How do our Spirituality and Earthly Behavior Coalesce?

Let’s start with the spiritual.

Dr. Schweitzer’s dream was not unlike the storied quest of so many

renowned scientists: the search for the GUT: a grand unified theory

that would explain everything.

For the scientists the hotly sought-after object was a sole,

comprehensive explanation for all known physical phenomena on two

levels, macro and micro.

For the grand doctor, his holy grail was a theory of ethics that also

functioned at two levels, the spiritual and the corporeal, that was at

once incontrovertible and equally comprehensive, with applicability

not only to humans but to all life, all God’s creation.

For Schweitzer, such incontrovertibility was not to be found in nature.

Indeed, he wrote: ”Nature knows no reverence for life.”

No, for his ethical theory to be incontestable it must emanate from a

mythical connection with life itself, from a spiritual union with all

existence, ultimately with the Creator of that existence.

He writes again: “I can understand the nature of the living being

outside of myself only through the living being within me…Knowledge

of [external] reality must pass through a phase of thinking about that

nature of [personal] being.”

In other words, the information we obtain spiritually, or mystically is

superior to what we see or glean from observing the world, as it by

dint of such other worldly mysticism that we come to comprehend the

daily world we encounter.

It is the psychic connection with existence itself that contributes to an

understanding not only of the other beings on our shared planet, but

how we are to deal with them, our behavioral obligations towards

them. Such information, flowing from the unsurpassed awe that the

miracle of existence radiates, links us, in the mind of Dr. Schweitzer

with the Creator and the Creator’s purposes.

That linkage supplies the most secure, loftiest, most irrefragable

source of moral behavior.

Next time we’ll learn how to put that literal stream of conscience into

our everyday practice and world.

Bob Echols

For Our Animal Friends