see what I can see. Perhaps my story will speak to yours.

 

My journey. No mystical experiences, I’m afraid. Primarily it has involved taking a close look at the reasons for and against life after death, as well as stepping back and becoming more aware of the different paradigms which powerfully influence how people imagine the relationship between mind and brain. 

 

Let’s start by considering the reasons for. Some of the ones I encountered in my journey were logical in character, meaning that they centered on the definitions of key ideas and the need to preserve their integrity. Others were theological in character, presupposing as true certain basic ideas given in a particular scripture or tradition, and the arguments go from there. The ones that really impressed me, however, were the empirical arguments—the ones grounded in concrete sensory experience.

 

We have already heard about one class of such experiences: the near-death experience. Another has to do with apparent cases of reincarnation memories. The gold standard for research on this is Ian Stevenson, M.D., a well-respected psychiatrist from the University of Virginia who was once described as “a methodical, careful, even cautious, investigator, whose personality is on the obsessive side.” Perfect for doing exhaustive, honest research. He and his collaborators gathered cases suggestive of reincarnation from all over the world—Africa, the United States, Canada, Burma, India, South America, Lebanon, and Turkey. Each case, he says, “usually starts when a small child of two to four years of age begins talking to his parents or siblings of a life he led in another time and place. The child usually feels a considerable pull back toward the events of the life and he frequently [asks] his parents to let him return to the community where he claims that he formerly lived. If the child makes enough particular statements about the previous life, the parents (usually reluctantly) begin inquiries about their accuracy. Often, indeed usually, such attempts at verification do not occur until several years after the child has begun to speak of the previous life. If some verification results, members of the two families visit each other and ask the child whether he recognizes places, objects, and people of his supposed previous existence.” That’s what Ian Stevenson says. Together with a network of volunteers, he would try to find these spontaneous past life recall cases as soon as possible. He’d carefully question both the family of the living child and the family of the deceased to ensure that they had no contact and that no information had or would be passed between them. He’d also obtain detailed information about the deceased, including information not fully known to anyone involved—such as details of the will—so as test the child’s knowledge. Over the years, Ian Stevenson accumulated 3000 such cases, and, having honestly considered alternative hypotheses—like fraud, information gained from others, extra-sensory perception, deception on the part of the parents, and even spirit possession—he argued that reincarnation stands as the best scientific hypothesis for explaining the cases. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation—that’s the place to begin exploring Stevenson’s research for yourself. Another good overview is a book by philosopher Robert Almeder: Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Death.

 

We’re talking empirical evidence for life after death. The near-death experience, reincarnation memories, as well as cases of mediumship, apparitions, and out-of-body experiences. Viewed separately, we find in each class of evidence provocative cases which strongly suggest the possibility that something survives physical death. Viewed together, viewed collectively, a pattern arises that makes it hard NOT to believe.

 

But I will admit: we are talking about parapsychological stuff. Stuff which strikes many people as strange. Which naturally leads us to consider some objections to life after death. It certainly did for me, in my own journey, since parapsychological research has long proven to be a magnet for criticism, even enthusiastic contempt.  

 

Why is that? 

 

One reason, I think, is the National Enquirer effect. By that I mean a kind of guilt by association. Since they are controversial, and controversy attracts attention, accounts of near death experience, or reincarnation memories, or other parapsychological phenomena pop up now and again in National Enquirer-like sources, and we may think, Huh, parapsychology must lack credibility since the National Enquirer lacks credibility, is sheer sensationalism and entertainment and fluff. Nothing to it. However, to this I would say that it’s simply unfair to take the worst expression of something and treat it as if it were representative of the best. It’s unfair to read an article or see a special on TV that is so gullible and poorly thought out that you can drive a truck through it—and then think that you have, by this, successfully debunked all the quality research on the related phenomenon that’s out there—like Ian Stevenson’s research, or the Lancet NDE study from 2001. 

 

It’s unfair—but nevertheless, we can fall for it. We can succumb to the National Enquirer effect. And then there is this reason for objecting to parapsychological evidence for life after death: the shadow of fraud. It’s happened. During spiritualism’s heyday in the 19^th century, there was widespread fraud, especially as the movement was taken over by showmanship and riches were to be had. As for the 20^th century, there have been a few documented cases of evidence tampering in lab-based parapsychological experiments. Fraud has happened; and the shadow this throws can tend to spoil even evidence and experimental results that, in truth, are perfectly valid. To this, I would say four things: First, evidence tampering is something that researchers in all scientific fields have been tempted to do, or have done, for purposes of getting tenure, or preserving prestige, or other causes. It’s a problem every field deals with. Second point: some of the people who are most zealous about uncovering fraud are parapsychologists themselves. When they find it, they let everybody know. Transparency. They understand, more than anyone else, that the phenomena they study are extraordinary—and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence that, to be taken seriously, must be as immune as possible to the charge of fraud. This, in fact, leads to my third point: because of the intense scrutiny it has labored under in the 20^th century, parapsychological research has developed methodology and controls that are perhaps far better than you see in other branches of science. Given the level of criticism, parapsychology has had to run as tight a ship as possible, for it even to survive. Finally, there is this, my fourth point: whereas it is admittedly true that even the best cases for survival are not fraud-proof—since one can always conjure up ways in which the case might be tainted—still, there is the silent inexorable witness of evidence that continues to pop up in widely differing contexts, over time, examined by many different researchers. The silent inexorable witness that makes the probability of fraud remote, and in fact turns the suspicion back on the skeptic, and can lead one to wonder what it is that causes some skeptics to disbelieve no matter what; or to insist on standards of evidence, that, if adopted, would render any empirical science impossible; or simply to be more interested in ridiculing and name-calling than rational dialogue.

 

We’re talking about objections to the possibility of life after death. Besides the National Enquirer-effect and the shadow of fraud, there’s this: the idea that the origin of belief in life after death is wish fulfillment. People believing because it’s just something they want to believe in. “Such a theory,” says philosopher John Hick, “is attractive to an age schooled in the exposure of motives by modern psychology. But nevertheless [this theory is not in accord] with early man’s thoughts. For the most general primitive attitude to the dead of which we have evidence was not one of envy, but more of fear or pity. The dead were not usually thought of as having passed on to a higher and happier life but rather as having lapsed into an altogether less desirable state of mere half-existence. […] The early greek conception of the after-life, expressed in the Iliad and the Odyssey, centered upon the psyche or soul, which scholar Erwin Rohde described as ‘the body’s shadow image’ or ‘a feebler double of the man.’ At death this descends into erebus or hades where, while still recognizable and still bearing its earthly name, it persists as a depleted, joyless entity, a mere bloodless shadow of its former embodied self.” That’s what John Hick says, and he concludes: “Thus the ‘pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die’ view of the origin of humanity’s conviction of an after-life is not supported by the evidences of anthropology. On the contrary, ‘for the vast majority of mankind, the idea that the soul gains by passing out of this world is very rare indeed.’” The question for us thus becomes—how did belief in an afterlife take hold upon humanity, if not out of wish fulfillment? Perhaps for some of the positive reasons we’ve considered here today. Definitely, John Hick’s point prevents us from summarily dismissing the ancient conviction in life after death—psychologizing it away.

 

There’s lots of possible objections to consider, and reason requires that we take a fair look. Here and now, there is one more I want to consider—perhaps the objection that, above all, drives criticism and even contempt towards belief in life after death. It’s this: that life after death is simply impossible. So impossible that even to bring it up is to be ridiculous. Impossible in a way that some thought rocks falling to earth from the skies was impossible. “I would more easily believe that two Yankee professors would lie,” said famous Unitarian Thomas Jefferson,” than stones would fall from heaven.” He was referring to what we now call … meteorites.

 

The key objection to life after death is that it is simply impossible. Why impossible? Because, after all, mind is dependent on the brain. How can you have thinking without a brain to support it? How to even imagine what that might be like? To even consider this—what’s the matter with you? 

 

This was the objection—there like the proverbial elephant in the middle of the living room—that I encountered pretty much everywhere in academia. There in the graduate school of philosophy I went to. There in the Unitarian Universalist seminary I went to. You just didn’t question the assumption. You just didn’t. 

 

Which is why I count one of the sweetest moments in my personal journey the time I discovered the work of William James, American philosopher of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. In particular, his short work from 1898 entitled: Human Immortality. In his elegant prose he acknowledges that the “old notion of a life hereafter” has lost “its power to draw belief,” especially in “scientifically cultivated circles.” “One hears,” he says, “not only physiologists, but numbers of laymen who read the popular science books and magazines, saying all about us, How can we believe in life hereafter when Science has once for all attained to proving, beyond possibility of escape, that our inner life is a function of that famous material, the so-called ‘gray matter’ of our cerebral convolutions? How can the function possibly persist after its organ has undergone decay?”

 

But it is as a scientist that James asked me and asks all of us to take a closer look at the admittedly intimate relationship between mind and brain. Certainly one way of describing it is in term of “production,” as in the brain producing the mind as a tea kettle produces steam and an electric circuit produces light. Take away the tea kettle, and there’s no steam. Take away the electric circuit, and the light goes away. The brain dies, and there’s no more mind, nothing left. But—is this the only way to describe the relationship? William James says no. There is another way, of equal explanatory power: what he calls “transmission.” As in, the brain transmits a stream of consciousness, or a soul, or a spirit—whatever language you want to use—in the same way that a television set transmits ultra high frequency electromagnetic waves, transforms them into the programs we see and hear on our TV screens. Damage the TV, and the programs no longer come through all right. Turn the TV off, or unplug it, or smash it to smithereens, and nothing comes through at all. It looks exactly like death—but this does not mean that the ultra high frequency electromagnetic waves are gone too. They are just no longer capable of being received and translated. In some form and fashion, they are still there. Same goes for the mind, upon death of the body.

 

Now, William James proposed this alternate paradigm of mind-brain relations in 1898, so clearly his analogy in setting forth the transmission idea did not involve TV sets. He talked about sunlight shining through a glass prism, or air moving through organ pipes, as determined by organ keys. But my mind went immediately to the television set. It helped me to see instantly that the transmission paradigm of the mind-brain relationship made just as much sense as the production paradigm—that, in fact, what we have here are two radically different ways of understanding what it means to be human. Each one adequate to the facts. But one makes life after death impossible, while the other makes it … possible.

 

And here is where things stand. My personal journey to a reasoned belief in life after death. A careful consideration of the best evidence I can find. Taking a look at the objections and evaluating their persuasive force as fairly as possible. Stepping back and becoming aware of the different paradigms which make all the difference to how we envision the relationship between mind and brain. In the end, I freely admit that my belief, however reasoned I hope it to be, may not change anyone else’s mind. In fact I expect this, understanding the power of paradigms—how it can be so difficult to communicate across paradigms and hope to be understood. Yet this I know: that we do not have to think alike to love alike. It is why we are Unitarian Universalists, what it means to be Unitarian Universalists. And I know this too: that taking a reasoned position on something cannot possibly require anyone to have discovered an argument that demolishes all opposing views. Such a requirement is absurd. Not only is it egregiously false to the history of ideas, it’s also destructive to one’s own life. To hold off from believing something which is of vital significance to your heart and spirit until you have convinced everyone else is to make yourself a hostage to others, to paralyze your own growth. The exercise of reason is just not fundamentally about other people—your ability to convince other people. It’s about integrity, and self-respect. It’s about doing justice to the voice of reason and conscience within that honors doubt and won’t settle for unthinking faith. It’s about convincing yourself. Being able to give yourself to the belief without a sense of shame or dishonor. Reason, rightly used, prepares the way.

 

**

 

Reading before the sermon                                             

 

Our reading today is a reflection on the Near Death Experience, or NDE (for short). Because of modern advances in resuscitation technology, the past fifty or so years have seen an influx of accounts of remarkable experiences by some people who have been clinically dead and yet have been brought back. Their hearts had stopped beating; their lungs had stopped working; and thus, starved of blood and oxygen, their brains had shut down. One evidence of this is doctors shining a light into their pupils and nothing happening, no reflexive response to the light. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem, and that’s the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn’t work, it means that the brain itself has stopped working. 

 

Now, how we interpret NDEs depends on a prior belief regarding the nature of the relationship between the mind and the brain. Clearly, the state of our minds is closely related to our brains. But how, exactly, does the relationship work? 

 

One very common belief is that the brain produces the mind. There can be no minds without brains, and when the brain dies, the mind ceases to exist. Let’s call this the production theory of mind-brain relations. The brain produces the mind like an electrical generator produces electricity. Just as electricity ceases to exist when the generator breaks down or is turned off, so the mind fades away to nothingness when the brain dies.

 

If one believes this theory of mind-brain relations, then what neuroscientist Michael Persinger says about NDEs will ring true. He says that the best way to interpret NDEs is to see them as a “last gasp” of the brain’s functioning, triggered by a potent cocktail of drugs, a lack of oxygen, and perhaps even a fear of dying. The dying brain no longer perceives anything in the external world; all it is perceiving (for example: being outside of one’s body, the presence of dead loved ones, the tunnel, the bright light) are fantasies created in the mind and nothing more.

 

Yet does this hold up to the evidence?

 

A good place to start would be to explore the 13-year study of NDEs published in 2001 by the highly respected international medical journal, The Lancet. For now, I would simply have you consider the following report, which comes from Madelaine Lawrence, R.N., Ph. D., Director of Nursing Research at Hartford Hospital. She mentions the case of one patient who described floating up over her body and viewing the resuscitation effort being done on her. She then felt herself being pulled up through several floors of the hospital that seemed to dissolve as she moved through them until she found herself above the roof. There, she paused to enjoy the view of the night skyline of the city when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a red object. It was a shoe. She was struck by the oddness of this discovery, but only for a moment, as she felt herself “sucked up into a black hole” into the rest of her NDE. Afterwards, when she returned to her body, this patient told her experience to a nurse, who told the story to a medical resident, who laughed. However, the resident took his skepticism right upstairs to the janitor and convinced him to get a ladder. They checked the gutter on the roof, and the red shoe was there, just as the patient’s story had said it would be.

 

From Michael Sabom’s research we hear of other such cases, where NDE’ers came to know things in ways that are hard to explain. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist, wondered about the degree to which exposure to TV medical shows influences the reports of NDE’rs. What they show on TV, he points out, is very different from what actually happens in a real ambulance or emergency room; so if the accounts that NDE’ers give of their resuscitation experiences resemble TV, then it’s likely that their experiences were nothing more than hallucinatory.

 

Here’s how Sabom conducted his research: He asked one group of people who almost died but who didn’t have an NDE to try to describe the resuscitation procedures. Then he asked a second group of people—this time, all NDE’rs–to describe the resuscitation procedures. The results? NDE’rs often contradicted TV procedures in accurately describing what doctors, nurses, and other medical staff actually do to resuscitate people. The reports from non-NDE’ers resembled TV.

 

These are just two of many cases in which NDE’rs come to possess information that can’t possibly be accounted for through the production theory of mind-brain relations. If the brain produces the mind like an electrical generator produces electricity, then the only ideas we can have in our minds about reality have to come through our physical senses in contact with the world around it, or their scientific extensions (as in telescopes and cyclotrons). Clearly, though, NDE’ers are coming to know things in ways that don’t involve their physical brains and sense organs.   

 

Perhaps we need a different theory of mind-brain relations, one which can more accurately account for the facts—all of them, even the strange ones that come to us from research into the NDE…..

 

Here ends our reading for today.

 

 

CONGREGATION seeks leaders. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

As I reflect on our world today, and the challenge of leadership in difficult times, a story comes to mind from spiritual teacher Anthony de Mello. It’s about a mouse, in constant distress because of its fear of the cat. A young magician appeared one day, said, “How terrible to be so caught up in fear that you cannot enjoy yourself at all,” and he turned that mouse into a cat. But then it became afraid of the dog. So the young magician turned it into a dog, thinking that would fix things. But to his surprise, it then began to fear the panther. So the young magician turned it into a panther. Whereupon it was full of fear for the hunter. At this point the young magician gave up. He turned it back into a mouse, which surprised the mouse, who squeaked, “Why?” The young magician, a little older now, said, “Nothing I do is going to be of any help, because the one thing I cannot change—which makes all the difference—is your heart.” And that’s the story. If our hearts aren’t already big in some sense, then it does not matter what the outward circumstances happen to be, or the changes that magic might bring: we will never be able to dwell richly within our lives. Even when our circumstances are small as a mouse, I believe there is some kind of abundance to tap into and receive and be filled by. But not for a mousy heart; all a mousy heart can ever know is scarcity. Even it if beats within the body of a panther. 

 

The question before us this morning is thus: How to grow trust in our hearts so that, for the most important things, we can confidently know there will always be enough—no matter the state of the world, or the state of the stock market? Should things shrink down even to the size of a mouse, what can give us a sense of internal security that can endure every plummet of the Dow Jones Index and will not be shaken? 

 

These are fundamentally spiritual questions. Fundamentally spiritual, but also intensely practical. “Fear,” says a newspaper headline from several days ago, “may thwart financial cures.” “We aren’t dealing with a fundamental economic issue any longer,” says the article, quoting James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital management. “We are dealing with fear. And that doesn’t respond to economic medicine.” People need words of reassurance; people need to hear an upside image; and until they do, investors are likely to be on edge. “We’ve so been traumatized over the past few weeks that every little thing that happens, we overreact.” “The opposite side of irrational exuberance is irrational pessimism, and neither one is a good path to your financial goals.” That’s what the newspaper article said. Despite a 700 billion dollar bailout of the banks, and other kinds of proactive solutions, what may nevertheless thwart these financial cures is … the mousy heart. The heart that won’t believe, the heart that can’t stop trying to control things long enough to take the leap of faith, the heart that doesn’t keep its eyes on the prize.

 

The question, again: how to dwell richly in our lives, how to tap into abundance, no matter what the external circumstances might be?

 

I believe that this is a question people have always asked, as a central part of their faith journey. How can my heart be, not mousy, but magnificent? And for a teacher like Rabbi Jesus, the best answer can’t be transmitted through words. It’s an answer you have to live into through trust, and commitment, and action. Often, during difficult times. Exactly during difficult times. You can talk about it later; but first, you have to act. 

 

Go back 2000 years ago. The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a time when Rabbi Jesus tried to take a little time off from his ministry and retreated, with his disciples, to a site near the Sea of Galilee. But people saw where they were going and ran there on foot ahead of them. 5000 people waiting, when they finally got there. And Rabbi Jesus, despite his fatigue, could not ignore them. Compassion welled up in his magnificent heart. He began teaching them, healing them; and it was hours later when his disciples came up to him, saying, “Rabbi, look, it’s getting late, it’s time for dinner. You need to send the people away into the surrounding villages so they can buy themselves something to eat.” But Jesus said to his disciples, “YOU give them something to eat.” In reply, they sputtered, “You want US to go and buy bread for 5000 people? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? That would cost us a fortune, and last we checked, we’re poor.” But Jesus said, “No, no, no—you’re misunderstanding me. How many loaves of bread do you already have, in hand?” They checked, and all together, the disciples had five small loaves of bread and two fish. When Jesus heard this, he immediately turned to the crowd of 5000 people and said something which simply stunned his disciples. He said, in a loud voice, “Everyone, it’s time to eat. We have more than enough to go around. There’s enough for everyone. Please sit down!” And the people did, in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed the meal and broke the loaves and divided the fish and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. Which they proceeded to do. Five loaves and two fish. Though the disciples could not help feeling in their mousy hearts that their fearless leader had gone nuts. No sane person could possibly believe that five loaves and two fish would be enough to feed 5000 people. 

 

But such is the difference between the mousy heart … and the heart that is magnificent. The magnificent heart knows that for what is truly important in life, there’s always more than enough to go around, and we need not fear adversity. The magnificent heart looks at a situation of apparent scarcity square in the eye and says, ‘I don’t believe it.” The magnificent heart challenges the people around him not to believe it either, and to step up, step out in faith. The magnificent heart—the heart of Rabbi Jesus—is satisfied with nothing less than a miracle.

 

But to this I hasten to add: not the WRONG kind of miracle. Not the supernatural kind, the out-of-thin-air kind, the someone-else-is-gonna-do-it kind. The magnificent heart expects a miracle, but not the wrong kind. When I read the gospel story, what I wonder about is how long it actually took that first person in the crowd, there at the side of the Sea of Galilee, to get what Jesus was trying to teach. I wonder how long it took for him to catch the abundance vision so fully and truly that his heart became magnificent too—and over his dead body was he gonna let the abundance vision die. And so he took personal responsibility for seeing that the vision came true. He gave what he had. He reached into his pocket and he pulled out a piece of his own precious bread and he put it right there in the basket. He chipped in.

 

How long did it take that first person, then the second, then the third—until the abundance vision caught like wildfire? Until mousy hearts found themselves behaving in ways that were not mousy at all? Suddenly, it’s a scene out of Stone Soup, it’s food flying out of people’s pockets and bags and satchels, faster than you can blink, all added to the communal feast. Everyone chipping in generously until it’s a done deal. Things starting with only five small loaves and two fish—but ending, despite the adversity of the situation, with enough for all, more than enough.

 

The miracle can happen here for us today. We can live into it, here and now. This morning, I am delighted to announce that, just a few weeks into this year’s stewardship campaign, we are more than half way to our pledge goal of 1 million dollars. People are stepping up. People are chipping in. We have, in hand, 144 pledges, totaling $520,000. So many people committed to giving 5% of their total household income, if not more, and I’m one of them. But we’re not there yet. There are about 420 more pledges we have yet to receive, so I am asking you, members and friends alike, that if you’ve still not pledged—let your hearts be magnificent. Experience abundance. Step up. Chip in. Let’s reach the pledge goal. Know that your dollars are going to something that sustains lives, changes people for the better. Pledges are the main source of income for our congregation—one of the largest Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America—so your generosity is key to ensuring that UUCA remains vital and strong and that it’s able to grow into all that it can be, able to reach towards that Sustainable Living vision I talked about earlier. 

 

I want the abundance miracle here at UUCA. I want it, and I hope you want it. Everyone taking the work of this place personally, making a generous financial commitment. Stepping up, chipping in, because if we don’t—if we’re counting on the WRONG kind of miracle, the supernatural kind, the out-of-thin-air kind, the someone-else-is-gonna-do-it kind—then you know what? We begin with five loaves and two fish, and we end with five loaves and two fish. That’s all. The 5000 go hungry. 5000 lives, unchanged. 5000, who will never know the miracle. And who wants to be a part of that? We are called to so much more, as a leader congregation in the world. We are called to magnificence. So let our hearts be magnificent. Let the miracle happen today. Let it happen. Amen.

 

Rev. Anthony David

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Yom Kippur Homily

My Yom Kippur homily found me this morning, when I opened up the editorial page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and saw there, published, my letter to the editor. It reads as follows:

 

I take exception to Lorraine Murray’s article from Saturday, Oct. 4 (in the “Faith and Values” section), where she equates respect towards many sources of wisdom with an “anything goes” mentality. The two are quite different. People with an “anything goes” mentality really don’t care about testing their beliefs to see if they are actually true or helpful in their lives; but people who respect many sources of wisdom think about what they believe and go in search of truth no matter where it comes from. An open-ended search for meaning has nothing to do with “anything goes.” Open minds DO have a limit—and that limit is the test of reason, conscience, justice, and love. 

 

Then there is this. Ms. Murray is clearly out of touch with today’s pluralistic world, which brings to people the riches of the world’s religions, science, literature, the arts, and scholarship. In the face of this, Ms. Murray cites some shallow theology and a spurious interpretation of the Bible to call people back to a narrow “One Way, One Truth” kind of religious path. For my part, I’m grateful that a prophet like Martin Luther King, Jr., ignored calls like this. MLK Jr. discovered the power of peace through the works of a Hindu saint, Gandhi; and his eyes were opened to the New Testament’s message of love when he read a spiritual classic of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita. To me, this says that a spiritual life which draws wisely from multiple religious traditions can change lives and change the world. It also says that if you want to be enriched in your home religious tradition, don’t be afraid to explore other voices and other ways. God is too big to be contained by any single tradition, and this is but evidence of God’s goodness and God’s mercy.

 

This was the letter, and I read it with great satisfaction, since it was an opportunity for me to express very simply and directly the great power and promise of our Unitarian Universalist faith—to get our message out there. Because of fatigue from doing too many things the previous week, I almost did not write it, but I’m so glad I did.

 

And then I read my name. The name that my initial email to the AJC very clearly communicated as Rev. Anthony David, Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. But somehow, to my utter mystification and dismay, between the email and the newspaper, things suffered a weird transformation, and my name appeared as Rev. Anthony Davis. Rev. Anthony Davis??? What’s the matter with these people’s eyes? It’s right there in black-and-white. David. David. David. Talk about a fly in the ointment. Finally getting a good letter to the editor printed—my first one—and they screw up my name!

 

I should add that the last several sentences were me grousing and complaining to my wife Laura, while she was getting ready to go and teach fourth-graders at the Waldorf School in Decatur. She’s got enough on her mind, as you can imagine; but even so, she listened to me going on and on, patient as always. Listened silently, fully. Then said, “It sounds like their getting your name wrong touched on something really deep within you….”

 

That’s what she said, and immediately, I was reminded of a line we say as we begin our Yom Kippur service. This one: “We have come together for our Yom Kippur service. How shall we begin it? Let us begin by listening.”

 

Then this line: “All pretense gone, naked heart revealed to the hiding self.” 

 

Then this: “O source of peace … lead us to a healing, to a mastery of all that drives us to war within ourselves and with others.”

 

Yom Kippur begins with listening, as we think about our lives and our deeds, as we ask ourselves hard questions, confess our frailties and faults, become more aware of all that drives us to war within ourselves and with others, start a clean day in the book of our lives. Forgiveness and renewal.

 

It all takes on a particular poignancy and immediacy, given the rawness of my frustration from this morning. The incident of the misspelled name reminds me that there are some parts of the naked heart that are persistently hurting. There is a difference between action and the disposition to act; there is a difference between feeling and the disposition to feel. Specific times of hurtful action and feeling from the past year—this we can leave behind us, as we ask for forgiveness and start a new day in the book of our lives. But then there are the underlying dispositions, the underlying patterns that lay dormant until they are triggered—and when that happens, the same hurtful actions we have asked forgiveness for happen again, the same emotions…. It’s the predispositions and the patterns that are so hard to leave behind. They don’t just appear in Chapter 1 and stay put. They extend forward, go into every new chapter we write because they are often a part of our make-up, part of our self-definition, part of the internal tensions that drive us, a weakness that is part and parcel of strength. “From weakness to strength / or strength to weakness— / and so often back again.” Yet another line from the Yom Kippur liturgy we just said, a short moment ago. “O source of peace … lead us to a healing, to a mastery of all that drives us to war within ourselves and with others.”

 

So let us begin by listening. So often this happens in the context of a caring relationship, where someone is willing to allow us to vent and they do not try to solve it for us, or psychoanalyze us, or make us feel guilty for the emotions we are feeling. They surround us with listening, enabling us to listen to ourselves. When Laura did this for me, she gave me strength and courage to go deeper into the emotional pattern that was triggered by the AJC’s misspelling of my name. In this way, I found myself remembering how I have always had a name that people have mispronounced and misspelled. It used to be Makar—M-A-K-A-R—but most people’s habits of pronunciation and spelling led them to say “Maker” and spell it “M-A-K-E-R.” It was the name of my grandparents who had emigrated into Canada from Ukraine, and all my life I have felt the obligation and the weight of their raw immigrant ambition to do better than the previous generation, to be the best; so it has always been a supreme irony and supreme frustration to have a surname that represented “being the best” consistently mispronounced and misspelled—as if to pointedly debunk it, or ridicule it.

 

There is far more to say here—there is more to the story of how, in my 21^st year, I dropped my last name legally and adopted my middle name as my last name—but the point is made: an innocent misspelling of my name this morning triggered an entire emotional pattern, related to a significant part of my history, and what unfolded was outrage, incredulity, anger, sadness, even fear….An innocent misspelling of my name put its finger on an internal tension that drives me, put its finger on a weakness that is part and parcel of a strength.  “From weakness to strength / or strength to weakness— / and so often back again.” We all carry complex patterns like this within us, and though they might have been formed in Chapter 1 of our lives, they can still be with us in Chapter 15, or Chapter 50, or Chapter 75. This is the truth….  “All pretense gone, naked heart revealed to the hiding self.” 

 

But with listening, the work of Yom Kippur begins. Just this. We listen with curiosity and compassion—we listen with an honest acceptance of what we find. Sometimes, just this can win a measure of the healing and release we are looking for. I love the story that comes from spiritual teacher Anthony De Mello, who says, “I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. Then one day someone said to me, ‘Don’t change. I love you just as you are.’ Those words were music to my ears: ‘Don’t change, Don’t change. Don’t change . . . I love you as you are.’ I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!” That’s the story. Suddenly, our prison of destructive habit is opened, and we are released. My anger at my name being misspelled: defused to the extent I was able to sit with it for a time, to reconnect with the related history, to recognize the old pattern, to honor it for the story it tells, to choose not to indulge it, to let it go.

 

This afternoon I received an email from a member of UUCA, with this in the subject line: “Nice Letter to Editor!” The email reads, “I assume that the letter in today’s paper was by you, and either: (1) the AJC misspelled your name, (2) You’ve changed your name (again), or (3) You can’t spell your name. I’m sure it’s #1!” And now I can laugh at this. Now I can laugh. I can move on … and I do so feeling more whole, feeling more reconnected in a compassionate way to my past, ready to start another clean day, ready for the future. We can do this, whatever the old pattern might be that is giving us trouble. “Source of Life, in our weakness give us strength. In our blindness be our guide. When we falter, hold our hand. Make consistent our impulse for good.” Amen.

 

Rev. Anthony David

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Letter to the Editor

I take exception to Lorraine Murray’s article from Saturday, Oct. 4 (in the “Faith and Values” section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), where she equates respect towards many sources of wisdom with an “anything goes” mentality. The two are quite different. People with an “anything goes” mentality really don’t care about testing their beliefs to see if they are actually true or helpful in their lives; but people who respect many sources of wisdom think about what they believe and go in search of truth no matter where it comes from. An open-ended search for meaning has nothing to do with “anything goes.” Open minds DO have a limit—and that limit is the test of reason, conscience, justice, and love.  

 

Then there is this. Ms. Murray is clearly out of touch with today’s pluralistic world, which brings to people the riches of the world’s religions, science, literature, the arts, and scholarship. In the face of this, Ms. Murray cites some shallow theology and a spurious interpretation of the Bible to call people back to a narrow “One Way, One Truth” kind of religious path. For my part, I’m grateful that a prophet like Martin Luther King, Jr., ignored calls like this. MLK Jr. discovered the power of peace through the works of a Hindu saint, Gandhi; and his eyes were opened to the New Testament’s message of love when he read a spiritual classic of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita. To me, this says that a spiritual life which draws wisely from multiple religious traditions can change lives and change the world. It also says that if you want to be enriched in your home religious tradition, don’t be afraid to explore other voices and other ways. God is too big to be contained by any single tradition, and this is but evidence of God’s goodness and God’s mercy.

 

Rev. Anthony David

Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

When I was a teenager, I came across this Bible passage, from Matthew 12: 31-32, in which the writer puts the following words into Jesus’ mouth: “And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” I read that, and immediately, a thought popped into consciousness. Not a question about what this strange-sounding statement might have meant to first-century hearers. Not curiosity about the audience to which it was being addressed, and for what reason. Definitely not doubt that this was something the historical Jesus might ever have said. But this: words blaspheming the Holy Spirit! Big, horrible, nasty, four letter words! That’s what popped into consciousness, and I was appalled by how my own mind had seemingly betrayed me…. Words, popping out from underneath the furniture of the known parts of my mind like speedy cockroaches. Something like this has never failed to happen, since then, when I have found myself standing near a cliff, or on a rooftop, or on a high balcony—unwanted, anxiety-provoking words popping into consciousness, saying, “Jump. Jump.” Know what I am talking about?

 

It’s just one way of illustrating how there are different parts to our selves—as if the self were like a thrown-together committee—and sometimes the committee members conflict, sometimes smart people find themselves embroiled in stupid anxieties, or doing stupid things. Here’s another example of this, and while it comes from a psychology experiment conducted in the 1970s, it speaks to any age and situation, really, in which people are challenged to delay gratification and deal with frustration in the now in order to secure a greater good in the future. Four-year-olds, ushered one-at-a-time into a room by a kind experimenter who gives them toys to play with for a while. Then the experimenter brings out marshmallows—sets a plate down right in front of the child, holding one marshmallow, and then, some distance away, sets down another plate, this one holding TWO marshmallows. The experimenter checks to make sure that the child likes marshmallows, and then he asks, “Would you like the plate in front of you, with the single marshmallow, or would you like that plate over there, with TWO marshmallows?” That plate over there, of course. Then the experimenter says, “Great. But now I have to go out of the room for a little while. If you can wait for me until I come back, you can have the two marshmallows. If you can’t wait, then just ring this bell, and I’ll come back and give you the single marshmallow in front of you. But if you do that, you can’t have the two.” The child nods yes (he understands), the experimenter leaves, the child stares at the two marshmallows across the room, he stares at the one marshmallow right in front of him, he starts to salivate, he feels desire suffocating him, he looks again at the two marshmallows, he tries to fight temptation, he can only hold out so long, he’s only four years old. He rings the bell. Now, in your mind’s eye, substitute Wall Street for the room containing toys, substitute the securities that tanked and have been a big part of the financial mess we are in for the plate holding one marshmallow, and substitute far more reliable, sustainable sources of wealth for the plate holding two marshmallows. Wall Street financiers—so-called “Masters of the Universe”—unable to resist greed, investing in financial instruments so complex that not even the traders understood them, but that’s OK to them because, in the short run, the payoff was big. Congress in cahoots, unwilling to press for tighter regulation. Smart people doing really, really stupid things.

 

One more example to consider. This one comes from another psychology experiment, but this one is focused on the phenomenon of “learned helplessness.” The experimenter, Martin Seligman, worked with dogs in two phases. In the first phase, Seligman established in the dogs a sense of whether or not they could act on their behalf to escape unpleasant circumstances. For one group, things were set up so that they learned that they could act to stop the electric shocks they were receiving. For the other group, things were set up differently: these dogs learned that nothing they did would cause the shocks to stop. They learned to be helpless. At this point, the experiment moved on to phase two. In this phase, the set up was a cage divided by a low wall. On one side of the wall, the floor was electrified; but on the other side of the wall, the floor was normal. Here’s what happened in this phase. The dogs that had learned earlier that they could help themselves quickly figured out that the thing to do was jump over the wall. As for the other group of dogs: they just sat down on the electrified side of the wall. Didn’t even try to figure out how to escape. Didn’t believe that was even possible anyway—the sense of helplessness persisted—even though, in reality, their actions would have mattered. How many of you resonate with this? You sympathize with the dogs who learned helplessness. You read the self-help books that tell you YES YOU CAN, you listen to the Senior Minister preach about YES YOU CAN, you watch the great and powerful Oprah on TV proclaim YES YOU CAN, and perhaps for a time you can feel it, you believe it, but it fades, you find yourself back to NO I CAN’T—even when there’s a part of your mind that understands quite clearly that it is irrational to conclude something about all present and future circumstances on the basis of just some selective past experiences of helplessness.  It’s irrational to do that. Illogical. And yet, smart people find themselves saying NO I CAN’T anyway.

 

Smart people, stupid things. Our selves—the thrown-together committee—divided. Unwanted thoughts popping into consciousness like cockroaches; doing what is unhelpful or downright wrong even as we want to do what is right; persisting in feelings of helplessness even though we know it doesn’t have to be that way. Being our own worst enemies. No peace in the home, or between neighbors, or in the cities, or in the nations, or in the world—because it’s not in the heart. It’s not in the heart, but we long for it to be in the heart, we long to achieve genuine happiness so that, like ripples in a pond, happiness can expand outwards into everything.

 

That’s what I want to tackle this year, in the context of a once-a-month sermon series, based on the wonderful book by psychologist Jonathan Haidt called The Happiness Hypothesis: Achieving a vision of happiness that is sustainable and does justice to what one wise person calls the “triple-bottom line”: (1) people living near and far and yet to be born, (2) our planetary ecology, and (3) profit/economics/how we make a living. Doing justice to all three in a balanced way. Progressive Rabbi Michael Lerner echoes this when he talks about a “a New Bottom Line”—when he says that “every institution should be judged efficient, rational and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring for others, generosity and kindness, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of the universe.” This is what Rabbi Michael Lerner says, and right here is the recipe for reclaiming the American Dream and creating lifestyles which are more sane and more sustainable. 

 

For now, though, the place to start is with Chapter 1 in the Jonathan Haidt book, where he begins to probe the problem of unhappiness. He quotes from the ancient Roman writer Ovid, who says, “I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.” This is our particular focus today. Unhappiness. The divided self.

 

The classic Western formulation of this problem has already been suggested. Ovid talks about reason versus desire. St. Paul in the Christian tradition talks about the warfare between the Spirit and the Flesh. To use the language of contemporary psychology, it’s controlled processes of the mind versus automatic processes. Controlled processes represent the kind of thinking that requires concentration and effort, needs language as its vehicle, proceeds step-by-step, plays out at the center of conscious awareness. Such a capacity is new to us, relative to automatic processes which, for their part, reflect millions and millions of years of accumulated evolutionary wisdom. Unlike controlled processes, automatic processes are what go on in our minds without the need for conscious attention and control, without need for language. They can run in parallel and take care of many different things at once. What they contribute are gut feelings, visceral reactions, emotions, intuitions. If automatic processes are like the powerful elephant, then controlled processes are like the precise rider. Very different kinds of intelligences—and in all three of the examples I mentioned earlier, the conflict between them is clear. Scary thoughts popping into awareness, and because they are scary, because they cause us anxiety, our attention grabs hold of them and won’t let go even as we want to banish them forever. Greed for here-and-now profit and pleasure even though greater profit and higher-order pleasure is possible for those who can delay gratification and work for the longer-term good. Feelings of helplessness (anxiety, sadness, anger) overwhelming the voice of reason that says, the moment before you is very likely different from the moment behind you. In the future, right now, you can make a difference, even if, in the past, your hands were tied… The elephant out of control, and the rider hanging on for dear life….

 

This is the classic Western formulation of the problem, suggesting the classic Western solution: to emphasize reason and Spirit over desire and Flesh. The rider to conquer the elephant. Not to wave a white flag, not to surrender, but to win….

 

One version of this message comes from some people who draw on the findings of evolutionary biology as it traces the development of our human brains: from the mere clumps of neurons of our vertebrate ancestors of millions and millions of years ago, to our brains of today, complex and many-structured. In this long evolutionary process, one moment stands out, around the time of the death of the dinosaurs, when, in the more social animals, particularly the primates, a new layer of brain tissue developed that would enable our ancestors to make creative associations among ideas; to rise above the immediate situation and see it from a larger perspective; to suppress or inhibit immediate reaction and replace it with a more considered response; to think about consequences; to reason. I’m talking about the neocortex, which is Latin for “new covering”—so very different from the older centers of the brain which, if they are directly stimulated, bring about gluttonous, hypersexual, ferocious behaviors. Experimenters have seen this in rats, cats, and other mammals, and presumably this is what would happen to us as well. Something we HAVE seen in humans is what happens when the “new covering” is damaged or impaired, as in cases of brain tumors. Here again, the gluttonous, hypersexual, ferocious behaviors, emerging. Without the “new covering” of the neocortex, we would not be truly human. And here is where some people draw the conclusion that the solution to the problem of the divided self is to win the war of reason against emotion and desire. They see the brain’s evolution over time as telling a story about the emergence of that which gives us our humanity. Reason steps forward and leaves emotion behind. Reason is the Holy Grail of countless years of evolution, and so … let there be more reason. Whatever is best goes in this direction. Win the war.

 

Yet there is more to the story. Listen to how Jonathan Haidt describes this: “There is, however, a flaw in the … script. It assumes that reason was installed in the frontal cortex but that emotion stayed behind…. In fact, the frontal cortex enabled a great expansion of emotionality in humans. The lower third of the prefrontal cortex is called the orbitofrontal cortex because it is the part of the brain just above the eyes…. This region of the cortex has grown especially large in humans and other primate and is one of the most consistently active areas of the brain during emotional reactions. […] When you feel yourself drawn to a meal, a landscape, or an attractive person, or repelled by a dead animal, a bad song, or a blind date, your orbitofrontal cortex is working hard to give you an emotional feeling of wanting to approach or to get away.” What Jonathan Haidt is saying here, in other words, is: take a closer look at ALL the data. Don’t just look at some of it, and then pronounce final conclusions. Take a closer look at ALL the data, and what you see is that the emergence of the “new covering” didn’t just enable a new reach of reason, but also a new reach of emotion. It benefited both the elephant and the rider—made them BOTH smarter. In other words, the war of reason against desire and emotion is a war that cannot possibly be won. Reason and emotion operate in the very same brain centers, so for one to conquer the other is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Smart people doing more stupid stuff!  

 

Perhaps nothing proves the point better than to cite cases where people’s orbitofrontal cortex has been damaged—through a stroke, or a tumor, or a blow to the head—and they lose their emotional lives. When they ought to feel emotion, they feel nothing. Reason and logic remain intact; they perform normally on IQ tests; they continue to be aware of and understand social rules and moral principles. But what happens when they go out into the world? Again, listen to Jonathan Haight describing this: “Now that they are free of the distractions of emotion, do they become hyperlogical, able to see through the haze of feelings that blinds the rest of us to the path of perfect rationality? Just the opposite. They find themselves unable to make simple decisions or to set goals, and their lives fall apart. When they look out upon the world and think, ‘What should I do now?’ They see dozens of choices but lack immediate internal feelings if like or dislike.” This is what Jonathan Haidt says. “It is only because our emotional brains work so well that our reasoning can work at all.” If we go back to the rider and elephant metaphor here, what’s happened is that the elephant has gone away—there’s nothing to carry the rider any longer. He’s dead in the water. In short: take a look at ALL the data, and the story that emerges can’t possibly be one of reason versus emotion. We just can’t win that war. It’s Vietnam. It’s Iraq. Can’t win it. 

 

But what we can do—the solution to the problem of the divided self that we can work towards—is in building emotional intelligence. We are going to be exploring this for the rest of the year, but here’s a start on thinking about some ways in which the rider can learn to respect the elephant and work with it more effectively. It’s key to a better future. Key to figuring out the New Bottom Line that Rabbi Michael Lerner talks about. Key to liberal religion like ours in particular, since for too long, our movement has been suspicious towards the elephant, at times wanting to recast religion and the religious life as a hyperlogical sort of thing, presuming that only when you become free of emotion, spiritual sanity and truth will come—but it won’t come. The religious rider without the elephant to ride upon is dead in the water…. Liberal religious life must balance reason and emotion. It must find a way, else it won’t be sustainable into the future….

 

We need to build emotional intelligence. So: Go back to one of the illustrations I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon. The one about the four years olds and the marshmallows—how they were challenged to delay gratification and deal with frustration. Using some of the language I’ve developed since sharing this story, we can say that the children were being tested to see how they could navigate the conflict between their controlled processes and automatic processes—between the rational rider that prefers the two marshmallows, and the elephant that wants the one marshmallow immediately. What researchers saw in the children who were able to delay gratification the longest was this: they looked away from the source of the temptation. They thought about other pleasant things. They knew, at some level, that they weren’t going to be able to wear down the elephant, groaning as it was for a taste of the single marshmallow NOW. How can the small rider block the full-on charge of an elephant? So what they did instead was nudge it. They stopped looking. They thought about something else. They might have even imagined that the marshmallow was yucky, something nasty. Now, that’s going to delay the elephant. That works. That’s emotional intelligence. I should also add that, years later, the experimenter caught up with the children he had worked with, and he discovered a clear correlation between an ability to delay gratification and performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests, as well as the likelihood of being admitted to top universities. Now that’s not stupid. That’s smart.  

 

As for the illustration about learned helplessness. The dogs, lying down on the electrified section of their cage, not believing they can do anything to make things better, even though all they need to do is simply jump the low wall separating the side of the cage they’re on with the other side. And again, I am really identifying with these dogs this morning. So much hurt in the world, and it can all feel so overwhelming, and compassion fatigue sets in, and everything feels hopeless, and you don’t know how or where to even begin. What’s a smart way to address this? Perhaps what Martin Seligman did to help the dogs unlearn their helplessness will be instructive for us. Here’s what he did. He had to drag each helpless pooch over the wall that divided the electrified side of the cage from the one that was not. Unless and until he could give back to them at least a small concrete sense of change—even if they had to be dragged to it—the dogs were not going to stop feeling helpless. The dogs had to be helped to reclaim and rediscover the sense that they had some control over the situation. No amount of mere talking can do this for them, or for us. When we are feeling stuck in a deep conviction of our own powerlessness—when the elephant within us is depressed and won’t rouse at the sound of the rider’s voice—the best thing that we can do is something small. Even to admit one’s powerlessness—as people in 12 step programs do—is a clear win, a taste of reclaiming sanity. As individuals, we may not be able to act directly to change the state of our economy. But we can find ways to be better savers and spenders of our own money, and that’s going to drag us over the wall. We may not be able to change the state of the world. But we can find ways to make a difference in our corner of the universe. We can smile at someone we’ve never met before, this morning, and share some friendship. That’s going to drag us over the wall, and you know what? It might amount to dragging them over the wall, too—might just be the thing they need, the nudge they need to get to the other side. That’s emotional intelligence. Not stupid, but smart.

 

Rev. Anthony David

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta