WORD AND THOUGHT

Frank Kaufmann

March 11, 2009

Brno, The Czech Republic

This presentation examines the nature of conflict, and recommends ways

to overcome that propensity. I examine conflict that tends to take place
among religious believers, as well as conflict that takes place between
religious believers and secular-leaning people, or people who do not have
time or appreciation of spiritual and religious matters. These are the two
types of conflict I look at briefly, and recommend a program or agenda to
help us in transcend this bad habit. [slide]

There are three elements to being human, the spiritual, the mental, and
the physical. All people realize this, even non- and anti-religious people.
The fleeting flirtation with spirituality that non- and anti-religious people
involve themselves with can be seen in the delight at superficial occasions
that are spiritual in nature like, “I can’t believe I was just thinking about
you and you called,” or “ I can’t believe that just when I was at a deadlock
in what I was trying to think through, I couldn’t sleep and I was up at 4 in
the morning and there on the television set was a gentleman speaking
about the very thing that got me through my problem.” Even people who
are either philosophically materialists, or plain old, coarse, everyday,
simple materialists of the self-indulgent consumerist type still have a
quest, a taste for, and a delight in those things that suggest that which
transcends mere natural law, or that which transcends the mere
capacities, either mental or physical.

The difference between religious and spiritual people and non- or anti-
religious people is that materialists, either philosophical or accidental,
tend to regard spirit to arise accidentally from the busy clash of
phenomena. This random bashing around eventually produces spiritual
things. [slide] Religious or spiritual people tend to regard the human
structure, this tripartite structure I described, as given, and therefore, A.
purposeful, and B. magnificent. So we are spiritual, mental and physical,
and for those people who are religious or spiritual by nature, we recognize
our humanness as built that way toward remarkable, exciting, thrilling,
and magnificent ends. We are perfectly designed.

Each of these three aspects has a particular quality or essence. [Slide] The
essence of the spiritual is that it is “one,” non-divided. All religions, even
those that mistakenly have been described as polytheist, recognize that
the absolute and the highest of the high is one, undivided. Non-division is
an insight, an essence, or a characteristic of that which is spiritual.
Constancy or unchangingness is an element of the spiritual and eternal –
no beginning, no end. For those of us who are vigorous in our interest in
spiritual matters, we increasingly come to develop a relationship with
these fascinating elements – oneness, unchangingness, and eternity, no
beginnings, no ends. [slide]

The physical side of the human structure is exactly the opposite. It is

comprised of or constituted by multiplicity, infinite variety, the seeming
exact opposite of oneness, infinite variety. The physical is characterized by
variance or incessant change. It appears one way at dawn, and the very
same thing appears a different way at dusk. And the chances of seeing
the same thing both at dawn and at dusk are unlikely because you are
likely to be somewhere else or facing a different direction. Secondly the
physical is temporal. It is constantly and incessantly defined by beginnings
and ends. We are born, we live, we die. Our days are born, and live and
die. So whereas the spiritual has oneness, constancy and eternity, the
physical has multiplicity, variance, and “temporalness.”

The spiritual side of us seeks to have a relationship with, to resonate with,

and to manifest oneness, constancy, and no beginnings, no ends. The
physical side of us seeks to participate in, have a relationship and
resonate with multiplicity, variance, constant change. Do we like constant
change? Do we like multiplicity? The physical side of it, if we’re honest, we
love change, if you're a football nut, you want to see game after game. If
you like women, pardon my naughtiness here, the physical side of you
wants to try every single one. That’s true. That’s the physical side of us. It
seeks to engage infinite variety, infinite multiplicity. This is not a bad
thing. It simply is the nature of the physical. [slide]
The most interesting part of being human however is the mental, the
middle part. The role and function of the middle part is to mediate, to
reconcile, and to orient us down the path betwixt these seemingly
opposite realities that are in fact paradoxically harmonious and mutually
supportive. The reason why I use the word "mental" rather than
intellectual is because intellectual is only subset and faculty of what is
needed to fulfill and realize this mediating role. The mediating role is calls
for discernment and knowing, and it is derived from three sources –
intellectual, emotional, and purposeful. [slide] These three aspects of our
makeup help provide for us our needed and necessary discernment. It is
the job of all of three of these to judge. I like this one better than that one.
This (this wall) is not the way out of this room, that (the door) is. I need
these elements to help me make decisions. This is the job of the mental.
Because we are infinite, so is our intellect (and our other discerning
faculties). The power of the mental to spot and evaluate difference is
unending, infinite. [slide]

The same is true with regard to the capacity of the heart, its emotional
grasp, and emotional discernment. [Slide] And the same is true for the
capacity of purposefulness. The reason why purposefulness is a judging
thing or a deciding thing is because purposeful actions distinguish and
differentiate; this will quench my thirst, this will not. If my purpose is to
get rid of my thirst, "purposefulness" helps distinguish between things,
and calls one thing better and one thing worse. So knowing, apprehension,
discernment, these are what I call mental (not intellectual). These are
designed to guide the human being into our capacity to perfectly
harmonize our experiences of being at once spiritual and physical.

This tripartite, mental part of being human has by its natural function
judgment or assessment. Its job is to navigate and to guide. Its mission
and job is to provide for the individual access to the true nature of things.
It does so through collection, collaboration, interpretation, and integration
of information. That can be straight gut. It can be straight heart. It can be
straight emotion, intellectual analysis, or a blend of the three.

I have a friend who is radically different from me. She operates entirely
from the gut, and I am relatively intellectual. We often clash and are often
at odds from one another. People wonder how we can be friends. But
through her emotional apprehension she gets an accurate grasp. For this
reason I stay humble to her, even though it may seem to some that she is
erratic. It is important to understand this and never to be prejudiced
against people you consider unintelligent or dull witted. Please understand
that each person has a grasp. They get it. This is an important matter for
me. When you walk down the street and you pass the person cleaning the
street, you make a big mistake to think that your intentions and ways
elude him just because you are smart, think quickly, or speak well. If you
think you are smarter than him, pause and correct yourself.

The reason why conflict can arise is when these mental functions –
intellect, heart, and purposefulness – have a bias in their nature, when
they fail to function as an impartial third party. If the mental is infected
with bigotry, if it is bigoted toward one side or the other it cannot provide
the balance and sound guidance for us to chart our lives properly. The
mental usually has a bias toward the physical. This is because the
physical is most easily recognizable, and the most easily accessible. If the
mental tends to side with change, difference, and multiplicity, it fails to
provide guidelines that intuit the spiritual, oneness, constancy, and
eternity.

When you see religious conflict, it is not because religion by nature tends
to be conflictual. It is because the work of the mental side of ourselves is
biased toward the differences in religion rather than biased toward the
spiritual in religion.

The second thing to note is that religions, (due to religious history) are
guaranteed to be radically different from one another even though they
derive from the same, one, true origin point. The founding and arising of
religions has happened steadily for 1000's of years. How different is each
age and each epoch? Add to that the extreme geographical and cultural
differences in the founding and development of each religion, and you
have a recipe for as great a difference as possible. Faithful people often
do not like to approach religion historically because they think it might
relativize their faith, but most mature believers are able to integrate the
contextualization of their faith in history. [Slide] The person who taught
what eventually became Buddhism lived about 2,500 years ago. [slide]
The person who taught what eventually became Confucianism and what
eventually became Taoism also approximately 2,500 years ago. [Slide] The
person who taught what eventually emerged as Judaism taught
approximately 4,000 years ago. This is a guy walking around teaching, a
fellow like you. Some fellow 4,000 years ago. [Slide] The person who
taught what eventually emerged as Christianity, 2,000 years ago. The
person who taught what eventually emerged as Islam, 1,400 years ago.

Plus, all these religious impulses are arising in all different parts of the
world – in China, in India, in Israel. [Slide] These simple facts, plus the
extreme differences in geography and culture in these vastly different
parts of the world should make it obvious that initiatives, even in touch
with identical sets of truths, would surely find expression in wildly different
forms and externals. This is common sense.

So here once again there is an urgent need for sound mediation from our
mental faculties, these and the social institutions devoted to the training
and development of our mental faculties – namely, education. Our
approach and grasp of religion both in the oneness of spirit, and in the
vast multiplicity of time and space, require balance, and a positive role for
judgment and discernment. We must be fixed and oriented toward a
peaceful balance between the infinite, the one, the unchanging and
eternal, and the infinitely various, infinitely changing, and infinitely arising
beginnings and endings of historical religious unfolding. [slide]

The ideal enterprise to help us and to train us in forging the balanced and
whole persons that we must create of ourselves, by our own decisions and
responsible acts is the conception, construction, and devoted
maintenance of sacred space. It is in this permanent self creating
demanded by such a reality that we forge the capacity to harmonize these
two seemingly paradoxical dimensions of our experience the one and the
many. There is nothing more perfect for this simple human purpose, than
beginning with sacred space, the building that sits in the center and from
which social unfolding expands. Sacred buildings are not only merely
functional as places for people to gather, even as place for every kind of
person to conjoin. Even beyond their functionality as the present call for
social harmony, they are more profoundly the present call for our own
inner harmony. The mind, the devotion, and the act harmonize all
elements of our being human for simultaneously spiritual and physical
purposes. These invite us to be human in a balanced way, training our
three parts to dance in the original ideal of the divine.