The Positive Path

Via positiva, in the sense intended here, is a radical proposition because the association between the spiritual life and renunciation is very fixed in popular consciousness. However in more ancient traditions, including what is now called Shamanism or Paganism, there seems to have been a better balance between renunciation and participation. As religion developed from what were essentially Shamanistic religions growing up around the world with Stone Age man, they became more symbolic so the elements of nature were represented as gods (polytheism), and then developed more recently into monotheism. With this development of religion (categorised here as the social dimension of the spiritual life) came a greater emphasis on renunciation. Extreme forms of this are found in all parts of the world, alongside a view of life that is essentially pessimistic. The Gnostic and Manichaean traditions of the West for example view all matter, and especially the body, as corrupt, and the birth of a human being as a 'fall' from a spiritual state into a corrupt one. The practices and world-views associated with such a spirituality is defined here as via negativa. However, as in the Christian use of the term, it does not necessarily imply a negative outlook, and for any spiritual aspirant there are times when via negativa in its more constructive sense is vital.

'via negativa is not necessarily pessimistic, rather it is an active withdrawal. However, it is via positiva that needs a modern reinterpretation, as the old association of spirituality with renunciation is so deeply entrenched.'

It is via positiva that needs a new articulation however. The proposition made earlier is that one can transcend the narrow sense of self by either dis-identifying with the elements of the manifest world, or by identifying with the whole. The Buddha's teachings are via negativa in this sense, and his first Noble Truth (life is suffering) points to an immediate problem with via positiva: that it implies an accommodation with suffering. The Buddha taught dis-identification with the ego (he used the term calming or extinguishing) and offered the end of suffering as the goal of this process (later Buddhism shifted the emphasis so that the end of suffering was for all sentient beings). As many are drawn to the spiritual life because of pain, loss, or suffering, the Buddha's message has an immediate appeal. To reverse the strategy seems almost perverse, yet it will be shown here that via positiva is more appropriate to contemporary life than via negativa. At the very least a balance, one that existed thousands of years ago, needs to be restored.

(continue)