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THE TEST OF SIGNIFICANCE
As individuality finds itself fulfilled in and through thinking, so mutuality blossoms out in meaning. To think is for man to struggle with the multifarious, ever-changing problems which his experience of nature presents to him at every moment. It is to transform the legacy of the past — body, memory, karma — into an intimation of the future; to be victorious over the downward pull of natural energies, to compress natural energy so that it may release the light of thought. The successful thought- process transforms energy into ideas. It overcomes the disintegrative tendency of natural compounds by giving birth to the typical substance of "human" integration: intelligence.
Intelligence is released as natural powers are used in a human way by the individualized human being in his effort to achieve victory over his life-environment. When, at a later stage of his growth, man has faced the tests of mutuality and responsibility, the integrative power of thought gives birth to a new phase of intelligence, to "meaning". Meaning is an expression of the sense of mutuality when confronted with the solution of problems and conflicts caused by the assuming and the discharge of responsibility.
Individual being must always prove itself through the use it makes of natural energies or social wealth. Relationship likewise must prove its worth by the results of cooperative activity. Love acquires value and significance through the utilization of its fruits, be they psychological or physiological. Human society demonstrates its greatness in the civilization that is founded upon the characteristic type of human relationships which constitute its warp and woof. Relationship of love or business partnerships must be productive if they are not to be destructive. Abundance of fruits, however, is not enough. The value of any fruition depends upon the significance with which men endow it. The factors of worth and meaning are essential correlates to the actual fact of productive mutuality.
Where being and individuality are concerned there is no question of value or significance. "To be" is a primordial fact which requires no valuation or justification. There is no problem as to the meaning of "I am". It is; this "is-ness" is to itself an absolute. The famous query of Hamlet, father of modern neurotics, "to be or not to be", is a senseless question, if taken at its essential value. What Hamlet actually meant to say was: "To be related to this world, or not to be related — that is the question". His doubt was as to the significance of his relationship to his relatives, his traditional morality, his familiar world. Falsely, he identified himself-with this world. All doubts and neuroses are born of such an identification.
The "I am" is — this is all that need to said; and no "I" can obliterate itself, though it can feel its relationship to its world so meaningless as to want to destroy this relationship. It can destroy the process of integration which binds it to the world of men and of nature; it can destroy "life" and "intelligence". It cannot destroy itself. It cannot, with any sense, give significance or no significance to itself; for the self is entirely out of the realm of significance. Self is; but relationship has meaning, or fails to have meaning.
Likewise, the self does not "produce". It attaches, to itself, or even temporarily identifies itself with, natural energies, or it does not. It imprints itself upon, and integrates through intelligence, these energies; or it fails to do so. But any relationship can and must be productive. The purpose of the productivity, the character of the products, the use to which they are put, the way problems of production are handled and their consequences met, the manner in which they fill or fail to fill the needs of the producers and of the society in which they participate — all these factors have to be considered. They give significance and value to the relationship, or condemn it as senseless and worthless.
No relationship can be considered as an absolute. "I am" is an absolute; relationship is of the realm of relativity. Relativity is the characteristic substance of all relationships, and the result of relationship. Value, sense and significance are expressions of the need there is for any human being to integrate in his experiences selfhood and relatedness.
This integration results from the individual giving a valid meaning to the products of each and all relationships in which he is a partner. If he cannot give a valid meaning to any relationship he has entered into, it becomes destructive. All unproductive relationships are more or less destructive of the integrity of the selves related through them. Some relationships are productive of positively
destructive factors.Yet the "I" must relate itself to other selves. While the "I" is an absolute to itself, selfhood is not an absolute within the universal whole. It must become polarized to relationships. Through this polarization, the element of value enters the realm of incorporated selfhood; that is, of personality. All selves are — outside of the realm of value; but a personality potentially has value in terms of its capacity to participate in constructively productive and significant relationships.
This capacity is not inherent. It is never to be taken for granted. It is determined by the use which the self makes of the energies of nature over which he holds sway by right of birth in mankind and in a particular race, society and family. It is determined by the character of the "intelligence" the self generates by compressing natural energies into ideas, as the engineer deepens and increases the weight of the waters of the dammed-in river in order to generate electricity and light.
Intelligence in the personality is a promise of value and meaning in the relationships which this person will weave on the warp and woof of social-cultural living; but only a promise! Meaning as such can only be born out of the actual experience of relationship — relationship, not only with another self, but also with objects and social entities of one kind or another.
To be; to use; to define — a basic trinity of human existence. Individual being is demonstrated by the individual use of available natural powers; yet complete incorporation as personality requires not only individual use, but also an individual focus of intelligence through which individuality finds its particular character defined by the process of thought.
In the sphere of the individual self, intelligence is the defining of the boundaries of the individuality and of the thinking that seeks to exteriorize and to give form to the innate realization of "I am" by providing particular and relatively unique characteristics for the ego. In the sphere of the concrete personality, intelligence manifests as technical skill, as the adequacy of the means to the end. In the sphere of relationship in mutuality, intelligence is reborn as understanding.To understand is to become aware of meaning. There is no need for understanding one's self, that is, one's essential "I am''-ness; the need is for self-realization through characteristic acts within the limits of one's ability to use power in terms of one's own individual nature. The injunction "know thyself" requires the perception of individual limits, powers and character. For modern psychology, what is meant by "understanding oneself" is mostly the understanding of what the experiences born of personal relationship have brought to the concrete personality; whether it be fulfillment, power, personal fruitions, or frustrations, inhibitions and complexes. It does not refer to the essential individuality, the spiritual identity; but rather to the personality after it has grown out of the varied and complex relationships of years of living in a family and in society.
To understand a situation or an idea is to "com-prehend" all factors brought to a condition of operative and productive (or inoperative and sterile) relationship in the situation or the idea. These factors may be images and concepts, or personalities and their words. "Com-prehension" is literally "taking together" these many factors and defining the character, quality, purpose and eventual results of their togetherness.
A concept, a scientific law, a juridical principle have the one function of establishing significant and valid forms of relationship between perceptions, images, experiences and entitles of one kind or another. A religion likewise gives meaning to the relationship between men and one or several transcendent or cosmic Persons; and as the basis of sanctions for ethical conduct, it gives significance and value to specific patterns of mutuality. In either case, religion sets limits to the relationships it believes to be within its field; and logic sets limits to the associability of statements and concepts.
To define is to set limits. In some cases, limits can be set a priori by an authority external to the relationship being defined. This leads to formalism, artificiality, political or religious tyranny. Fascism. In other cases, limits are set in terms of the inherent capacity, purpose and function of all the factors in the relationship considered as a whole. This alone is the way to understanding.
To comprehend is to take all factors together and to define thus the character of their relatedness; but to understand is literally to "stand under" this gathering of elements, and to bear their weight. Not only to see and evaluate objectively as if from a distance; but to experience by actual feeling and by direct pressure. Understanding is an internal process; comprehension may remain an external process. Intellectual judgment on the basis of a priori formulas of significance and value is the negative shadow of understanding, just as intellectuality is the shadow of intelligence.
Understanding alone is a true foundation for meaning; and there can be no "second-hand" or vicarious understanding, without it ceasing to have any right to be called "understanding". Yet understanding need not always require direct personal experience. It can be reached also through actual identification of feeling and being with the experiencer or understander. Understanding can be based on the memory of past experiences—even perhaps of experiences of past personalities with which the consciousness is transcendentally linked beyond the hiatus of physical death. Understanding can be attained through the experience of a collectivity, group or nation, in the life of which one vitally and totally participates in root-identification of feeling and blood.
In any case, real understanding cannot be merely an intellectual, formalistic and indifferently objective operation. It is conditioned by actual relationship and identification with the relationship as a whole. Yet identification can only be temporary. The self that understands must pass through this stage of identification and emerge victorious. Meaning is the prize of victory.
It is the "pearl of great price" found hidden in the sea-depths, within a hard shell that hides pain, irritation, suffering. The test of significance is the testing of a man's determination not to be contented with externals and mirages, but instead to search the very core of all relationships — personal and social, collective and universal — until he has reached the essential meaning. Only in essential meaning is selfhood integrated with relationship, and the Great Work of human living is accomplished. "God" is the perpetual emergence of meaning out of the antiphony of selfhood and relationship. Self, Love and Meaning constitute the trinity of the perfected consciousness of man.
Meaning is the "Spirit of truth and understanding" that descended like "tongues of fire" upon the men who, all of one mind, formed the Apostolic Brotherhood of the Christ. The spirit of significance is the Holy Spirit; and holiness is a correlate of wholeness perceived and transformed into an expression of meaning and value. Likewise, law should be considered as an expression of significant and all-inclusive relationship, if law is to belong to the realm of meaning and understanding, rather than to that of formalism and intellectual convention, or of arbitrary rule by an ego who failed to meet the challenge of mutuality.
The concept of law is indeed tragically in need of revaluation, for by being identified in our society, either with the dictates of an autocratic law-giver (be it man or God) or with the decisions of a formal and usually unrepresentative majority-vote procedure in an elected legislature, law is seen as unrelated or opposed to the harmony of the whole people, and often to meaning. Law can only be an expression of mere convenience or opportunism whenever it is actually an easy substitute to the realization of harmony and to the expression of meaning experienceable by all the selves affected by the power of this law over the relationships in which they participate. The spiritual function of social law is to define the sphere of any and all human relationships — not to dominate and control their arising and their character. Likewise, the true function of intelligence is to define the character of the individual self and its ability to use natural energies.
Law deals with relationships; and true relationship can exist only on the basis of mutuality. Where there is mutuality, law manifests as harmony — as the "joining together" of selves in terms of creative participation in the activities of a greater whole, a social or cosmic organism. Where there is no harmony, no understanding, no awareness of significance, law can only be a mask for personal or group rule, with or without the formalities of so-called democracy.
The test of significance is the challenge to any man and any association — whether in marriage or in business, in politics or in cultural fields — to accept no participation that cannot be significantly defined as to its character, procedure and purposes. To be significant is the requirement of any relationship. Significance is the crowning and soul of mutuality; creative harmony, the formulation of effective and productive love.
