Non-Human and Para-Human Persons
We’ll call them metapersons.
Re-Assembling Reality #20 by David A. Palmer and Mike Brownnutt.
In Re-Assembling Reality #19, we considered the implications of treating nonhumans as persons. We showed that we often confer personhood on beings that we interact with, and that this process is essentially the same for human and non-human persons.
Part of that process involves giving names and attributing a personality to the person. My friend’s name is Kelly. My dog’s name is Biscuit. My mountain’s name is Grandfather Pomra.
I know your personality too — you’re patient but slightly irritable, and on occasion you’re known to erupt in an epic temper. I know you enough to have experienced your patience with me, but I’ve heard from others about how you blow up when someone treats you with disrespect. On the other hand, I’ve also felt the goodness of your heart, and caught glimpses of it through the way you deal with me and others. I can feel something like a dark cloud over your face when you’re worried, and I can hear your care for others through that slight tremor in your voice when you ask. So I know about your personality — partly through my own experience of you, and partly through what I’ve heard others say about you. Of course, the more I know you personally, my knowledge of your personality might change, and I might deal with you differently in consequence.
It’s the same with Biscuit, and even with Grandfather Pomra. I know when Grandfather Pomra is in a bad mood, when dark clouds billow down from his peak, covering the land in gloom, and we rush into our homes when we hear him grumbling — because we don’t want to be drenched in his cold rain. We’ve heard the stories of the huge storms he’s unleashed in the past, which led to the entire village being washed away. But Grandfather Pomra is also fickle, and usually it won’t be long before he clears his mood, the sun shines bright, the deer come into the pastures, and we run out of our houses to play and fish in the stream gushing its waters out of the cracks high above in Grandfather’s craggy body. We’ve lived under Grandfather Pomra for generations, and we know him well.
So, persons — human or non-human — tend to have names and personalities.
Human cultures are full of persons other than physically living and physically normal humans. Relations with these persons is one of the major concerns of religion. In this and the next two essays, we’ll discuss the following questions: (1) who are these persons? (2) how do we relate to them? (3) are they real?
If we were to conduct a survey of all the cultures, societies, and religions in the world, in the past and in the present, we’d find an unending number and variety of such persons. But to get a sense of their different characteristics, we can classify them into a few categories.
- Humans who have physically died, but are still persons.
Even within this group, there is great variety.
The souls of the dead play a significant role in Chinese culture, as in most cultures. Humans are treated as persons, and their personhood continues after their body dies. Chinese people relate to such entities as persons by giving them regular offerings of fruit and tea, speaking to them, building homes for them in the form of tombs and tablets in ancestral shrines, and even catering to their needs by sending them money, mahjong tables, drivers, clothes, and so on. These persons have names — the name they had when they were alive. They are still members of the family, and they retain some personality for those who were close to them in life. But their personality fades with each passing generation.
Another type of entity within this category would be unknown persons, or unhappy and vengeful persons, who are called gui, ghosts. Just like there are some persons in human society that you want to stay away from, Hong Kong people stay away from ghosts — they avoid living close to them, and give them offerings and money during the Ghost Festival to keep them pacified.
Some souls or ghosts have names and strong personalities, and people talk about how they saw them, or how they did good things or bad things to them. Some people give them offerings and make shrines to such persons, who might respond powerfully to these offerings. People build them palaces in the form of a temple, and give them a physical presence in the form of a statue. People go to such persons with their problems, ask for help, give them a gift, and make a vow to repay the favor by making more gifts if that person solves the problem.
There are other persons who, even in life, were not like other human persons. They may have reached a high level of spiritual attainment or enlightenment, they may have guided humans during their lifetime, and may continue to do so after the death or transformation of their body. If their body remains on earth, it may be enshrined in a temple or monastery. These persons have names, and strong personalities, often manifesting great virtue and love.
Some of these persons are saints or sages, such as Saint Francis or Wong Tai Sin. Others are great figures who are the central figures in the world’s great religions — such as Shakyamuni Buddha, Mohammad, or Jesus Christ.
In the different religious traditions, there is a huge difference between the soul of your ancestor, a local deity, a saint, and someone like Buddha, Mohammad, or Jesus. In these traditions, these persons simply cannot be compared with each other. We will return to this question later.
Still, for our present purpose, in placing them in this category we note that all of these persons were humans who once lived in a physical body. They lived among other people, at a certain time in history. Even though they are no longer walking around this earth in a physical body, their personhood continues, and people relate to them as persons.
2. Things, forces, and phenomena in the world.
We previously discussed (in Re-Assembling Reality #19) the different beings in the Amazon, a volcano on Java, and Grandfather Pomra of Mount Anye Machen. All manner of things in the world can be and have been personified: the mountains and the seas, the rivers, the animals, the thunder, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the wind, the birds, the insects, the seasons, the days, moods, illnesses, even the parts of your body, and even luck, wealth and fortune. By personifying them, we move from abstract categories such as “animals” or “species” based on physical features, to highly individualised and differentiated personalities, who even have their own names. These are things, forces, and phenomena that physically exist in the world, but on whom humans confer personhood and to whom humans relate as persons.
3. Virtues and qualities as persons.
Another type of person is incarnations or expressions of specific virtues. For example, Guanyin is the pure virtue of compassion. Ganesh is wisdom. Hephaestos is craftsmanship. By relating to compassion, wisdom or craftsmanship as persons, people hope to strengthen themselves by associating themselves with the powers of these virtues, or to strengthen those virtues within themselves. Humans are rather bad at relating to nebulous things. By putting a face on something, we are better able to engage with it. Asking the question “What would Ganesh do in this situation? Can I do that?” is much more concrete, and may be more helpful to our thinking, than asking “What is a wise thing to do in this situation? Can I do that?”
4. The universe, cosmic forces, and ultimate reality as persons.
Many scientists personify the universe. The American physicist Steven Weinberg, for instance, speaks of the universe in the following manner:
“Fluffy clouds here and there, snow turning pink as the sun sets, roads stretching straight across the country from one town to another. It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe.” [1]
An inert universe, indifferent to humanity, might be “inhospitable” (i.e. “not treating us a guests” — because it doesn’t treat us as anything). But Weinberg’s universe is not inhospitable, it is hostile. It is actively against us. He has personified it.
Personifications of the universe are also common in different religious traditions. What is personified may be the whole universe, or forces that underlie the universe, or the ultimate reality that is the origin of the universe, or a combination thereof. These persons are usually seen as the supreme deity within their religious tradition.
In Hinduism, the whole universe may be treated as a person, Brahman. This person is present everywhere in world — whenever you interact with any thing, force or being, you are also interacting with Brahman. The whole world, in all of its dazzling diversity, is a single person. By relating to the world, you are relating to Brahman. But Brahman is not only the world, He is also the ultimate reality beyond the world, and the forces that constitute the world. The three main forces are personified as Brahma (Creation), Vishnu (Preservation) and Shiva (Destruction).
Through these personifications of abstract forces, people can identify different phenomena around them as expressions of those forces. For example, you can see the operation of Brahma in the creative forces in the world, the work of Vishnu in the way things work to sustain life in the world, and the work of Shiva in the destructive forces in the world. By learning about the distinct personalities of the three through the stories about them, these forces acquire a depth, subtlety and complexity that is poorly conveyed by an abstract concept. And by engaging in a relationship with one or the other of the three, you connect with the personality and virtues associated with that particular person.
In Daoism, the ultimate reality is Dao, which is the origin of everything and underlies all transformations. Dao is personified in the figure of Supreme Lord Lao 太上老君, who is also known as Laozi 老子. Daoism also personifies three basic modalities of the operation of Dao, through the Three Purities 三清: the Heavenly Lord of Primordial Beginning 元始天尊 (the pre-existing Origin), the Heavenly Lord of the Numinous Treasure 靈寶天尊 (the Order of the Cosmos), and the Heavenly Lord of Dao and its Virtue 道德天尊 (the Transformation of Humanity).
In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baha’i Faith), the universe is not ultimate, but is the creation of a person who is known in English as God (with a capital G), in Hebrew as YHWH and Elohim, in Greek as Theos and Kyrios, and in Arabic as Allah. This person is absolutely transcendent and exists independently of the world, but is constantly engaged in the work of creating the world. Whenever you interact with any thing, force or being, you are interacting with a creation of God and learning something about God’s creation. By relating to God, you are relating to what underlies the whole world.
5. Mediating figures.
Some persons combine different categories. Religious traditions are replete with persons who are regular, living human beings, but who are also considered to have qualities that make them, in some ways, more than human, or other-than-human — they are said to receive divine messages, to have miraculous powers, or to manifest divine virtues. Some of them are run-of-the-mill spiritual healers and seers, while others are saints and sages.
Some religions have another category of mediator, who has a unique and special status, and plays a core or pivotal role in the specific religious tradition.
In Buddhism, for example, the Buddha was a living historical person, as in (1) above, but he’s also seen to be an Awakened One, radically different from all other persons — whether human or non-human — because he was awakened to the ultimate reality of the whole universe, and he can guide others to this state. The Buddhist religious community consists of those who “take refuge” in the “Three Jewels” of the Buddha, his teachings (dharma) and his community (sangha).
In Christianity, Jesus was a living historical man as in (1), but he is considered by Christians to also be the incarnation of God (6). In Jesus, the transcendental God came into this world, living with humans, walking with them, talking with them, healing them, and suffering with them.
In Islam, Mohammad was a living historical man as in (1), who is considered by Muslims to be a Prophet and Apostle of God (6), through whom God’s Word, the Qur’an, was revealed to humanity. Through the Qur’an, the transcendental and unknowable God speaks to humanity, and makes His will known to humans.
In the Baha’i Faith, Baha’u’llah was a historical man as in (1), who is considered by Baha’is to be a Manifestation of God (6), revealing the Word and Will of God to humanity. Through the Manifestation of God, who lives, speaks, and acts among humans, humans learn to relate with each other and build a new pattern of social relationships.
All of these terms — Incarnation, Prophet, Manifestation — have specific meanings within their respective religious traditions. But they imply that, through a human being, the Personhood of God — who is invisible, absolutely transcendental and impossible to humanly conceive — becomes physically accessible to the world of ordinary humans. Through these human persons, God makes Himself and His Will known to humans. Through their relationship with these figures and the recorded accounts of their teachings and of their lives, people build relationships with the transcendental God.
“Metapersons”
From the examples we’ve shown, we can see how humans can, and do, confer personhood on just about anything in the universe, from the humble earth that you walk on, to the unimaginable transcendental power that is the impulse behind everything in the universe. Our examples might have made you shriek in horror at the indiscriminate mixing together of so many different types of entities. Please be patient. We will get to how religious traditions separate them out in a later essay. For now, though, we can see that they all involve personhood that is applied beyond the ordinary physical life of humans.
Some of these persons listed are non-human. We could call them “non-human persons.” Some of these persons listed are human, or human-like, but go, in some sense, beyond humanity. We could call them “para-human persons.” A catch-all category of “Non-Human and Para-Human persons” would say what we mean, but would be rather unwieldy. We will follow anthropologists who, in recent years, have begun to refer to them as “metapersons.” [1]
[1] Marshall Sahlins, The New Science of the Enchanted Universe. Princeton University Press, 2022.
This essay and the Re-Assembling Reality Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9061 Science and Religion: Questioning Truth, Knowledge and Life, with the support of the Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum and the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
[1] Stephen Weinberg (1993). The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. Basic Books. p. 154.
