Spirituality and Ultimate Beliefs

In general, the space outside the room is metaphorical for whatever people consider to be the transcendent or the ultimate context, even if, for some of them, this context is an atheistic or humanistic "nothingness."

Putting God into this outside space makes the MetaSelf model a framework for discussing our imagery of the transcendent. It is compatible, on the one hand, with the idea that God is not ordinarily visible, and with religions that prohibit specific representations of God. We cannot see the actual form of God, but we can witness manifestations in nature or can imagine God as "behind" nature (behind the walls of the room). This outside space accommodates both the deistic view that God created the world and has since been separate from it, and also the belief that God sometimes comes into to the world, being manifested in a person or event. This incarnation or intervention could be seen as coming in through the wall, as it were along the z axis (which can be thought of as spirit or transformative energy or a ray of light). Revelation, conversely, could be pictured as a window opening up in the wall and our seeing for a moment the reality that is "beyond" nature and ordinary human understanding. Death and the departure of the soul might proceed along the same axis, exiting the room. (One is reminded of near-death experiences in which people see a special kind of light.) The idea that God is "bigger" and greater than the natural world - super-natural - fits very well with the space that surrounds the room on all sides, including above and below.

Naturally these subjects are very personal and contentious. My hope is that spatial imagery can be a rather neutral ground on which people can meet to discuss how they see things. In my personal experience, since assembling the MetaSelf model, I have been able to use it to clarify my own beliefs and to structure my own psychological and spiritual life. When I am in a state of inner turmoil, I can imagine stepping back outside the situation to see it from the point of view of a compassionate observer. I use the imagery of the room and stepping outside as a "visual aid" to structure this inner imaginative step. One might call such a position just outside the room one's soul, the Observer or Witness, one's buddha self, or one's higher Self (despite higher suggesting the vertical axis). In a way it's like a guardian angel of one's better nature, sitting on one's shoulder. The humanist might argue that one does not need to step outside oneself as far as this; one need go only as far as the position of the wall, which stands for nature in the abstract, and that provides a calming reassurance that one's inner conflicts are understandable and "only natural."

Paradoxes crop up when we try to imagine a God's eye view from outside, the view of the artist in the illustration. In fact, some people consider it impossible to speak about this "outside" clearly, partly because any "ultimate context" one chooses to imagine can always be superceded by a still "larger" or alternative "parallel" one that negates it. For example, the idea that God created the world at the Big Bang can be trumped by the assertion that we have no way of knowing what happened before the Big Bang; perhaps the universe had been shrinking down to a point, and the Bang was simply one reversal of an endless series of expansions and contractions. Or, if we imagine a good God outside the room on all sides, someone can claim that a malevolent God, one still bigger, surrounds, controls and conditions all the good god's actions. The debate could go on forever.

At some point, someone is apt to bring us up short and start asking why different people hold different views of what is beyond the room. Suddenly the terms of the argument change and we are facing back into the room looking at the social and psychological factors that influence people's opinions. These investigations, too, however, can be abstract and endless.

Eventually, discussion about context must end in action, agreement, disagreement or an agreement to disagree. We must face each other in some real-life moment and deal with what is going on between us. Between us is where, as Martin Buber saw it, God in an immanent sense (instead of a transcendent sense) can spring up, in the dialogue between I and Thou. An unpredictable reality emerges from our interaction, a reality that is neither just you nor just me. It's bigger than both of us. I sometimes think of this reality as embodied all along by the total space outside the room; it has just been found and brought into our lives.

My feeling is that we need both parts of the model, both what is inside and outside the room. People oriented mostly towards the transcendent "outside" - the mystical, timeless, religious, ideal and ultimate aspect of life - need also to turn and face into the world in what might be called the existential direction - toward the particular, the immediate, the material, the real. This is the front-back axis of the body, and we need its whole length. Instead of putting our attention on one end or the other, the MetaSelf model suggests that we start with where we are, in our own body, and make full use of its axial structure as a visual aid (and a verbal and kinesthetic aid) to being human.

A Three Axis Approach.

While the MetaSelf model concentrates on the horizontal z axis that goes in and out of the room through the wall, all three axes of the body are implied in it and all three can be used to diagram the place of the ultimate in our lives. Once we see clearly that all three are operating in conventional speech and imagery, it becomes easier to recognize them and to shift among them.

The left/right horizontal, when we see it running around the room through a series of box-frame images, can be used as a way to show the development of consciousness. It's like a retrospective exhibit of an artist's work to date, with a blank space left on the wall at the end for work that is still to come. Our stroll around the room is the basis for the locomotion metaphor of the artist's "journey" through life, represented by the images in the box-frames. We stop at each image and face it, and then we resume our forward motion in the same direction as the sequence.

Generally, the left/right axis conventionally places the Source at the left (because writing in English goes left to right) and the Omega point is at the right. Beginning at left; end at right. First Cause at left; Final Cause at right.

We employ the vertical axis to talk about "levels" of development which ascend, superceding but incorporating parts of the level below them. The best developed example of this kind of diagrammatic organization I have come across is Ken Wilber's work, which stresses vertical depth instead of front/back depth.