Intro: Reimagining Health
By John B. Cobb, Jr.
The wisdom traditions or Axial Ways all re-imagined and re-invented the pursuit of wholeness of body, mind, and spirit. Unfortunately, in the modern West, the communities that consciously continue those traditions have been distorted by their acceptance of Cartesian dualism and the fragmentation this introduced. They have focused on the spirit and largely turned over the understanding and shaping of body and mind to others (the body, say, to the gym, the mind to the school). An ecological civilization would end the reign of Descartes and put body, mind, and spirit back together again. As another category focuses on schools and, therefore, especially the mind, this category, while certainly concerned with the mind, focuses on body and spirit.
By now, the connection between body and spirit has come to be a familiar part of popular American culture. Westerners have learned from India and China that breathing and bodily movements contribute to spiritual realization. From many sources we know that psycho-spiritual problems express themselves also physically.
Most of this discussion has been kept out of the schooling system, which is still committed to Cartesian dualism, but complete exclusion has not been possible. Study of sex and gender, for example, cannot be entirely omitted, and the effort to treat them as simply physical or simply mental has failed. They remain for the academic mainstream a marginal mystery, but for flesh-and-blood people they are of central importance.
We have learned that Western medicine, based on dualism, has accomplished a great deal, but has also failed in relation to many factors related even to bodily health. Chinese and Indian medicine, based on very different views of the human body, are also effective. We await the integration of multiple healing techniques whose complementarity can be understood when we recognize the unity of mind, body, and spirit.
Nowhere are challenges to modern assumptions stronger than the findings of what is called, in Cartesian culture, the paranormal or parapsychological. The Axial Ways all have accounts of many events, especially healings, that are viewed by Cartesians as “supernatural” and therefore incredible. These events certainly show that the real world is not adequately described by Descartes.
For those who reject Cartesian materialism, our understanding of the world is enriched by evidence for action at a distance and awareness of dimensions of reality not accessed by the sense organs. Despite the vast evidence for events that cannot be explained in Cartesian terms, the university has largely excluded them from reconsideration on a priori grounds. This evidence should be included as a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and of the world in which we live.
But while events of this kind are witnessed in all the religious traditions, they are not primary. These traditions tend to focus on worship or on one or another spiritual discipline. The frequent repetition of these activities affects the psychic life in different ways. We need to evaluate these effects.
I judge that the most promising single movement today working for ecological civilization is eco-feminism. It fits well in this discussion here because this movement clarifies and strengthens the unity of body, mind, and spirit. It also encourages re-thinking everything from this perspective and offering a perspective hardly distinguishable from the one developed by those most influence by Alfred North Whitehead, except in its addition of reflection about gender.
This is one in a series of collections by Pando Populus about big ideas that matter for the Earth. We are exploring these issues online and at our inaugural conference, “Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization,” June 4–7, 2015 in Claremont, CA.
For more information, visit: PandoPopulus.com.
To register for the conference, visit: Whitehead2015.com.
Artwork copyright © Tucker Nichols 2014
