No Concepts, Please!

Some years ago, I met a radiant young woman. I stress that – she struck me as someone with rare capacities for kindness and psychological acuity and sensitivity.

She had recently returned from Findhorn – perhaps the world’s leading New Age community. And not that long before, I had converted to Catholicism, though once I had been an enthusiastic part of Findhorn.

Our conversation turned to the differences between Catholicism and holistic or New Age spirituality.

In frustration, she turned to me and said: "But why do you have to NAME everything?' Meaning: why do I have to have **names** for matters of the Spirit? In my case, names such as Christ, Trinity, Incarnation, Body and Blood …

This conversation remains engraved in my mind. Because after two decades in the holistic movement, it seems to go straight to the core of what the holistic message is all about.

At the very core of Holism, then, is a suspicion of names – that is clear concepts – for religious reality. A large motive for this is a search for unity. I exaggerate only somewhat, I think, if I suggest it amounts to something like this: So long as we have no concepts, we can all agree on everything!

I need to be precise. What is at issue here is not abandoning clear concepts about **material** reality. Mathematical concepts, for example – about which we can all agree. These obviously remain in place in the holistic vision.

No, what this genuine young woman advocated was abandoning names, clear concepts for **spiritual** reality. And in my experience, an underlying pretext to her thought and that of many others in the holistic movement, goes rather like this:

"Religious concepts are dangerous. The source of so much war and persecution. We don’t need to NAME anything. Because spirituality is primarily an experience that is **felt**, it doesn’t need to have names. If we don’t have concepts for all this stuff, we can just get along."

Yes, something like this at least, underlies a great deal of holistic thinking.

I have come to believe this is a dangerous idea.

Because we think in concepts. And to renounce concepts is to renounce thinking. Or at very least, it is to think in a vague, unconscious way. Because we can never really renounce concepts. We can only render them fuzzy and deprived of consciousness.

Moreover, I have come to feel that the New Age agenda to stop clearly naming spiritual reality, plays into the same agenda of secularism. Because secularism is also predicated on emphasising material reality to the exclusion of religious concepts. In secularism, spiritual concepts have no value beyond the private realm of the individual.

The result, I would argue, is a private-isation of spirituality that makes spirituality less and less effective in the social and cultural realm. And material concepts gain ever more credence and power.

BUT – my Findhorn friend is right. Religious concepts belong to a process that also includes religious intolerance, hate, cruelty and destruction. My Findhorn friend joins with millions of sincere, good people who long to see the end of hate. And in this goodness, lies much of the appeal of the New Age idea.

Catholics (and those faithful to other religions) need to see the goodness underlying the New Age dream – while thoroughly rejecting this dream.

Because, as I say, the renunciation of spiritual concepts is ultimately impossible. And as I will try to explain, the only way forward that I see, is to embrace such concepts in as clear and conscious and loving a way as possible.