Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:7)
THE SPIRIT OF God infuses all living creatures. Man in this respect is no different from any other living being. The body is created out of the material of the earth from which it is fashioned by an artifice so marvellous in its complexity and yet reliable in its uniformity that when a flaw does occur, we are all shocked by it. The Word effects creation, and is in the creature. The Spirit infuses the creature with life. By this life the creature is made capable of progressing by experience in a medium of time through the limitation of space.
This is the world of becoming, in which all creatures are to experience their own identity in a dimension of limitation and finitude.
It is unfortunately true that many people appear to function at so low a level of consciousness that the seat of identity, which may be called the ego or the personal self, does not play a real part in any of their actions. Most actions are really unconscious responses to outer events and inner drives that impinge themselves on people, and the end of the action is simply the achievement of immediate comfort. In the case of many individuals, there is an awareness of the body only, but no communication with a deeper essence within it. However, when one makes a conscious decision, no matter how shallow and selfish it appears, one is at least responding to the core of identity, the personal self. A person is one who reacts consciously from this independent centre of identity and is prepared to follow the call of that centre in faith. The person is truly born when he is able to make an independent decision and act on it.
To come to the knowledge of one's true identity, which is equivalent to affirming that one has a unique, priceless essence to give the world, is a process that should begin very early in life. The infant first comes to know its value because its parents acknowledge it and love it for what it is, although it can give nothing in return - except itself. Though in its present state it is helpless and a source of inconvenience, it is also a being of infinite potentiality. As soon as it is accepted as a person, it can begin to explore its own personality and find that it is a focus of unique presence. To accept a person as he now stands is to start the process of his own self recognition. Admittedly this self that is recognised is a fragile thing, depending for its support on the good-will of the outside world, seen primarily as the family. But it is an important beginning.
To be centred in the self is necessary for survival, let alone effective being. The satisfaction of the desires of the body for comfort is a paramount feature of a child's life. If the body is given its due acknowledgement with acceptance and love, the child will accept the physical part of his make-up without the embarrassment or the exhibitionism that is a feature of a poorly integrated personality. And the child will also begin to grasp that its identity extends beyond the confines of the body, which at the same time is in no way diminished in his estimation, for it is the essential ingredient of his life on earth. And so it comes about that, as a person grows into adult life, his identity is based on both his physical integrity and his growing mind.
But even this is not the end of our growth into identity. One's sense of inner presence must be such that is can withstand the blows of outer fortune. Whereas the child's sense of identity is fragile, depending on the approval and acceptance of those stronger than itself, when an individual comes more fully to himself, he has to make decisions that may estrange and even antagonise those closest to him in blood ties. This is where the moment of willed choice, of crisis, is so important. When this decision is taken and acted upon, the person affirms himself and sets out on an independent course in life. This course may appear to be extremely ill-chosen and have disastrous effects in the short term, but no matter how short-sighted his vision, the participant in life has at least left the shores of stagnation and entered the turbulent waters of experience.
A real decision always has moral overtones; the question of what is right or wrong in terms of the individual's well-being and his relationships with those around him becomes increasingly important. When the person begins to see his identity as a point not only confined to himself, but as an aspect of the community in which he lives, he is coming to a deeper appreciation of himself and is venturing into his spiritual inheritance.
The experience of individual identity is one's first taste of reality. As the experience of individuality becomes more extended into an awareness of communal identity, so does the understanding of reality grow in comprehensiveness until personal identity becomes increasingly irrelevant except in the context of fellowship with others. It is through the Spirit of God that growth into individual awareness and its expansion into communal identification becomes possible. Man becomes his full self when he is one with the Spirit of God that informs the spirit within him.
Although the Spirit of God is always within man, being the very flow of life that courses through his body, human consciousness in its natural state is seldom aware of that Spirit. The individual begins to know the impact of The Holy Spirit when decisions of a moral nature impinge on him, and he has to make conscious choices, which by the very nature of the circumstances are bound to alienate others whom he holds dear. When the Spirit is pulsating through a person, he is no longer asleep to reality; at last he knows that his life has a meaning and a purpose that transcends the merely evanescent satisfaction of the physical senses.
"It is time for you to wake out of sleep, for deliverance is nearer to us now than it was when we first believed. It is far on in the night; day is near." (Romans 13:11)
That which awakens us from the somnolence of inertia to a realisation of the self is the Holy Spirit. As a person grows into life, so he becomes increasingly responsive to the call of the Spirit, a call that directs him on a far journey away from simple thoughtless conformity with the life around him to a path of hidden promise, to the experience of a new realm at once unknown and infinitely desirable. The call may lead him through terrible dangers and almost insurmountable difficulties, but the strength of the self within, impelled by the Spirit of God, will ensure a final victory. This victory will not necessarily be a worldly or an intellectual one; it is a victory of the spirit of man over the flesh that anchors him to a present situation of impotence, so that the flesh may be informed, transmuted, and glorified to that spirituality which is the stuff of eternal life.
What is the relationship between the spirit of man and the Holy Spirit? They are not identical, at least in natural man, yet neither are they totally disidentical. The spirit in any living organism is the power within it that drives it forward into the unknown. In the more primitive forms of life, this movement is activated by the physical desire for survival and procreation, but were it not for the power of God within even the lowliest organism, that humble form could not survive, let alone renew itself. The very means whereby our physical body does undergo renewal, for instance in the healing that occurs after an injury, is the pulsating spirit of God within each component cell. Medical skill can put the body in the best situation for healing to occur, but it cannot induce, let alone command, the individual cells to perform their wonderful work of division, migration, and differentiation that is the heart of the healing process.
This, to me, is in its own way, as marvellous as any miracle recorded in the Bible. Indeed, the difference between a healing miracle and the normal healing process is essentially one of time. What occurs in the space of days or weeks under normal circumstances seems to take place with remarkable rapidity, or even instantaneously, in a healing miracle. It would seem that when the Holy Spirit is in conscious control of the creature's life, He can effect in the "twinkling of an eye" what He would normally take a considerable time to fulfil, and what indeed might be completely thwarted by a perverse attitude on the part of the creature.
If this insight is applied to the relationship between the spirit of man and the Holy Spirit, it would seem that, in the natural man, the Holy Spirit infuses the personality as an unrecognised host, and that the power of life He bestows is dulled and distorted by the adverse current of psychic elements in that personality. Thus the life that the Spirit bestows is crippled, wasted, and made awry by the destructive forces of the psyche. Its power is used selfishly, and its effect is impure and adverse. Yet without the power of God man would not be able to act even perversely. It is good to realise that all action, no matter how destructive it may appear, is ultimately under the creative Word of God and subject to His control. "You would have no authority at all over me," Jesus replied to Pilate, "if it had not been granted you from above." (John 19:11)
But what about the individual who has been denied proper recognition at an early age? And what about those who through unfortunate circumstances of upbringing have been the victims of unconscious complexes which have interfered with their proper psychological development? How can these types of people develop a sense of their own identity? They may instead identify themselves with their past unhappiness, or even fail to attain any conviction that they count for anything at all. While acknowledging the necessity for skilled psychotherapeutic help in many such cases, I would emphasise that even such unfortunate people can attain full personal identity, and this not only in spite of their psychological crippling but because of it. The life of full spiritual knowledge is sometimes more readily attainable to those who have been wounded or even crippled emotionally than to those whose lives have known little internal stress or disappointment.
The reason for this apparently paradoxical situation is basic to the nature of inner reality. I may accept my importance as a person by virtue of the loving acknowledgement I have always received. But this sense of importance may easily lead me to complacency, indolence, and increasing self-centredness at the expense of other people. In the end I might regard myself as the centre around which the world was meant to revolve. On the other hand, if I am crushed and left utterly bereft of al1 outer support, the true self may be the only focus of reality left to me, and I may start to know who I am in the deepest humiliation.
It has been a source of constant delight to see people whose early lives were one tragedy of neglect and suffering, and yet who have faced the challenge of inner authenticity and became whole as a result of it.
There are some people who resign themselves to misfortune so that they retreat from life and fail to become real persons, while others, admittedly a minority, faced with similar circumstances and scarred with much suffering, come to a knowledge of their real worth. These are among the leaders of mankind. There seems to be a fundamental attitude of life-acceptance in the few and life-denial in the many. The ones who fail life's tests sink into a pit of self-pity and despair. Those who pass the test of suffering come to an understanding of inner authenticity, and never cease to be aware of the amazing fecundity and potentiality of life. This prevents them becoming enmeshed in regrets and reproaches; instead they get on with the work of living. Temperament is often invoked as an explanation for the differing responses of people to the blows of fortune. But the heart of the matter is the personal response to the ultimate factors of existence, and these are illuminated by the Spirit of God within the individual.
A life that is blind to the transcendent reality that underlies the world of common life is enclosed in the mortality of transcience; everything has its moment of perfection and then fades away into annihilation. Life ends in a whimper of disillusionment and self-pity. A life that looks forward to all experiences - the unpleasant as well as the pleasant - as part of growth into a full person with enhanced usefulness to the world, ends in a realisation of inner identity. To put this in a more religious perspective, those who are open to the Spirit of God, whether in success or in failure, are given the inclination and the courage to press onward to the great quest: the knowledge of God and the attainment of the stature of a real person.
It can therefore be said that the experience of identity in a realm of limitation is the way of growth. Growth is the very purpose of life, and death in turn is the end of a particular phase of growth. By an act of faith we believe that the creature may venture through death into an unknown country where he may come to experience more of his identity in other dimensions of limitation.
Birth has, then, three components. There is firstly the physical birth of the body that succeeds its existence in its mother's womb. Then there may be personal birth at a time when a decision of moral urgency is made that determines the future life of the individual. This decision gives the individual his first experience of autonomy, his first assertive action made independently of his parents or mentors. Finally there is to come the spiritual birth, when the impress of the Word of God acting through His Spirit informs the person of his true identity, that of a Son of God. This is the birth of the Word, identified as Christ in the Christian tradition, in the soul which, for convenience, can be defined as the true essence of the person, of which the personal self, or ego, is its manifestation in the outer world. But whereas the ego is a fluctuating centre of awareness, the soul, or spiritual self, is immutably fixed as the centre of the person, and grows into the knowledge of God (and-of itself) through The Spirit, which in turn is centred within it.
The Word lies dormant in the soul like a seed, to which many Christian mystics have compared it. Its moment of germination is the moment of spiritual birth. Then the person knows his destiny.