In Search of Martin Buber (I)

Last night I awoke out of a deep sleep to a pre-dawn awareness that what I am presently in search of is spirituality, even more than religion.

Martin Buber's I and Thou

I immediately saw that all my recent interest in such things as the philosophy of Martin Buber in his book I and Thou and the worldview of Carl Sagan in all his works points in that direction (see Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans and its eleven predecessors in my "Quickening to Qualia" series).

Yet I knew that the specific trigger was something I read in this news article in The (Baltimore) Sun. In a theater review of a one-man show about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "who was hanged by the Nazis in 1945 for his participation in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler," came this clause:

[Bonhoeffer's] father, a psychiatrist, was "a cautious agnostic," and though his family was not particularly religious or political, they were spiritual.

On the face of it it seems odd, at least to me, to say that someone might be spiritual when he or she is not particularly religious. Even so, only a slight amount of reflection makes it clear that that is exactly what Carl Sagan was.

Carl Sagan's Contact

His television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage was a spiritual love letter to all that is or ever will be. In his science fiction novel Contact, Sagan included a scene (pp. 302-307) in which several of his leading characters, including the scientists Ellie and Vaygay, are to dine with a Zen Buddhist Abbot named Utsumi. Ellie, Vaygay, and the other scientists are involved in building a Machine for space travel to somewhere in the cosmos to meet with the source of the interstellar Message giving the instructions for its, the Machine's, construction. On the way to the restaurant to meet Utsumi, Ellie asks Vaygay if Buddhists believe in God. Vaygay quips, "Their position seems to be that their God is so great that he doesn't even have to exist."

Godless or not, Utsumi is spiritual. During a consideration of the Vegans' reasons for communicating with Earth, Utsumi says, "I believe that we communicate out of love and compassion. ... I can communicate with a flower. ... I can talk to a stone.

The "innocent, almost childlike" Utsumi adds, "To communicate with a stone, you must become much less ... preoccupied. You must not do so much thinking, so much talking. When I say I communicate with a stone, I am not talking about words. The Christians say, 'In the beginning was the Word.' But I am talking about a communication much earlier, much more fundamental than that. ... To understand the language of the ants, you must become an ant."

The scientists describe the language of ants as traces of chemicals laid down on a path taken to food. Utsumi chides them, "Probably, that is the only way you know to become an ant." He asks why the study of ants and is told that scientists take pleasure in the understanding of them. "That is only another way of saying that they love the ants," he says.


Phiosophical though Martin Buber's I and Thou may seem, it too is basically spiritual. "The true community," writes Buber (p. 45), for example, "does not arise through peoples having feelings for one another ... but through, first, their taking their stand in living mutual relation with a living Centre, and, second, their being in living mutual relationship with one another."

This is very much like the passage in the Gospels where Jesus tells of the so-called Great Commandment and its sequel:

One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, "Which is the first of all the commandments?" Jesus replied, "The first is this: 'Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." The scribe said to him, "Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, 'He is One and there is no other than he.' And 'to love him with your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself' is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And no one had the courage to ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)

Buber, in a passage devoted mainly to showing that our feelings or emotions are not themselves a spiritual guide, in fact restates the two commandments of Jesus in terms not of God but of a "living Centre," adding:

The second has its source in the first, but is not given when the first alone is given ... The community is built up out of living mutual relation, but the builder is the living effective Centre.

That "builder" equates to Jesus's God. The "living Centre" is Thou, in Buber's scheme of the duality of human attitudes not It. The life of the spirit, one of these two attitudes, is in the subjective relationship I–Thou, not the objectification and exploitation which he calls I–It.

Jesus's own spirituality, clearly, was that of an I–Thou relationship with his Father in Heaven. Ellie, Vaygay, and the other scientists take their journey into the heavens where Ellie encounters her beloved father, long since deceased. Only he's not really her father, he's a godlike extraterrestrial with the ability to look like anyone in the memory bank of Ellie, whose mind he has read. He and his intergalactic coalition are so technologically advanced they can recreate the cosmos. For all intents and purposes, Ellie's faux-Papa is just like Jesus's: God.

The watchword of Ellie's faux-Papa is "lovingkindness" ... as was Jesus's. A watchword of Martin Buber's Thou as an innate, inborn drive is "tenderness." We start life knowing we seek "lovingkindness" and "tenderness" in, eventually, a spiritual Father. That is the essence of our search for spirituality.