The Outer Structure and the Inner Nature of Spirituality

Abstract

To the apostle who doubted, Jesus replied: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”. This idea that belief unmediated by vision is deeper and more profound than belief of the sort that flows from observation captures the basic orientation of living organisms. That orientation is a form of faith. We sense an environment continuous with our bodies, and that deeply felt relation is charged with the urgency of incipient action. Acting successfully requires believing in a real world where actions find their intended objects, and those objects, altering course as a result, yield the desired consequences. Flowers and grass perfectly embody this kind of faith. “The vegetative soul”, Santayana wrote, “enjoys [a] … Christian blessedness: it sees not, yet it believes. But believes in what? In whatever it may be that envelopes it; in what we, in our human language, call space, earth, sunlight, and motion; in the throbbing possibility of putting forth something which we call leaves, for which that patient soul has no name and no image.”¹