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Basics of Spiritual Altruism

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Basics of Spiritual Altruism BASICS OF SPIRITUAL ALTRUISM Sangeetha Menon, Ph.D. Bangalore, India ABSTRACT: The major discussions on altruism today, particularly in the area of sociobiology, give exclusive attention to altruism as an act that favors evolutionary or social benefits. That altruism is a phenomenon exhibited by a self is almost neglected. To understand altruism it is also important to look at the nature of ‘self-space’ that constitutes various levels of altruism. Self-space, as presented in the Indian philosophical literature, refers to a reified self-identity that would reflect ethical and spiritual concerns. Because of the emphasis on selflessness as a state of being the Indian philosophical literature offers a different perspective on altruism than sociobiological renditions. Selflessness is connected with transformation of consciousness, influencing compassion, empathy, and social good and hence could be described as having a spiritual mooring. In this paper I introduce and coin the concept of ‘spiritual altruism’ and juxtapose it with sociobiological altruism in order to emphasize the spiritual underpinnings of altruistic behavior, in contrast with sociobiological causes. ‘‘Those who eat without sharing, eat veritable poison’’ Bhagavad Gita: 3:13 Indian philosophical thought, in general, supports the collective co-existence of life. Its theories on art, metaphysics, soteriology, and even logic and epistemology favor the commonality in all life forms. This commonality is variously addressed but emphasized in the Upanishadic literature as ‘pure existence,’ ‘pure consciousness,’ and ‘pure bliss.’ The core of existenceis identified with ‘benevolence.’ In contrast to this foundation of commonality, divisions based on gradations in degree of intelligence or evolution of life, as embraced from a sociobiological framework, are of a cultural, constructive nature and hence may be perceived as trivial and irrelevant. For the Upanishads, understanding existence in its truest sense cannot be founded solely on degrees, divisions, and classes, which is just one way of classifying what we experience and rationalize. BEYOND THE SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE From a sociobiological perspective, human thinking mostly strives for a ‘scientific’ and structured way of understanding and from those structures universally applicable theories are deduced. Degrees of this ability is referred to as one’s ‘degree of intelligence.’ It is interesting that, in spite of the oddities E-Mail: [email protected] I thank National Institute of Advanced Studies for the congenial air which helped me write this paper, and my colleagues for discussions. My gratitude to Swami Bodhananda for his comments on an initial draft of this paper. My thanks also to the very helpful feedback from the reviewers. Copyright ’ 2007 Transpersonal Institute The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2007, Vol. 39, No. 2 137 human civilization and intelligence have given rise to, the focus is on building theories, patterns, and social mechanisms that have more stable and evolving degrees of survival. Survival seems to be the common ‘idea’ which we have built both biologically and culturally. The mechanisms – biological, cultural, psychological – we use may be entirely different, but in the history of ideas the idea of ‘survival’ tops the rank. One could argue at this point that ‘survival’ cannot be just an idea but a biological fact. Even if that be the case, I would contend that a sense of objectivity (for us as humans) could be heightened when we look from ‘above facts’ and see them as ideas. The grand theory of (genetic) survival, as we understand today, is a product not just of biological but also of cultural evolution. Use of tools, making of tools, nurturing of self-awareness, building of self- identity and emotions – all these together (or singularly) are supposed to be responsible for what we today recognize as the most important characteristic of existence – intelligence; and, the first expression of intelligence lies in improving the scope and duration of existence. If we look closely at theories of evolutionary biology, as well as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, they are ‘built’ to explain how we could exist in an immortal sense – even though a single body, a single gene, or even a species, will have to die and disappear in the process. Undoubtedly immortality of life has been our singlemost concern in the way we have built our theories in both the natural and social sciences. We strive to establish the immortality of genes, mind, body, and so on. This might be quite an obvious fact but not to be set aside as insignificant. To a survival machine, another survival machine is part of its environment, like a rock or a river ora lump of food (Dawkins, 1976). What separates us from the robot is the nearly instantaneaous communication and interaction that takes place between the different parts of the human brain (Newberg & D’Aquili, 2001). Another expression of human intelligence is the urge to exist, and accordingly minimize any process that works against existence. Human history of course has telltale stories of violence, hatred, and betrayal to narrate to our children. Paradoxically these stories are also stories of desperate means to ‘exist’asan individual, family, community, or nation. What is selfishness in the context of the selfish gene and selfish meme? It is an attitude or mechanism that works for self-promotion. The methodology for sociobiology is to arrive at the non-existence of any non- physical self by arguing that self is nothing but a bunch of memes and also to locate the intelligence behind the transmission of cultural traits. Therefore each of these memes has evolved its unique way with its own history and also each of them is using your behavior to get itself copied (Blackmore, 1999). Meme, if collectively termed therefore, is the ‘big self’ that triesto survive by all means. Central to these discussions are the questions of whether human actions are ever genuinely selfless, whether there is something in the moral life that transcends biological function, and whether one can sensibly 138 The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2007, Vol. 39, No. 2 speak of an overall purpose to the course of evolution (Clayton & Schloss, 2004). From the Indian perspective of spiritual psychology, however, one could meditate whether the core of existence is founded on body (biological), mind (experiential), or, something else that supercedes both (spiritual). In this context altruism becomes a perfect human trait to be studied because of its two distinct characteristics: (a) universal (pan cultural), and (b) transcendental nature. I use the description ‘transcendental’ with the assumption that whichever altruism we talk about (kin altruism, individual altruism, hedonistic altruism, utilitarian altruism, etc.) there is a supercedence that happens to the identity and values held by the individual, pointing to some degree of benevolence. FROM COMTE’S ALTRUISM TO SPIRITUAL ALTRUISM In the Western world, the term ‘altruism’ goes back to Comte, the father of sociology, who adopted it to describe those dispositions, tendencies, and actions which have the good of others as their obejct. Comte held the position that the goal is not to subordinate ‘egoism’ to ‘altruism’ but to develop ‘egoism’ to its proper proportions, in the belief that higher and fuller a personality is, the more he has to contribute to the happiness of humankind (Iverach, 1994). To a great extent we have been able to build on Comte’s ‘altruism,’ but we have not succeeded in adopting a matching theory for his ‘egoism.’The history of ideas on altruism that have focal points in Darwinian group theory and today culminate at the individual (selfish gene and selfish meme) theory only shows that our best explanations for a cultural and psychological phenomenon have been biological, catering to ‘adaptation.’ The ‘selfish meme’ approach to explain all of the past, present, and future of human mind and creativity is a tough but hasty epistemological strategy to demystify the human race from its uniqueness (Menon, 2002). The aspects of altruism capable of changing perceptions about existence drastically, considered from a humanistic point of view, such as transformation in values, self-identity, and group-identity, have been shadowed by an excessive interest in ‘adaptation.’ The ‘limited’ perceptions on altruism could be connected with one of the major constructs of Western philosophical tradition, the individualistic self (Kupperman, 1997). Recognizing the subtler transformative aspects of altruism, I wish to take a few instances from Indian philosophical traditions and present another form of altruism which I wish to introduce as ‘spiritual altruism.’ Also, since it addresses a core characteristic of existence, it has a universality that could be focused to represent something basic to humans.1 I wish to present a few cross-sections of what we could refer to as ‘Indian ways of thinking.’ These cross-sections taken from the foundational philosophical texts such as the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Mahabharata will have Spiritual Altruism 139 commonalities as well as differences, yet together they weave what could be considered as ‘spiritual altruism.’ These cross-sections will also help us to define the two components – ‘spiritual’ and ‘altruism’ – as developed in the diverse philosophies of India. Some of the key ideas I will be following through these cross-sections are the representation of self, construction of self-identity, and expansion of the self-space that constitute the core of identity. I hope that with a discussion of these ideas it could be shown that the duals of ‘selfishness’ and ‘altruism’ are notions far too limited to understand the complexity of human expression. To confine the ‘enlarging’ space of self to a more culturally and biologically defined paradigm (of selfishness and altruism) will not be helpful in appreciating the scope of human relationships and responses in its complexity. On the contrary, if we focus on self-space as the main factor then one of the noblest human expressions like altruism gets a definition not limited and exclusively defined by sociobiology.
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