The Problem With Transcendence

Last night a friend of mine and I went to see the Metropolitan Opera's HD transmission of the new opera by John Adams, "Doctor Atomic." The opera centers on the director of the atomic bomb project, Robert Oppenheimer, during the last days leading up to the first test of the atomic bomb in July, 1945 in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

It's a compelling work, even though music that modern doesn't really sit all that well with me. I admit it, I'm a Philistine. The Philistines were actually a remarkably sophisticated and cultured people for their time, but I like to believe that if they'd heard most of what's termed 20th and 21st century "classical" music, they would have been as put off as I am.

The staging is phenomenal and to say that the work makes you think is an understatement. I'm particularly taken with the libretto, that is, the words Adams and lyricist Peter Sellars thought to set to music. Sourced from poets like John Donne and Muriel Rukeyser, as well as the writings of the actual protagonists and the Bhagavad Gita, the text contains many an argument, and to me one of the most compelling ones is the one raging between acceptance of limitation, of the finitude of individual life, and the illusion of transcendence, of something close to entitlement to individual immortality.

One of the desires that seduces Oppenheimer is his yen to play God, to unleash previously unknown powers, to be Vishnu the Destroyer. When he isn't yearning to play God, he's invoking God -- what my fellow opera-goer, with her great gift for words, would call the mono-male-theist God -- in a way I believe to be core to the best-known monotheistic religions: seeking to put the responsibility for his actions onto his deity, claiming or hoping to be compelled by his God to do what part of him wants to do, but what his earthy common sense warns him is fraught with bad consequences, in this case for all of life on earth.

It's something I've always had trouble understanding, this demand for transcendence, for individual "eternal life," which seems to be more common among men than women, though plenty of women long for it too. To me, part of the bargain of being born on this Earth is the knowledge that it isn't a permanent gift, that at some point you die and make way for other life forms. Although I'm not crazy about getting old and dying -- who is? -- I accept it. To me "eternal life" should be on-going life on this earth, a fair shot at a worth-while existence for the many creatures on this planet, including (but not necessarily always foregrounding) humans.

The most disturbing thing about the insistence on individual eternal life is that it's all but inextricably linked to stasis, to permanence, to unchangeability. In the stereotypical Christian heaven -- and I grew up Christian, so I was exposed to it early -- people are given angelic bodies but compelled to use them in an antiseptic, asexual place where there is an unshakeable, detailed hierarchy which, like the bulk of the Bible, privileges elite men.

Some years ago I traveled to China and saw some famous Buddhist cliff carvings representing their idea of heaven. To my wry amusement, it was much the same as the Christian one -- neatly arranged in many tiers, superiors above inferiors, and pretty much all the women at the bottom, symbolically carrying the rest on their backs. Not surprising, but still saddening.

What's so scary about your body changing: ripening, unfolding, and eventually decaying? Not much if you accept the idea that you're not entitled to perfection or personal immortality. But what terror and rage it seems to evoke in those who cling to the notion that they "should" be perfect and everlasting.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject in other posts. But I did say I'd talk about morality in this one. Unfortunately, "Dr. Atomic" got me off track, and now I have to go back to work. So I'll leave the names of two books on Pagan ethics I find, not perfect (grin), but helpful. One is Robin Wood's classic "When, Why...If: An Ethics Workbook," published by Livingtree in December of 1996. The other, which recently came to my attention, is Marian Singer's "A Witch's 10 Commandments: Magickal Guidelines for Everyday Life," published in 2006 by Provenance Press.

More soon!