Rationalism and Reductionism vs. Intuition and Creativity

The sixth chakra concerns our “third eye,” intuition, and the bringing together of our left and right hemisphere of the brain in creativity. This is, of course, a description of when things work out well. The opposite situation, i.e. the illness of the soul that must be overcome to reach such optimal balance, is brought about when the rational part of the mind dominates the intuitive part, disregarding and berating the latter. Or, in less crude versions, keeping it down and giving it the role of a helper.

I think we can pair the sixth chakra to the traditional capital sin of superbia (in Latin) which can be translated as “excessive pride” or “boasting” or “arrogance.” It is indeed best seen in Western arrogance and its boasting about its scientific and technological achievements in the last three centuries or so, accompanied by the demise of the intuitive mind and creativity.

Cultural movements, like 19th century Romanticism, have represented attempts to counteract the arrogance of the intellect, bringing back a more balanced situation, but they have failed in the main. Creation Spirituality is, of course, another of such countercultural movements, with the specificity of being an ally of contemporary science, to the extent that the latter moves away from the one-sidedness, the materialism, and the denial of mystical experience that was typical of 19th century Positivism and is, unfortunately, still widespread today.

Matthew Fox explains the dangers of rationalism and reductionism in his book Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, as well as in many other publications. Rationalism means the arrogance of the rational mind which refuses to give much importance to imagination, intuition, creativity.

Reductionism is a step further, consisting of “explaining away” human experiences which, in reality, cannot be grasped by the intellect alone. Matthew quotes Paul Ricoeur when he says that “one lives only that which one imagines” and comments as follows: Life itself, after all, is not rational. It is the ultimate marvel of the more-than-rational. The modern era, with its dependency on the Cartesian philosophical model of “clear and distinct ideas” and the quantitative method of science, ignored feelings and intuition (…) This rationalism easily translates into faceless and fleshless statistics that encourage greed and exploitation of people and earthlings while creating pseudo-ecstasies of money and power and other abstractions. But the sixth chakra has the potential to melt these idols down into real life once again.

None of this means that we should privilege fanciful thoughts at the expense of reason. In fact, we are not creative without an intellectual life of some kind. Ideas count. Logic has its place. The problem is that we are out of balance. We don’t give enough importance to our intuitions. We prefer to live in safety rather than following such intuitions, even though they give us very important information about what truly matters for our happiness. We live in abstractions, being convinced that certain fixed ideas that we hold are absolutely true. We say: “This is the rational way” because we don’t allow any contamination of our ideas with the messy reality of intuition and creativity. In reality, this is only an expression of the arrogance of the rational mind, mostly connected to the left hemisphere of the brain, which thinks to be the whole instead of accepting it is just half of the whole.

One important corollary of this insight is that dogmatism — which Matthew loves to pair with pessimism in the definition given by Thomas Aquinas as “contraction of the mind” — is not confined to religion. Yes, it is very visibly propounded by all sorts of fundamentalisms, but science has also been involved in dogmas and attitudes that have restricted our capacities to feel, experience, sense, know, perceive, savor, observe, taste, and enjoy. In reality, even the great scientific discoveries of modern times have been helped by intuition, having been made by individuals who tried new untrodden paths.

On a personal level, the cure to stiffness in the sixth chakra is, of course, trusting our intuition. This might be difficult to do if we are not used to it. We need to train ourselves step by step, especially if we have been raised in a strictly modern household, and it is important to accept that we may “overtrust” as well as “undertrust” until we achieve a proper balance.

It is interesting to observe that Matthew does not explicitly talk about arrogance in his chapter on the sixth chakra. That is because he has already talked about it with regard to the first chakra. Arrogance may result indeed from acedia/sloth, in the sense that indifference toward life tends to turn into a negative judgment of everything, and finally into the perception of being the only one who knows anything, or has any importance.

This is “vainglory” in the words of St. Gregory the Great, which consists of an inordinate desire to announce one’s own excellence. But isn’t that precisely what the Western man has done? Arrogance is embodied in the sin of anthropocentrism, but also in that of racism. Even though today’s Western arrogance is not explicitly buttressed by pseudo-scientific claims about the superiority of the “white race” we are not very far from it.

Once again, we observe that working on the capital sins of the Catholic tradition and the chakras of the Hindu tradition brings us directly into the core of the problems that we are living today, both on the personal and the societal level.

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Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, pp. 293, 299, 305, 307, 193.

Banner image: Marking the third eye. In Hinduism, the tilaka, colloquially known as a tika, is a mark made with paste or powder and usually worn on the forehead, at the point of the ajna, or third eye chakra. Photo by Jayendra Lashkari, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikiquote.

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Queries for Contemplation

What is my relationship with my intuitive mind? Do I sometimes take abstractions
for the whole truth?

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Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet

Because creativity is the key to both our genius and beauty as a species but also to our capacity for evil, we need to teach creativity and to teach ways of steering this God-like power in directions that promote love of life (biophilia) and not love of death (necrophilia). Pushing well beyond the bounds of conventional Christian doctrine, Fox’s focus on creativity attempts nothing less than to shape a new ethic.
“Matt Fox is a pilgrim who seeks a path into the church of tomorrow.  Countless numbers will be happy to follow his lead.” –Bishop John Shelby Spong, author, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Living in Sin

The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human

The A.W.E. Project reminds us that awe is the appropriate response to the unfathomable wonder that is creation… A.W.E. is also the acronym for Fox’s proposed style of learning – an approach to balance the three R’s. This approach to learning, eldering, and mentoring is intelligent enough to honor the teachings of the Ancestors, to nurture Wisdom in addition to imparting knowledge, and to Educate through Fox’s 10 C’s. The 10 C’s are the core of the A.W.E. philosophy and process of education, and include: compassion, contemplation, and creativity. The A.W.E. Project does for the vast subject of “learning” what Fox’s Reinvention of Work did for vocation and Original Blessing did for theology. Included in the book is a dvd of the 10 C’s put to 10 video raps created and performed by Professor Pitt.
“An awe-based vision of educational renewal.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.

Natural Grace: Dialogues on Creation, Darkness, and the Soul in Spirituality and Science 
by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake

Natural Grace, a 208 page inspired dialogue between theologian Matthew Fox and scientist Rupert Sheldrake, unites wisdom and knowledge from unconventional angles. Considering themselves heretics in their own fields, Matthew and Rupert engage the conversation from postmodern and post-postmodern perspectives, deconstructing both religion and science—while setting the foundation for a new emerging worldview. Having outgrown the paradigms in which they were raised, both Fox and Sheldrake see it as part of their life missions to share the natural synthesis of spirituality and science rooted in a paradigm of evolutionary cosmology.