The inward morning: literary analysis and themes

Inward Morning (philosophy)

Response to the Inward Morning

When I was a child, three big questions were in my mind. When I lay in bed awake at night, the questions scared me. One was trying to imagine infinity and how Self-Existent Being could be possible. I had been told that God was Self-Existent and caused Himself to be, but I couldn't imagine it How could something be the cause of itself?. The second question was eternity. If I tried to picture it too clearly, it took my breath away. The third question was trying to imagine God's purpose or reason for being. Why do God and the universe exist? It seems such a huge wonder. My mother told me, "Try not to think about it. it'll drive you crazy." That was good advice, I am sure, although I did not take it.

We probably cannot answer such big questions until we have found answers to little ones. Bugbee (1958, 1976) tells us that meaning is found in "the rhythm of daily life" (p. 10) when we attend to ideas as they come along. This is in contrast to sitting and thinking deep thoughts, as we picture philosophers doing. He doesn't say it, but an inward quietness is needed, an openness to wondering and uncertainty. He points out that the human condition is mostly ambiguous or unclear. We go back and forth all the time between "bondage and freedom" (p. 10). But now and then, an answer comes and clears up the ambiguity. And I have found that if I look upon the little chores of daily life as opportunities for reflection, I stop thinking of them as chores and duties or something I have to hurry through. I was on a ship for a long time once, and what I missed the most about home was puttering around in the kitchen, doing dishes, and looking out the window over the sink. It was a revelation because I had believed that I hated doing dishes! Someone pointed out to me, "That's because it is your own kitchen," (whereas nothing on the ship belongs to you) and there was some truth to that, but it wasn't all of it. I saw that dishwashing could be contemplative. To meditate on the meaning of life and get a sense of finality, you need some quiet activity that allows ideas to come forth and happen in a way that makes sense.

Bigbee says, "Nothing short of eternal meaning can settle the concern of man in whom time has exacted something decisive in life. Even if he only comes up with a stammered word, it better be a word that he means" (p. 11). I understand that he thought his life might end suddenly during the war, and that made meaning more important to him. But it seems unrealistic to demand that every word a person speaks should be meaningful. "Please, pass the salt," is not very meaningful, but it is necessary to say such things in order to get through life. We can't go about saying to our neighbors, "Time is a human illusion. There is only the Eternal Now," although this is certainly a meaningful statement. We have to talk about the fence we share that need to be fixed and whether the man next door can borrow my lawn mower to cut his grass.

This doesn't seem too meaningful, and yet it is. Bigbee (1958, 1976) quotes Spinoza as saying, the true good is discovery of the union between oneself and all beings. If I remember this, I can get meaning from loaning my lawnmower to my nextdoor neighbor when he needs it.

From what I have read of quantum physics, the "union between oneself and all beings" is literal and not just a metaphore. Everything in the universe is really all one thing, one substance. Nothing is separate from anything else; all are parts of same whole, like different patterns in an ornate Persian carpet: "One enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos" (Talbot, 1991, p. 48). If this is so, and it is what quantum physicists claim, then, there is really only one man -- and separation is an illusion brought by the human experience and the way we perceive it. We are not separate from nature and other animals either, but connected. What we do to others, we do to ourselves. Would environmental damage or war exist if people knew this was so?