This essay deals with several issues that make it difficult for many readers
to see the spirituality of Markings as something admirable.
One problem is the fact that so many entries in Markings seem
to reveal Hammarskjold as an very unhappy person, irrationally unhappy in the
middle of an immensely successful and comfortable life, unhappy with a kind of
morbidly self-inflicted unhappiness.
He seems to dwell neurotically on feelings of meaninglessness
and emptiness in his life, contrary to any normal and rational ideas about what
makes life meaningful. ("What I ask for is absurd: that life shall have a
meaning. What I strive for is impossible: that my life shall acquire a
meaning.")
He also appears unnecessarily extreme and perfectionist in his self-criticism,
blaming himself for perfectly normal things like pride in his achievements
("never let success hide its emptiness"), or wanting to get credit for his
achievements, ("how can you attach a shadow of importance to the question
whether or not the memory of your efforts will be associated with your name?").
One thing to keep in mind here is the argument against
"Absolute" universal truths argued in earlier essays. We should not regard
Hammarskjold's ideals as Absolute, the only valid ideas about what finally
matters for everyone everywhere. But neither should we absolutize modern ideals
like happiness, regarding "pursuit of happiness" as an Absolute truth about the
purpose of human life, judging Hammarskjold to be simply and obviously mistaken
if he fails to recognize this universally valid truth. "Happiness," critically
refined by S/P reasoning, can be the name of an admirable human ideal, but it
does not describe the one and only way of leading an admirable life.
Hammarskjold's way is just different (and of course no one who reads the Gospel
of Mark can suppose that happiness is high on his Mark's of priorities either).
Possible weaknesses in Hammarskjold's ideals should not be regarded as a reason to reject these
ideals themselves in favor of some other ideals, but as a stimulus to refine
these same ideals, trying to understand what they would be at their very best.
******
A second major source of problems in Markings is the fact
that "being an instrument of God" in the world is one of the chief ways
Hammarskjold articulates his ultimate goal in life.
Making God central to one's spirituality, especially in the
way Hammarskjold does this, raises a whole host of questions:
- Does God exist as an actual person-like being? From a
strictly rational point of view, the existence of God, especially a God as
Hammarskjold imagines him, seems uncertain at best. If it turns out that there
is actually no being called "God" as a supernatural person wanting to use the
human person Hammarskjold as His instrument, isn't Hammarskjold's entire life
based on an illusion?
- If the person God does exist, why spend one's life serving
the interests of another person rather than serving one's own interests?
- Many intolerant, irrational fanatics such as cult-leaders
and televangelists also claim to be "doing God's will," and "doing God's will"
has served as a justification for a great deal of violence in history, against
supposed "enemies of God." This seems a truly dangerous self-image for anyone to
have.
Other problems have to do with the question about how,
concretely, Hammarskjold comes to know the will if God, or how he is actually
able to tell whether he is at any given time acting as God's instrument or
failing in this ideal.
Modern science-mindedness tempts us to treat this question in a rather
literal-minded way. Questions about whether the person "God" is communicating
with me might seem to be the same kind of question as the question as to whether
it is really the person "my mother" on the other end of the phone telling me to
go help my brother.
But no one actually treats the question this way, least of
all Hammarskjold.
For perhaps the majority of Christian believers, this
question is generally answered in connection with some kind of church
organization. Church tradition or church leaders are authoritative sources of
knowledge as to what God wants and does not want. Many appeal to the Bible as
"the word of God" revealing his will to people -- but the Bible can be
interpreted many ways, so again usually a church is necessary to at least give
people parameters determining the limits of what can and cannot be considered a
good interpretation.
But none of this applies to Hammarskjold. One might say that
God speaks to him through something like his own "conscience." But the concept
"conscience" is not quite adequate, but needs to be greatly expanded to describe
Hammarskjold's view of things. For example, he sometimes associates God with the
feelings of meaninglessness mentioned above. In one diary entry he speaks of
"void" in his life that he feels when alone at the end of a day. In the next
entry, speaking of the same feeling, he says "when we are compelled to look
ourselves in the face, then He [God] rises above us in terrifying reality." This
is not what we would normally call a "guilty conscience" for wrongdoing -- more
a feeling that some voice within him feels to be painfully lacking the degree of
meaningfulness it expects -- a voice that he associates with the terrifying
presence of God.
There are obviously some ways in which this view of things
can go wrong -- as for example a morbid sense of meaninglessness can plunge a
person into paralyzing depression. This is a good "counterexample" showing a
possible weakness in Hammarskjold's spirituality, but every ideal is subject to
such "bad interpretations." Markings itself suggests a remedy -- the fact that
these negative feelings of meaninglessness can also serve as a positive stimulus
("bless your uneasiness, as a sign that there is still life in you"; "keep alive
that pain in the soul that drives us beyond ourselves").
On the opposite side, Hammarskjold's ambition to be an instrument of God can
easily turn into a kind of highly inflated, egotistic megalomania. Markings also
suggests a remedy to this possible weakness, the same extreme self-criticism
that many find such an off-putting element in Hammarskjold's diary. That is, the
big danger is that a person who regards some inner voice of his as the voice of
God, is just self-deceptively deifying the personal biases that inevitably
infect everyone's intuitions and inner urges. This danger causes many people to
fall back on the seemingly "safer" course of looking for moral guidance mainly
in the rules of a church or of society. Hammarskjold takes the opposite tack,
doing all he can to "purify the eye of [the soul's] attention" as he says,
purifying it of "the stain of some secret desire of her own." His spirituality
assumes that people have the ability to sense intuitively what is most right in
each situation, and a spontaneous desire to do the most right thing. What is
needed is long-term efforts to purify and refine these moral intuitions and
impulses, and what they mainly need to be purified from is self-centered concern
for recognition, status, and power for oneself in the world. Hammarskjold's
extreme self-criticism is just the flip side of his extreme confidence in the
reliability of his own inner voice as the voice of God, the voice he needs to
follow in order to fulfill his extreme ambition of being God's instrument on
earth.
This essay takes the Platonist view, that from a rational
point of view "divine" means "perfect in its goodness." From a concrete and
practical point of view, some source of moral guidance merits being connected to
"God," insofar as it gives one an ultimate focus for moral commitment
transcendent and perfect in its goodness. (Asking whether one's own inner voice
is the voice of God is not at all like asking whether the voice on the other end
of the phone is the voice of one's mother.)
For unbelievers, this means that the literal existence of God as an objectively
existing person-like entity is not crucial to the validity of Hammarskjold's
spirituality. Hammarskjold is not leading a foolish life based on an illusion
even if it turns out no such being exists. Nor is literal belief in God as a
person-like entity crucial to this spirituality.
For believers, Hammarskjold's spirituality raises the
important question of where we can meet God, where God's divine world intersects
with our human world. Even though Western monotheistic religions traditionally
view God as outside this world, God and belief in God can have no effect on
human life unless there is somewhere in the human world where one can encounter
God. For example, so-called Islamic "theocracy," (literally "rule-by- God") in
practice really means rule by Islamic clerics as authoritative representatives
of God, since no one thinks that God actually sits in a president's office or on
a throne in a palace the way that human authorities do. For perhaps most
Christians, God is concretely represented on earth by some combination of the
Bible, church tradition, church ritual, and contemporary church authorities.
From the point of view of pluralist Platonism, there is no
single truth about this. Whatever can be known to be perfect in its goodness
(i.e. can withstand strenuous Socratic questioning) deserves being regarded as
connecting a person with the divine, and there are many possibilities for this.
One purpose of the present essay on Markings is to show that Hammarskjold's
spirituality offers a very close modern analogy to Pauline spirituality. There
are also of course many possible church-oriented admirable spiritualities. But
the very fact that church teaching provides external moral guidance makes
church-oriented spiritualities closer to the external-Law-oriented Pharisaic
Judaism against which Paul defines the inner driven Spirit-religion he thinks is
essential to being a true Jesus-follower. "God's Holy Spirit," concretely felt
as a passion for rightness within a person, is also for Paul the main place
where God's divine world intersects with our human world.
"Treat others as ends, never as means." And myself as an end only in my capacity as a means: to shift the dividing line in my being between subject and object to a position where the subject, even if it is in me, is outside and above me -- so that my whole being may become an instrument for that which is greater than I.(46)
Something "greater than I" is yet "in me," part of me as
"subject" rather than as part of the objective world facing me. But it is at the
same time "outside me" -- not part of "me" as a thinking being totally under its
own control, acting for its own purposes. This is a good description of what
"God" means concretely for Hammarskjold, determining what it means in practice
to make oneself an "instrument of God." ("Treat others as ends, never as means"
is a quote from the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Hammarskjold uses it here only as
a take-off point for some thoughts completely different from Kant's.)
==========================================
So, once again, you chose for yourself -- and opened the door to chaos. The
chaos you become whenever God's hand does not rest upon your head.
He who has once been under God's hand, has lost his innocence: only he feels the
full explosive force of destruction which is released by a moment's surrender to
temptation.
But when his attention is directed beyond and above, how strong he is, with the
strength of God who is within him because he is in God. Strong and free, because
his self no longer exists. (87)
Concretely speaking, "being under God's hand" means allowing himself to be
motivated by this force felt to be "in me but outside and above me." This is
Hammarskjold's "transcendent" ideal. He often fails, but sometimes he comes very
close. Once he has had the experience of coming close, this gives him a
different perspective on the rest of life, making him feel that "a moment's
surrender to temptation" is an "explosive force of destruction." (In
Hammarskjold's life, it is unlikely that "temptation" refers mainly to breaking
ordinary laws of moral decency. More likely it refers to normal
self-centeredness.)
========================================
To love life and men as God loves them - for the sake of their infinite
possibilities,
to wait like Him,
to judge like him
without passing judgment, to obey the order when it is given and never look
back. Then He can use you - then, perhaps, He will use you. And if he doesn't
use you - what matter. In His hand, every moment has its meaning, its greatness,
its glory, its peace, its co-inherence.
From this perspective, to 'believe in God' is to believe in yourself, as
self-evident, as 'illogical', and as impossible to explain: if I can be, then
God is.
========================================
It is not sufficient to place yourself daily under God. What really matters is
to be only under God: the slightest division of allegiance opens the door to
daydreaming, petty conversation, petty boasting, petty malice - all the petty
satellites of the death-instinct.
But how, then, am I to love God? "You must love Him as if He were a Non-God, a
Non-Spirit, a Non-Person, a Non-Substance: love Him simply as the One, the pure
and absolute Unity in which is no trace of Duality. And into this One, we must
let ourselves fall continually from being into non-being. God helps us to do
this."
I believe the second paragraph here is a quotation from one of Hammarskjold's
favorite Christian authors, the medieval mystic and theologian known as Meister
Eckhart.
==========================================
'Thy. will be done.' Admittedly, you have allowed self-interest
to supply the energy for your little efforts to assist fate; admittedly, to
others you have tried to paint these efforts in the most glowing colors - no
matter, provided only that you allow the final outcome to be decided entirely
over your head, in faith.
'Thy will be done.' To let the inner take precedence over the outer, the soul
over the world -- wherever this may lead you. And, lest a worldly good should
disguise itself as a spiritual, to make yourself blind to the value the life of
the spirit can bestow upon life in this world.
To let "God's will be done" is the same as to "let the inner take precedence
over the outer, the soul over the world." The internal spirit does indeed
"bestow benefits on life in this world," in that it motivates actions that often
produce "beneficial results." But it is important to resist the temptation to
think that these "worldly goods" constitute spiritual goodness, and to
counteract this Hammarskjold wants to go to the extent of making himself even
"blind to the value that the life of the spirit can bestow upon life in this
world."
==========================================
During a working day, which is real only in God, the only poetry which can be
real to you is the kind which makes you become real under God ; only then is the
poetry real for you, the art true. You no longer have time for pastimes.
"Real only in God" is the opposite of what people normally call "real." The
important thing is identification with an inner selfless drive that Hammarskjold
thinks of as "union with God." This makes one "real under God," which is the
only really important thing in life.
========================================
How would the moral sense of Reason and of society have evolved without the
martyrs to the faith. Indeed, how could this moral sense have escaped withering
away, had it not constantly been watered by the feeder stream of power that
issues from those who have forgotten themselves in God? The rope over the abyss
is held taut by those who, faithful to a faith which is the perpetual ultimate
sacrifice, give it anchorage in Heaven. Those whose souls are married to God
have been declared the salt of the earth - woe betide them, if the salt should
lose its savor.
==========================================
Your responsibility is indeed terrifying. If you fail, it is God, thanks to your
having betrayed Him, who will fail mankind. You fancy you can be responsible to
God; can you carry the responsibility for God?