[This is a transcript, slightly revised, of a talk by Jeffrey Wattles, given to the spring 2003 conference on the theme, Joyous Living, hosted in Los Angeles by the School of Meanings and Values. The transcription was done by Cheryl Boyles. You can order a video copy of the entire conference for $30 through The School of Meanings and Values, P.O. Box 3324, Camarillo, CA 933011-3324 http://www.school-meanings-values.org/]
It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here with you on this fabulous topic with this group of remarkable people, and I’m looking forward to it myself. In high school I had a luminous experience of the triad of truth, beauty, and goodness, but I didn’t take it seriously until, in 1971, I came across a passage talking about a need for a new philosophy of living to be constructed around the concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness. I made my decision. I was in the middle of my dissertation at that time in philosophy grad school, and I decided that I had to begin all over again building my own philosophy. Now, 32 years later, I have been working on it pretty much nonstop all that time, no matter whatever else I was doing. I weaved whatever I was reading—in science, in philosophy, in world religions, in the arts—into these studies, always working on this philosophy of living. And I now offer it to you, 32 years in 40 minutes. I hope to save you some time.
We are beings involved in thinking and feeling and doing. As thinkers, we find that truth governs our progress. And as beings who feel, we find that beauty governs the school of feeling. And as those who engage in action, we find that goodness is the dominant value for us. I thought what I would do today is to address the topic of joy by looking at, as it were, the stages in the philosophy of living, and seeing how they contribute to the theme.
Our previous speaker, Dolores Nice, spoke magnificently to the thought that I propose first: Supreme joy is our experience of the beauty of love. I just picked some way of putting in one sentence together the terms that seemed to me to be central. But we’ve already heard such a profusion of lovely expressions of that; I don’t need to add my own. What I wish to emphasize at the moment is this. This simple concept can be presented very simply—you can even say it in a single word; you can say, "Joy." Or you can expand it. Being able to move from the simplicity to the complexity, back-and-forth, not losing sight of the simplicity when you move into the complexity, and letting that complexity, over and over again, enrich your simplicity—that’s the movement of a philosophical concept that I wish to encourage in you during our time together this morning.
Joy in daily life is often more of an adverb than a noun, more of a by-product than a goal in itself; it’s a way of living. First of all, this means, here, that joyous living is based on truth. What’s that going to mean? Again, we can think of truth as a unity, in simplicity, or we can begin to expand the accordion and think of it in a differentiated way. You can ask yourself as you confront an opportunity, “Is my life presently based on truth?” Referring to truth in this simplest way, the question will trigger awarenesses and responses that you may find helpful. Now let’s go to the more complex form. To grasp truth, begin with fact. But many facts are sobering. Many facts are sobering, so there are no false promises here. This is not a vision of life where you are just always smiling, thinking, “We’re so spiritual.” That can be very artificial, very repressive, very psychologically unhealthy for our development. So we don’t pretend falsely. We let go of false expectations. Regarding such facts, integrated spirituality goes not over and above, but into and through. But there is a joy of being cleansed of false hope. The fact is there; the mind is here. It’s an odd kind of joy, if you will. It’s not massive, cascading, pervading your mind; it’s one of those slender, narrow, stern joys. But it’s there, and I think you know what I’m talking about.
When I think of truth in a differentiated way, I think of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience. And so I’m going to start with science now. How can science help? There’s a cosmos of law and order. We can roughly find this physical universe to be a place in which things are to a significant degree understandable, and to a significant degree work-with-able. And as we reflect and understand causes, it gives us high leverage. I’ll give you an example. Suppose you are dealing with one of those sobering facts, one of those moments where you realize that your growth is not as advanced as you someday hope it to be. The laughter assures me that I’m not alone in this; thank you very much. There is some unwelcome emotion, let us say some fear, some desire, that we would rather not live to the extent that we’re living it now. But we reflect, and what little fragments of science we have at hand are really enough to get high leverage out of this. We recall, biologically, that this emotion has an evolutionary value for us. The Creator put it there for a reason. We reflect on our social situation, and sociologically we realize, well, this environment is such as stimulates that emotion. We can be very plain about recognizing that. And we can recognize psychologically in ourselves, well, here I’m a critter that responds to these stimuli in these ways. There’s a personal history to that, and there’s a general psychology to that. These are features of the human critter. And if we add an historical perspective to that we can say: look at the blankety-blank situation that we’re in historically right now. Isn’t all of this really quite understandable? In so doing, in a very simple way, we have brought science to our aid. And there is high leverage in doing that.
So the first phase of the reflection on science is to face facts honestly. The next phase is explore causes. The third phase is look at things in a grand, broad, evolutionary perspective. That’s when things really start to get fun. This third phase of scientific reflection is a phase that involves philosophy and religion. As we see, these categories in truth and beauty and goodness are not airtight boxes. They begin to move and blend into one another, though not indistinguishably. The highest phase of scientific reflection that I propose to you now is a phase that cannot be fully grasped without a philosophical and spiritual commitment as well. But of a vision of a grand process of evolution one can say, “Look at this passing phenomenon; here we are going through one of these moments which are not so glorious, but on the way to a superb destiny.” A superb destiny. One of the things that a grand evolutionary perspective opens us to is the awareness that we are agents; we are not merely passive recipients in a causal chain. There are things we can do. We are free to choose, free to create, free to make a contribution, and there’s a joy in the very fact of that. And we begin to ask ourselves what values can be actualized here and now? So you see how the picture has begun to change? We started with a sobering fact; we got a scientific perspective that expanded into an evolutionary vision, and we’re well on our way at this point.
We’re going to have our first look now at a matrix that we’ll see being filled in throughout the continuation of this presentation. We’re just looking at truth right now. We’ve seen fact in science. Now we’re going to look at the philosophical level of this process, looking at meanings. Philosophy approaches truth by interpreting meanings. We have the joy of realizing that your mind is permeated by divine ministry. The Creator does not simply, you know, dump a mind on you, then tell you, “Okay, go make it glorious. I’m not going to have anything more to do with you until you hit perfection.” My favorite passage in the Bible that approaches this theme is Isaiah 11, chapter two – if you’ll turn . . . . The idea is that there are a number of gears of the human mind, and for each of these gears we can realize that we’re working with a circuit of divine ministry. We have intuition, quick perception. You can see my hands; you can hear the click of my fingers; you respond. If I click too close to you you’ll have an instinctive protective reaction. That’s because of the gift of mind function that we’re given at that level. There’s a divine ministry to that function. We don’t have to walk around adding fear to protect ourselves. There’s already a divinely ministered to function of mind that helps us there.
The next one is the spirit of understanding. As I go through on one of my long sentences you can, for the most part, hold it together. You can keep together the meanings of the words, from the beginning to the end. As I talk you associate ideas to make coherent sense of most of what I say, and you do it quickly. For example, you’re driving, and you see the red light and you don’t even have to spell out the words in your mind to say, “Oh, it’s time to stop.” You put on the brakes. You can do that because of quick reasoning. Organisms wouldn’t be effective if they were without that ability to associate ideas that way. Isn’t it nice to reflect that there’s a ministry to that? There’s a spirit of understanding that helps us.
Next there’s the spirit of courage. It takes courage, you know in Los Angeles, just to get out of bed and cross the street. It takes courage to get here—congratulations to every one of you. But there are times when you could use more of it, and times when you could use a finer quality of courage. When you open up the mind, let yourself become more permeable, more permeable, something starts to come in, and it stays with you throughout the course of action that you’re about to undertake.
There’s also the spirit of knowledge. You’re here seeking more information, more understanding. You’re curious. You’re exploring. You’ve got a spirit of adventure just to be here. That’s ministered to.
Consider the spirit of counsel: we cooperate. There’s so much teamwork that has happened in getting all of us here together now for this particular event, professional high-tech teamwork, and then there are people like me. We’re all cooperating together. That spirit of counsel enables us to share, combine ideas, and work together.
Beyond that, there’s the spirit of worship. So many people ask, even though they’ve been religiously active for many years, “How do I worship?” Just to realize that you can is a helpful and encouraging assurance. And realize that there is a spirit ministry from God that helps us do that.
Last, there’s the spirit of wisdom. We’re all seeking divine wisdom here. And, again there’s a ministry that helps us do that.
The next point that I’ll touch on in this quick summary of philosophy is that there’s the matter of cultivating the quality of thinking, and philosophy specializes in that, helping us learn to sharpen intuitions into insights that are really clear and really strong and really reliable, and helping us in logic so that we make more accurate deductions from those starting points, and then helping us to make sure that we have a sufficiently broad set of premises, set of starting points, so that we don’t end up in a one-sided, narrow-minded, polemical situation. We’ve heard of Miyuki Harley’s work in helping groups to unify when there’s tension. I expect she’d say that there are experiences where one group has got a very clear intuition of something that is a genuine value, and they’re making very good deductions on the basis of that grasp, and another group has got hold of another genuine value; they’re making very good deductions based on the premise that they’ve got. But many people in both groups don’t have a full enough set of premises, and so what’s necessary for your wisdom synthesis is to start from enough realizations of enough meanings and values that when you come to your wisdom synthesis it gets a whole lot easier to work together.
Then there’s the satisfaction of achieving a mature concept. Now I want to emphasize: concept and idea are different. I know this is going to come as a shock, and this is going to be a real disappointment: you can get ideas as fast as you can turn the page. I can give you 32 years of work in a series of ideas that you can get as fast as you can hear me. But an idea is not a concept. A concept is something that comes after years of—I’m sorry—struggle. And, for a concept to be formed, through that struggle you gradually acquire virtues, qualities that enable you to cope with situations. So I think you’ll begin to understand that I can give you ideas this quickly, but I can’t give you concepts that quickly. Part of the joy of being here with you all today is hearing so many different people giving voice to what they’ve found in the concepts because our concepts of great things will be different.
Let’s move into the area of spiritual experience. Don’t you hate these lists? These handy dandy, never fail lists? I’ve got a list for you. Look out for the list: If you feel in need, acknowledge it, and take your need to God. That’s a little moment of simplicity. So often we go through life with a sense of need. “Oh, I need this; oh, if only that; oh, my friend is just in this terrible situation; oh, the planet is just. . . .” And so we have this need consciousness. And that is a great step forward because it shows sensitivity.
But joyous living moves beyond just this phase of need consciousness, and how to make that transition from what I sometimes call the life of prayer to the life of worship is what this little sequence is about. So you take your need to God and there you are; you don’t run away. How often in our prayer life we just say something quick and then, boom, our mind is off on some different topic. That’s normal. I mean, I’m not here to make you feel guilty about something that is characteristic in the lives of every one of us. But here’s the movement that I’m trying to teach myself to make, and sharing with you: having expressed that need, we stay with it. We listen. We remain open. And in that openness, the more we grow, the more we realize that God is responding. Some of that response we’ll never notice because our awareness is too dim, and it’s going to be in the future. It doesn’t come all right away, but some of it does start right away. And as we feel that, oh—there’s a wonderful sense of satisfaction and relief and release—and then we give thanks.
Thanksgiving is a very important next step in this transition. Then there’s a phase in which we let that indwelling divine spirit gift take us further. A prayer, it has been said, is sublime thinking. Worship is super-thinking. And that super-thinking is not something we can do. That’s the illusion of a seven-step list. You think, “I can do all these steps.” No, you don’t do these steps. This last step is something that you let be done. You assent to it; you consent to this process. And that spirit then lifts you up to the heights of worship, and that’s where you find the divine, beyond verbally expressible aspects of truth and beauty and goodness. And it’s bringing those into your life, bit by bit, is where the joy comes more and more and more.
Now, the next thing I want to emphasize is that we all have our ideals. Especially as we start to study religion, we all have these great moments where everything is just clicking and we’re on a roll, and the challenges come and we can handle everything. And then there are those other moments. And it’s at those other moments where we feel, “I’m so far from my goal.” Even though we have more of those good ones, and they last longer, and so on, we still know we are very far from the destiny of perfection to which we’re called. But, it’s very important to realize the satisfaction, the joy, if you will, of just going in the right direction and learn to find a joy in that, a joy that is just breathtaking – just breathtaking.
Now I want to talk about a subtle topic in the spiritual life for just a couple minutes: what about something beyond joy? Since God is so far beyond the mind, pursuing spiritual worship sometimes leads beyond the conscious experience of joy. When you let that indwelling divine spirit take you where it wants to take you, sometimes the mind doesn't find itself in any graspable territory anymore. And some of those moments are in some sense beyond joy. I want to honor that moment, but I also have another comment, and that is that the soul thrives not on mysticism but on interpersonal communion with the giver of the indwelling spirit gift. What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that we don't make a goal of a kind of blank-out state where we are out there in this space in nothin' of nothin' of nothin', even though that sometimes happens. But it's the soul's wholehearted pursuit of God that takes us into and through, and keeps us going and keeps us alive and keeps us oriented toward God and not toward a particular state. Worship is about God, and not toward a particular state. And it's an interrelation and it's a back-and-forth, and there's a vitality to it, so that's at the moment what I want to say about beyond joy.
Consider our matrix. As we look at the truths that we recognize as we look at facts honestly, as we reflect on meanings philosophically, as we approach the delights of the experience of the family of God in our spiritual experience, we begin to realize the beauty of truth on all these levels. When I've talked about joy, it's another way of saying we're picking up on the beauty of truth. You with me? Okay – beauty of truth.
Now, that gets us ready for beauty – put simply. I started out a little while ago saying that joyous living is based on truth. Now I want to add that joyous living is sensitive to beauty. That's the main theme. Is joy merely one spiritual feeling among many? If we reflect on that question for a moment we could say that sometimes there's joy, and sometimes there's solemnity, and sometimes there's righteous indignation, and so on. There are a lot of different emotions in the religious life; and one doesn't want to take one emotion only, and make too much of it so that we feel, “Ooo, if I'm not feeling this particular emotion, there's something wrong.” How often does it happen in a worship service that we're put through a programmed sequence of emotions: “Now we're all going to feel guilty, and then we're all going to feel—ah— now I'm forgiven, and then I'm going to feel morally exhorted, and so on.” There's this pat, time-after-time-after-time set of emotions that we're put through. And there's a terrific logic in that, a terrific validity, and there's a terrific depth in the sequence. And well-played, it can be a magnificent experience, even over and over again. But let's remember that we do not want to crystallize sentiments and stereotype things. In the realm of beauty, think of the arts and how diversely the arts carry us through emotions that do not lend themselves to a stereotyped description.
Joy is full in the direct sunlight of love – our most immediate experience of beauty, human and divine. If we're going to take joy in the broad concept that I think is being suggested by today’s theme, then we're going to see joy as a feeling that underlies other experiences that can be there while these other emotions are also a part of our consciousness. The life of feeling is very diverse toward the beauties of nature, for example. How diverse they are. The body is part of nature, and as we enjoy our bodily being in this environment—breathing, and walking, and perceiving, and interacting—that too is part of the joy of the beauties of nature. And one of the most remarkable characteristics of the human body is that it is capable of progressively, slowly, bit by bit, coordinating and integrating such that our body supports a mind whose basic capacity is to host one of these spirit gifts, and to have an integrated life, mind, body, spirit, working together in harmony. When we're living at our best, that's what it feels like. And when we're not, we have the joyous assurance that we're on the way, and sooner or later we'll get there.
There's so much we can say about artistic living, about play, about humor, about the fine arts. When thinking I'm remembered the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, Bret Favre. He has more joy in playing that game than anyone I've ever seen. And sometimes Green Bay is doing well, and sometimes it's not doing well, and sometimes he is slammed to the ground. And that guy just gets up grinning. He loves it.
Consider the fine arts. We could go into this area for a long, long time. My favorite sculpture is Rodin, the Burgers of Calais. The story behind the work is that the English had surrounded the city of Calais, and they said, “We're going to slaughter the whole town unless you delegate six to die on behalf of the city.” And there were six volunteers. Rodin did a number of sculptures of these six, and I recently saw a breathtaking version. What I'll recall to you about these six is that some of them were just distracted as they faced death, and some of them were wandering. But there were two who were going forth to meet this English king, and leading the others with them. The way Rodin showed these two was that the leader of the group had one leg forward, the right leg forward and the left leg back. And his associate right next to him had the left leg forward in a way that was immediately next to the other man’s leg. It was as though the legs had fused, a symbol of teamwork, a symbol of solidarity. The end of the story is that the English king was so moved by these six that he forgave them all and no one was killed.
Artistic living. You've chosen to be here; you busy, busy people have chosen to take your precious time. I can predict with confidence, knowing enough about enough of you, that you people have many good things to do with your time, and you've made a choice. And the artistry of living is to make these choices in a way that preserves space and balance. You've chosen to balance by being here. I hope you'll feel at the end of the day, that was an artistic choice. One of my images for artistic living is something that I call seven eighths. There was a track coach who was working with a high school runner. The coach said, “Go around the track once, and give me your best time for 440 yards.” The runner set off and ran his fastest. Then the coach said,, “Now go at about seven-eighths of your best time. Take something off; relax into it.” The runner went around, relaxed into it, and came in at a better time. Enough said.
Joyous living is dominated by goodness. Often we venture into truth and delight in the movement of truth. Truth is dynamic and active and flowing, and we pick it up with this fact, and the meanings start to consciousize, and we move up to the values, and the worship starts to happen. And we can, some of us—here’s a confession—some of us can spend so much time focusing on that upsweep of truth from philosophy and the move to religious experience, some of us can specialize to such an extent that we forget the importance of goodness, the importance of action, the importance of duty, and what high leverage there is in the goodness side. So joy is complete only with a supreme commitment to goodness. Goodness in its fullness, the beauty of goodness, if you will, you will only taste insofar as you make and achieve and live a supreme commitment to participating in divine goodness.
The flight from duty jeopardizes happiness. Here’s a question: can joy be a duty? I think about Immanuel Kant, and before he got wiser he wrote a book that most ethicists read without reading the later work, a book called the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. He talked about whether love can be commanded. And Kant said, “No, it can't be commanded insofar as it's an emotion, because emotions rise and fall, and we can't command that. What we can command is action, doing good to others.” He had more to say in 12 years, but that's what people remember.
I want to share with you a parable of Jesus' that I think reflects on this question.
"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a certain king who made a marriage feast for his son and dispatched messengers to call those who had previously been invited to the feast to come, saying, `Everything is ready for the marriage supper at the king's palace.' Now, many of those who had once promised to attend, at this time refused to come. When the king heard of these rejections of his invitation, he sent other servants and messengers, saying: `Tell all those who were bidden, to come, for, behold, my dinner is ready. My oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all is in readiness for the celebration of the forthcoming marriage of my son.' But again did the thoughtless make light of this call of their king, and they went their ways, one to the farm, another to the pottery, and others to their merchandise. Still others were not content thus to slight the king's call, but in open rebellion they laid hands on the king's messengers and shamefully mistreated them, even killing some of them. And when the king perceived that his chosen guests, even those who had accepted his preliminary invitation and had promised to attend the wedding feast, had finally rejected his call and in rebellion had assaulted and slain his chosen messengers, he was exceedingly wroth. And then this insulted king ordered out his armies and the armies of his allies and instructed them to destroy these rebellious murderers and to burn down their city.
"And when he had punished those who spurned his invitation, he appointed yet another day for the wedding feast and said to his messengers: `They who were first bidden to the wedding were not worthy; so go now into the parting of the ways and into the highways and even beyond the borders of the city, and as many as you shall find, bid even these strangers to come in and attend this wedding feast.' And then these servants went out into the highways and the out-of-the-way places, and they gathered together as many as they found, good and bad, rich and poor, so that at last the wedding chamber was filled with willing guests. When all was ready, the king came in to view his guests, and much to his surprise he saw there a man without a wedding garment. The king, since he had freely provided wedding garments for all his guests, addressing this man, said: `Friend, how is it that you come into my guest chamber on this occasion without a wedding garment?' And this unprepared man was speechless. Then said the king to his servants: `Cast out this thoughtless guest from my house to share the lot of all the others who have spurned my hospitality and rejected my call. I will have none here except those who delight to accept my invitation, and who do me the honor to wear those guest garments so freely provided for all.'"
It's a challenging parable in many ways and I simply want to draw one lesson from this. It’s my interpretation; yours will surely be different, but my interpretation is that the wedding garment is our joy. If we only grasp spiritual truth of the kingdom of God on the level of fact and idea, we don't yet have the beauty of truth. We don't yet have the joy of truth. And the truth hasn't really sunk in unless there's that wedding garment that comes with it, if you will.
Now, the last topic to discuss a bit is character. Happiness, said Aristotle, is the more or less lifetime enjoyment of acquiring and exercising a noble character. And I think that because time is growing short and I want to have time for questions, we'll space through some of the next of this rather quickly.
Jesus taught about happiness in the beatitudes. There's a particular dynamic to which I wish to draw your attention and that is that the first one is all in the present tense; "Happy are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This is now. This is a happiness now; this is a joy now. To think of oneself as being “poor in spirit” is a way of saying, “Yes, I'm aware that I'm not yet at the perfection to which I am called. And yet, just by turning that way, I already know this kingdom of God, this family of God; it's my own experience now.”
The next one is, "Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." It's the happiness of being on the way. Do I have that fullness of righteousness that I desire to attain one day, that utter consistency where temptation cannot reach me anymore? No, but I'm on the way! I can be happy now just being on the way. And that wholehearted desire, that hungering and thirsting, is already such a blessing that it's present happiness, even just for being on the way.
We'll look again at the matrix. The matrix looks like nine little boxes, and the boxes have their integrity. They are the focus of disciplined investigations that can last as long as you care. But as you go into one of these boxes, you'll find that there are relations to all the other boxes. And you can take them in groups of three, and you can start to weave them, and you can start again to see how truth dynamically brings you aloft. And when you get to that summit level of truth, that spiritual truth, you're realizing the truth of God, of God's love for us. And once you hit that, you're beyond the matrix because this matrix is an organization of what is fairly comprehensible to us. But when we hit love, we're in personality relationships, and personality is a mystery, and that's beyond our comprehension. So, because this matrix leads to love, and because it orients toward personality and personality relationships, in a way it deconstructs itself because the pretensions to total comprehension fall away in the presence of personality, in the presence of love. I thank you.