Bishop Barron on The Buffered Self

recently I had the great privilege of having a breakfast with the father Robert Spitzer who is the intergalactically smart Jesuit who some years ago ran gonzaga university as president now runs the magis Institute on faith and reason it just delightful of human being as I say a remarkably smart fellow right now a series of books it'll be either a quartet or a quintet when he's finally finished I read actually volume two of it which is called the soul's upward yearning and we spent a good couple hours discussing that book and drawing out implications from it I think it's the best answer out there to what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls the buffered self now what's that well Taylor says that prior to let's say 1500 everybody felt that we had a sense of connection to the transcendent to God and that without that connection we couldn't really find meaning or happiness prior to 1500 almost everybody felt that way beginning 1500 and now coming up to today you have our mieze of people who don't believe in God and who feel that you can be you know happy within the confines of this life alone and Taylor's book is about what happened how did that take place but that image of the buffer itself stays with me a lot I think a lot of people today especially young people are getting caught within that self it's this world what science can describe or near experience that's it what what spitzer does in this book I think very cleverly is he takes from literature from philosophy from physics from achingly high epistemology all these different sources indications of the transcendent he punches holes through the buffer itself to let in the light of the transcendent now I think there's a there's a brilliant idea in practically every page of this book but I'll just focus on three areas I think are quite important the first one is the appeal to an experience of the transcendent which can be found really trans historically transcultural and was described in the 20th century by some really major figures maybe those famous of whom is rudolf Otto early 20th century figure who had a huge influence a lot of theologizing in the 20th century but I don't maintain that again cross cultures and cross time people have had an experience of what he called the new man or the sacred he also famously described it as the mysterium tremendum at Fosse nuns the mystery at one in the same time frightening tremendum at Fosse nuns it fascinating a sense of that reality which overwhelms our receptive capacities overwhelms what we can know frightens us think of the Bible talking about it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God but even as it frightens us and overwhelms us it intrigues us and compels us and draws us into itself this experience is practically universal and gives access otto said to this transcendent reality look in someone like a Paul Tillich who follow Otto quite closely he talks about the various concerns that we have with the things around us but then he talks about an ultimate concern there's something that presses upon us with an ultimate unconditioned power or think of a CS Lewis who knows about all the various longings we have you know for various things and various worldly goods but then there's this longing for ultimate fulfillment this this aching sense of the more that lies beyond what we can see and master and accomplish and he use the word joy it's wonderful joy is is this really a 'king sense of longing for what we can't get in our ordinary experience this gives us access these three people would say many others too to a properly transcendent reality now Spitzer knows that critics will emerge to say well what if all that's just a bunch of subjective fantasy or just a projection of your you know desires and so on well the answer to that is this particular desire is for something properly unconditioned absolute final and see therefore it can't be sequestered simply in the confines of one subjectivity because so to sequester it would be to render it if so facto conditioned or limited or finite it must transcend the split between the subjective and the object and so it's a very real contact with the unconditioned reality so there's the first kind of trajectory that he describes in a lot of detail by the way here's the second one and if you like really high abstract philosophizing you'll love this part of his book it's about how the transcendent is accessed through the very process of human knowing now look at people like Plato Aristotle Thomas Aquinas John Henry Newman they all reflect on this but Spitzer puts the focus on his fellow Jesuit the 20th century philosopher Bernard Lonergan and Lanigan is fascinating I've loved him for years lottery talks about the dynamics of any act of knowing he says any act of knowing so my knowledge of what's in this room my knowledge of ancient history or whatever it is takes place always within a heuristic context of what can be further known it lovely word heuristic is from the Greek eurisko I look for I look for the mind curiously knows what it's looking for when it goes about his work so every act of knowing takes place and then there's a further seeking the mind wants more you don't experience any scientist or a philosopher anyone's had this that when you answer one question satisfactorily the mind doesn't just stop and go to sleep rather ten new questions emerge there are ten new things I need to know well what made possible what I just answered you know so I've explained a phenomenon great great well what explains that the mind keeps asking why why why it pushes on and finally water again says it's pushing on toward the perfectly intelligible his language knowing everything about everything when every possible question is answered that's what the mind wants that means the mind is always already in every one of his particular acts in coadley in the presence of the perfectly intelligible well what's the perfectly intelligible that is the unconditioned reality that whose every condition is filled that which by itself explains its own being and therefore the being of everything else that which adequately will answer any and every possible question that must be in coadley operating in the mind when the mind does any of its work to put that in religious language the mind is always searching for the beatific vision or the vision of God Thomas Aquinas said in every particular act of knowing God's existence is implicitly Co known that's what he means is as my mind knows any particular thing it's taking place within the heuristic horizon of all that can possibly be known the answer to any question takes place in the context of the implied answer to any question to every question this is an epistemological route to God notice please how it starts with any act of knowing not theological knowing it's any scientist any philosopher any psychologist any physicist asking and answering questions is doing so finally within a transcendent context well if you think these first two approaches are little on the abstract side even though I think it's very important for us to explore these more abstract dimensions of the endeavor but if you find them a little too abstract consider a third proposal by Robert Spitzer namely the analysis of near-death experience now most of us know what I'm talking about here these experiences have been studied carefully scientifically for the past roughly 40 years and it's not just you know casual anecdotal kind of evidence have been very carefully analyzed from all sorts of angles including the high scientific angle again most probably know the features people who have experienced you know the stopping of their heartbeat or by most indications they have entered into clinical death have these extraordinary experiences usually involving leaving their own body and seeing it from some higher point advantage being able to describe with remarkable accuracy what's around them let's say in the hospital room usually journeying then toward a light identified as a very benign compassionate power often meeting deceased loved ones along the way so again a remarkable consistency in the description of these experiences spitzer knows well the critics will emerge to say look it's just you know these are hallucinations these are phenom phenomenal a knees are the result of oxygen deprivation and so on well counter-arguments though abound here because the accuracy with which people report what was in the immediate environment of their death is hard to explain on simply internal brain grounds or hallucination grounds when people would say precisely who entered the room and when doctors that they have had never met before able to give their names in their physical descriptions etcetera the most remarkable one to me i had read about this but it's been so rehearses it it's a woman who left her body and near-death experience saw the room she was in described it very accurately then she said she moved out of the room and down the corridor and down another couple corridors and then out the wall of the hospital on the other side of where she was she saw them on the ledge of the hospital a single gym shoe that someone had left single gym shoe that was I think was red in color and then one of the laces was configured an odd way and went under the shoe and she she reported all of this when she came to and so Sahni actually went to that site looked out the window found the gym shoe exactly as she described well I agree with Spitzer that's pretty hard to explain simply on the grounds of you know hallucinations or brain fantasies something else now that I didn't know that I find fascinating Spitzer claims that a lot of studies have shown that people born blind they've never seen they've never seen ever in their life they don't know what color is but yet some of them have near-death experiences and come back with vividly visual and colorful descriptions of what they've seen I don't know how you explain that simply on the grounds of hallucinations and so on so that's a way that's not so achingly abstract but very experienced all and I found in my own pastoral work when you scratched the surface you start telling a story about near-death experience faced come flooding out of people many many people have had them and he thinks I find this compelling that this is a way or I should say it coheres very much with these more philosophical modes of apprehension that if we are already in touch with a transcendent dimension are we surprised that at near-death we find this this point of contact okay those are three things from a very rich book there's much more in it and as you Dalli guess by now I'm a big fan of the book urge you to read it but also once you've read it please give it to a bright young person who maybe has been soaking too long in the acids of contemporary skepticism and materialism who's been too long in the musty confines of the buffer itself and needs to punch a few holes

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2016