Holy Spirit, Wholly Spirit? (Wraith no more)
Embodiment is a phenomenological term referring to a form of sensate. We said to be consciousness ‘embodied’. Yet in this, there is no immediate additional sense that this kind of being is temporary or may be contrasted with any other, previous or yet to come. I embody myself, in another, related sense, as well as embodying a certain set of cultural norms and suasions, individuated impulses and impetuses, and the ‘spirit of the age’, more or less. It is first to Durkheim that we might appeal for an explication of what is served by the idea that I am ‘made up’ of two things, the two-in-one, with a third having fallen out of discursive fashion, becoming recently and at best become an addendum to the body-mind amalgam. Even here, however, the problem of the concept of mind, let alone that of ‘other minds’ – one of the basic puzzles of phenomenology proper – resonates with the older concept, that of spirit. Surely if I embody my consciousness, I may also be said to not be possessed of a bias that centers the spirit somehow ‘inside’ the mind alone. Yet if not, the whole idea becomes rapidly outlandish; where then sits the spirit, if it exists at all?
In social organizations exhibiting mechanical solidarity, the spirit is embodied by the group. One is thus never ‘alone’ in any contemporary sense; one has not only one’s kindred and community within one, one also likely has some other kind of force semi-present – not residing continuously but there when called upon; the clan membership of an animal spirit, one’s non-human but just as intimate kin – which indeed, when the need arises or the occasion befits, embodies itself in a variety of ways. The metaphysics of transformation is the home to such beings, who are not only shape-shifters in the phantasmagorical sense – this modernist formula ignores the fact that for authentic transformer beings, their recurring but differentiated presence occurs by crossing over ontological barriers and not merely by changing their appearance – but as well, embodiments of a specific sensibility and idea. And while the people may regard these visitations as somehow sacred and their denizens holy, the spirit materializing before them is not entirely made up of the spiritual. For within the transformer resides the hallmark of humanity: we became aware, within the primordial dawn of our species tenure, that only through adaptation and generalization would we at all survive.
It is this leitmotif, this element of character, that pushes human consciousness away from the sense that the cosmos is simply an anonymous space within which happenstance humanity has taken fragile hold. In this sense, we might hazard it a projection alone, if a necessary one, but equally so, we are also driven back from the opposing sensitivity which demands that we kneel before nature as a wholly alien power with no human interest. It remains fascinating that the career of the concept of spirit not only traverses mode of production boundaries but as well, is itself a model of adaptation and generalism. For Durkheim, spirit is itself embodied in the notion of the sacred, his benchmark concept for speaking about symbolic forms which have a seemingly uncanny ability to preserve their identity across otherwise utterly different societal modes. One might also suggest that the presence of such an idea in vastly different cultures and apparently universally so, has given rise to a great deal of historical conflict. It is not so much that the other does not believe in the gods at all but rather that his gods are different than mine. This was never considered a puzzle on the ground, because of all of the other empirical differences amongst human cultures, but it was, with narrower eyes, perceived as a threat simply due to the knowledge that my own gods hung in the balance of their believers; and just here, numbers then mattered. We are well aware that specific embodiments of the spiritual come and go, so it is well not to get too hung up on any particular one. In response to this, the concept of spirit itself underwent a redesign: first communal and shared by animals and sometimes by other natural forces as well – recall Jung’s list of archetypes includes narrative leitmotifs such as ‘the flood’ – but in the light of the passing of entire civilizations, it becomes something which can be embodied but is in essence ethereal.
This newer sense of how the spirit functions allows it a much greater liberation not only of movement but also of presence. It can appeal to this one or that, pending one’s credo and moral druthers, accepting and indeed embodying the customary before demonstrating an overturning of it – Jesus was Jewish but set the tone for a wider covenant and thus elect – or it can revive a faded or fading sensibility by appearing as a remanant – a reminder of the past and not simply a haunting, for instance – or yet again by eschewing material form in a wholly irruptive event, leaving the witnesses or perhaps even the visionary in wonderment but also with a renewed sense of perspective. In this, it matters not just what kind of vision is appresented and thence phenomenologically apprehended by our own embodiments, only that the experience is perceived as extramundane. Even the source is, finally, unimportant, not only due to the Thomas principle but equally to the simple fact that visions are, by themselves, incommunicable. To assuage this problem, the concept of spirit gradually becomes hyper-individuated. Protestantism likely has its own roots along the road to Damascus, where a specific individual, Saul, is accosted by a specific version of the holy spirit. It interrogative, ‘why do you persecute me?’ is sounded in highly personalized terms. Saul himself cannot ignore it, since it is literally pointing a finger. It is of interest that as Paul, his mission takes up that personalized sensibility, which is really more of a sensitivity made sensible only through epistle and sermon, for no one else was truly present for Saul’s decisive transformation.
This too is of interest: human beings as well now have the transformational ability whilst yet alive; the difference is that I must be transformed, and for that there must be present an external impetus, which within social contract style cultures is unnecessary. There, transformer beings exhibited rather inherited traits which were shared by members of the same clan. In agrarianism, one can accrue to oneself such abilities, which is both astonishing and yet perhaps expected in the sense that it mirrors the change in the concept of spirit already underway. This idea of gaining something, however wondrous or even unexpected for the specific character involved, is almost certainly related to the continuously developed presence of material surplus in the new mode of production. Even in sophisticated transformational cosmologies, the kind we see in well-developed subsistence societies such as those along the Northwest Coast of North America, surplus and gift, however ostentatiously ritualized such as through the potlatch system, is, by the end of winter, almost completely used up. Only in the agrarian mode do we see large-scale surpluses which must not only be catalogued – the very first contents of writing known – but also possessed, and possessed by someone or some group. It is not a great leap for the human imagination to take upon itself the idea that the spirit is itself something which one not only can embody, but also develop, just as one develops the land or yet the imperial territory and its resources, and that what aids in such a growth can hail from diverse sources, just as material resources are diverse. Now, all this is not to say that changes in material subsistence directly drive all other forms of change. No, there is a rapidly-adopted symbiosis between symbolic forms and material manifestations, and this too is fitting, perhaps even inevitable, because the entire idea of embodiment does itself center around a syncretism of a symbolic form – the ethereal Being – being ‘materialized’ in that normative and to a great extent, even worldly.
So, gained possession and development, though in mighty contrast to mere inheritance and stasis, reflect, and perhaps as well refract, the material conditions of life at hand. The spirit also transforms the closeness of ‘what is nearest to us’ by moving our perception away from the distanciated ‘at-handedness’ of having to interact with the world or with nature as imposing something upon it, making it work for us in return, to that of the ‘in-handedness’ of something which, like my own spiritual being, can be disclosed to me. There is thus a profound phenomenological shift expressed between the metaphysics of transformation – wherein it is my kinship within a communal spirit that allows me to experience the spiritual and envision the apical being which animates the mechanical whole; there is no Gestalt in transformational metaphysics – and that of transcendence: here, the whole is not only greater than the sum of its parts but is so by virtue of the spirit being precisely disembodied in its very essence, rather than existing by represencing itself on down the cultural line as limen. We should never put on airs about one world system being somehow ‘superior’ to another in any of these senses, rather only that we can now recognize the pedigree of the concept in question.
The culture hero, in his cross-cultural diversity, too must exhibit only the traits which are befitting to the cultural imagination itself at hand. Raven has transformational powers but is not himself the transformer being, who is rather Kanekelak or the like. Paul has been transformed but thence does seek transfiguration. Beethoven transforms the world through his art but has neither the power of self-transformation nor is he transfigured, unless dully and figuratively by the discourse of art history. The three forms of metaphysics known to the human imagination are themselves embodied, respectively, by such brief but contrasting catalogues of figures. One can iterate such a trinitial list, but no specific figure, whether mythical or historical or both, may be said to be itself an archetype, only, once again, an embodiment of a conceptual event. I can experience the figure ‘herself’ but only as an expression of the spirit. And this concept is both and at once the spiritual being as itself a representation of something ultimate and even infinite, while also becoming spirit as an abstraction of our existential consciousness, faced as it is with the problem of mortality cast as finitudinal being. For our embodiment, while divorced from the spirit ‘holy’ whilst in itself, is experienced as oddly something which is itself not wholly bodily borne.
G.V. Loewen is the author of over 60 books, and was professor of the interdisciplinary human sciences for over two decades.