The Huston Smith Reader. Huston Smith

      4

      The Sacred Dimensions

      of Everyday Life

      JEFFREY KANE Let's begin with the idea that there is a spiritual dimension to reality and that it should make a difference in the way we educate children. The first question I'd like to ask you is, As you walk down the street, or as you eat your meal, or as you go to bed at night, do you see a spiritual dimension which pervades everyday existence?

      HUSTON SMITH If I answer honestly and personally (it's a personal question), the answer is some days I do, and some days I don't. But let me say immediately that on the days that I don't, I feel unwell, you might say. It is as if I have the spiritual flu—something like that. When you have the flu you feel rotten, and when you have the spiritual flu the world seems drained of meaning and purpose—humdrum and prosaic. But I've lived long enough to be able to say when those days roll ‘round: okay, this is the yin and yang of life—ups and downs. This is one of those dark days of the ego. Most of the time, though, meaning and purpose are discernible, often to lyrical heights. Those moments are privileged; they are gifts. Even when my happiness isn't at a rolling boil, I tend to know that there is a spiritual dimension to all things.

      KANE When you think about the spiritual dimensions of reality, is it in the everydayness of the world, is it in a glass of water, or in the air that we breathe?

      SMITH It's everywhere. Everything is an outpouring of the infinite that is spiritual in essence, so everything reflects that spirit. Blake is famous for having said that if the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see everything as it truly is—infinite. For him infinitude was also perfection. Limitations exist in us, not in the world.

      KANE Would it be going too far to say that everything is truly sacred if we see it rightly?

      SMITH Not too far at all. As the Thomists say, esse qua esse bonum est: “being as being is good.” Of course the evil in the world tests that principle, but I think it can be defended.

      KANE I remember back to C. S. Lewis, in the beginning of The Screwtape Letters, where he explains that the devil must consume souls because he has no being himself.

      SMITH That's a good way to put it. There's another route to the same point. Heroin is horrible, but at the moment of the high, that high itself isn't bad. It's the toll it takes that is bad. Even cancer cells aren't bad in isolation. It's only the way they prey on other cells that's evil.

      KANE Do you think we might actually have here a very quick first inroad to educating children? Would it be too much to say that one of the most fundamental things we need to do if we are to educate children is to help them see all things as sacred?

      SMITH It would be wonderful if we could do that. Education is more your province than mine, but I've always thought that if I stop teaching university/college students I'd like to teach preschool. Somehow it's two ends of the spectrum that attract me.

      KANE Incidentally, Rudolf Steiner made a point of saying that people who teach the youngest children should be the oldest teachers. Such matters aside, do you believe Emerson offered a signpost to the sacred with his contention that the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common?

      SMITH He's right. I wonder if tribal peoples, being closer to nature than we are, do better at that—seeing everything aglow with the sacred. That may be only a myth that we somehow need today, but I think it's more than that. Unencumbered by the busyness and humdrum of contemporary life, tribal peoples seem able to hold on to the shining world that children are heirs to.

      KANE Do you think that the “doors of perception” can be cleansed through aesthetic experience—through experiences of nature, for example?

      SMITH Definitely. Just this morning I wrote something on that subject because The World's Religions is coming out in an illustrated edition that will include the world's religious art. In writing the preface for this new edition, I found myself saying that the function of sacred art—and indeed beauty of every sort, virgin nature emphatically included—is to make easy what would otherwise be difficult. If one is viewing an icon (in a way, all sacred art is iconic), then the icon basically disappears by offering itself up to the divine. The energy of the divine pours through it into the viewer, one consequence being that the viewer's heart is expanded and becomes uplifted by a great work of art. Note that word uplifted. Can you imagine performing in that state a despicable act? It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us. So your point is well taken, including your emphasis on virgin nature.

      KANE Might nature be considered the greatest of sacred art?

      SMITH That's interesting. I do think of sacred art and virgin nature as two of the clearest apertures to the divine, but I've never thought of rank-ordering them. I think of Plato's statement that “beauty is the splendor of the true.” I like that because it gets us beyond thinking of nature and art simply as pleasure giving. They do far more than that. They offer insight into the true nature of things.

      KANE Beauty wouldn't then be simply in the eye of the beholder?

      SMITH Not ultimately, though there's partial truth in the saying that when a young man falls in love with a girl, he sees something in her that others don't see. The romantic illusions that color his perception don't alter the fact that at that moment he is closer than any other human being to seeing her the way God sees her. When I hear someone say, “I don't see what he sees in her,” I feel like responding, “Don't you wish you could?” I don't think it's naively romantic to think that romantic love opens a window to the inner nobility of the beloved, one that is closed to ordinary eyes.

      KANE Would it be fair to say that beauty is something one is open to, rather than something that someone creates in the act of perception?

      SMITH Yes, that's the case.

      KANE Could we rightly look at beauty as a matter of impression, as well as expression? Normally we think of art as expression, as subjective expression.

      SMITH Something of the artist figures, but the accent is on what comes to him or her. It's imprinted, as you say. I like your way of putting it.

      KANE Perhaps we've reached a second education implication here, and I wonder what your thoughts are. If we are going to educate children rightly, perhaps we should spend a good deal of time in nature study and art (again to use the phrase)—as impression, attempting to open children to the beauty in the world.

      SMITH I am sure that is true.

      KANE There was once a teacher who taught me about Shakespeare. He said that Shakespeare pointed to various aspects of human existence and the human condition, and that he pointed beautifully with great accuracy. He (my teacher) said what we often do in school is we say, “Look how nicely he points. You see how his eye is lined up with his finger? He's pointing very directly.” But this overlooks what he's pointing toward. I wonder if that isn't true as well—a flower unfolding, or a cloud passing in the sky, again, opens a door, or provides a lens into something beyond itself.

      SMITH The notion of pointing, of course, suggests the Zen adage of the finger pointing at the moon. If we obsess over the finger, we overlook the moon. It's very true. Much of education falls into that trap. In higher education I am distressed by the proportion of attention that goes to methodology rather than content.

      KANE When we begin to think of there being sacredness, or when we recognize this sacredness in the everyday, does knowledge have a different “shape” than we