Spirituality
Posting this on Christmas Day is a good day for this topic. Christmas has a relationship with spirituality. Spirituality is about intent and action (e.g. practice) for personal growth of consciousness and its evolution for the purpose of personal and human betterment. The day celebrates the birth anniversary of a man who was a master of spirituality.
Architecture has developed to a large extent under the auspices of the lines of knowledge from founding masters of spirituality like Jesus the Christ, or lineages of spiritual knowledge coming up through history. Although I brought the topic of technology in our environments forward first, spirituality is likely more transformative. This topic is essential. My research would be floundering without this field of intention.
Implicated in the earlier discussion on technology (I-04) is the presence of human consciousness, its use and abuse - and therefore, that modern technology is too often made dangerous. Locating architecture's presencing as linked with our conscious awareness (I-03) implicates spirituality.
Although Modern Machine Ages technology may not be essentially positive to life, the negative effects on life and environment can be mitigated. We have the means to go to 'zero' in many ways, and it is humanity's character that is holding up timely and heartful improvement. A great number of people are not able to act in harmony with each other, nor to do helpful things beyond their own direct personal interests, which many of us are not in control of. The problems we are facing also point to a spiritual crisis.
Origins
One day a long time ago, someone reached a point of human consciousness as we know it now. That person could realize that they have a relative place in life and in the life of the environment. Questions about who we are and what we are began to develop. Why do I feel this pain? Why should I feel so much pain? What am I and who is thinking this? My situation is not what I want. I feel so very wonderful and I am content. I guess that everyone is familiar with these questions and feelings.
This questioning led some people to find out how to investigate. Discrimination and practices to improve, enhance and evolve the self, and to know the seer, began to be developed a long time ago.
From that point it is easy to understand that inward or self improvement implies a 'best' condition and that there may be an ultimate condition of the self. Expressing that became a very big thing, you could say. Those expressions contribute hugely to define the path of humanity. Although the specific timing of this is not important here, it is important to say it is old. We know that the biblical figures lived at least 5000 years ago. The Indian knowledge system is now being dated before Egypt of the early stepped pyramids. The earliest widely used religions that we have now are over 2000 years old. Patañjali's Yoga Sutra is at least 1800 years old, based on his inclusions from earlier practice at his time.
The capacity of people to reach states of consciousness that transcend the physical world, death, and to look into the infinity of dimensions and live those consciously and practically, has been documented and is being lived today by many people. It is not uncommon for people to take up therapy and to work with their physical body, and we do work hard on thinking and intellectual skills and powers. But most people do not take their consciousness in hand to evolve their understanding, wisdom and motivation. Becoming humane or reaching even higher capacities is fraught for us. I speculate that even in people who have not taken on this realm
feel it to be very important because there is defensiveness and strong emotions in almost anyone. If I press forward and write of evolving toward the divine or higher consciousness, many of you will not feel interested or even uncomfortable. Paths to evolve to reach these conditions beacon as they have for a very long time. Such endeavours are free (or should be), and help to enable anyone to reach such states. One need not look far or hard to find the gentle and subtle tendrils of this.
Architecture
On the day that someone began looking into their inner realm of awareness, and gained personal will and application toward understanding spirituality, the same questioning arose toward the environment. 'What are mountains and fields?' They could then question deeper into the small things near, and further into the vastness beyond the horizon. With consciousness, the creation of environmental support for mental, ideational and heartfelt fitness and inner comfort begin to become a natural part of life.
Is there is a better place to be? If so, there would be choices and decisions on where to go and when. Moreover, once the person gets to that other place, the questioning on making it more appropriate comes up. If that person has gone far, they are able to question how to retain the same 'culture' of where they were. I am not referring here to comfort like the gorilla's nest-making, nor to where the people would go for better food and resources, and sanitary devices. Animals of all types know, sometimes seemingly magically, where to go and when to be there. No doubt humanity has been masterful at that for a long time. Of course we need control for warmth and security, but the form that this takes has infinite possibilities. Changing a place would involve meaningful forms for feeling comfort and reflecting values. The need to make these choices would have begun to evolve early. Many people today claim practicality to default back to simplistic technical concepts. This is echoed by how we have made our technology. But there is no escape, these too are conscious choices.
Just as with spirituality, with the question of making a place fit, comes the idea of 'best'. People would learn to make choices to touch those inward motivating characteristics. When placements and preparations to make an environment fitting and the intent to attain a higher personal condition of consciousness is touched, we begin to see that architecture occurs. The inward life and awareness that we can draw form from presences an awareness that we call architecture.
Siblings
Architecture and spirituality are not only siblings but twins. Conscious awareness must come first, so spirituality is implied as the elder twin of architecture, but only by 'minutes'. If the younger twin is devoted to the elder, then both will flourish. The support of the elder twin is a superordinate program that defines architecture.
The superordinate program of any place that we make is the support of spiritual wellbeing and evolution. By superordinate I mean a program that exists beyond any practical program like bedroom, cafe, office, garage or for operations or desired functions within. That superordinate program is facilitated by practical programs, by qualities such as a style, like Modernist or Rocooco, or characteristics such as 'rustic' like a log cabin or 'clean' like a John Pawson interior. These are all akin to technology now. The unity between nature and ourselves can be evolved through these sibling twins as a thought aspiration that engages our stewardship responsibility within Nature. The superordinate program is climate and biosphere responsive and brings love for all things and beings. The Office for Presencing Architecture intends to unpack this and create environments accordingly.
Nature
Nature has facilitated that humanity is here. We bring with us a vast amount of potential. That potential is far greater than it appears to almost everyone. On the one hand, spirituality engages the realm of evolving consciousness. Included in that, however, is to connect and become engaged in the entire ocean of being. Nature is alive, but right now, our technological effort supported by objective scientific research extends over the earth only as systems, processes and extracted materials. Somehow, the love and higher states of human being and life are part of the earth's raison d'etre and are integrated in how we act.
“Galaxy Cluster Abell 520. This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a collision of massive galaxy clusters.” Image: NASA. https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2012/10/2987-Image.html
Physics and astrophysics says that we are in a universe that is conservatively ≈ 90% unmeasurable to us. It is known only through circumstantial evidence. The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, against all known laws of physics. Dark matter and energy are an 'answer' to this that is established, for now. The world, trees and creatures, moons, and galaxies and everything else are less than 10% known.
That would have to include us, wouldn’t it? Almost all the energy that we are made of is invisible to us. The ≈ 90% is in part experienced as love. Love is an energy, or like an energy. The Sanskrit word prana encompasses love and represents a wider view. Prana cannot be felt, but its flow and influence resonates in us, which we feel. In a way, writing that is ridiculous. It is like writing that the ocean cannot feel water but it feels its effect. It is, however, apt.
Human being showing ≈5% of its energy and matter field. Photo: Johanna Osborne.
Quantum superposition expresses the mutual influencing of matter and ourselves by observation, i.e. the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. But the path for that experience is unknown, even as it is experienced every day, consciously or not. Architecture is experience of this as our awareness as an act within Nature. Technology is a subset of that experience, that, according to the science that generates it, does not (yet) include the immeasurable quantum, nor life, consciousness or motivation.
When architecture presences, that potential of humanity is realized in our experience and is reflected as capacity for that moment at least. The awareness I am calling ‘presencing’ is how we are enabled stewards of the world.
Power
Empowerment to act with more power globally and locally is what we have gained. Now the quest has to be to make whole what we are destroying.
Perhaps you can see how carbon reduction, and solar power, and other science-based intents seem plaintive in light of the immensity of the earth and our collective and entrenched actions against the biosphere and the earth's climate, and pitiful in light of human capacity. It is sad to see how humanity hobbles itself. No doubt, triage and to mitigate harm and to move toward equity is necessary in any way possible, right now. Here, we are interested in developing the view of how we can evolve beyond the current chaotic melee of myriad tiny self-serving efforts for mitigating technologies' harm. This will support triage and move toward ending the need for triage.
The activity that spirituality encompasses supports how we evolve ourselves, and so also how we see the world, which changes the world. Spirituality, as the evolution of human(e) potential, is a way to harmonize with each other and Nature, and to unify and join our effort on multiple planes.
Happy solstice and turning toward the light. May all of us find and imbibe the light within.