Every summer when we go on holiday, many of us are drawn to faraway places. Perhaps not all, but many.
On educational trips, some of us may immerse ourselves in foreign cultures, visit historical sites, and try to grasp what is foreign to us in the present. The further we move away from our own culture, the stranger the groups of people and cultures we immerse ourselves in may seem. And yet, in the depths of cultural symbolism, there are often images that resonate in our souls. When I visited Israel many years ago, the feeling of “foreignness” was much stronger in the Arab-dominated cities and regions than in the Jewish ones. But there were also familiar elements in Arab culture that fascinated me.
Humanity develops in epochs
In anthropology, one comes across the idea that the longing for the distant and foreign is a remnant from the beginnings of human development. Today, over 99 per cent of humanity is sedentary. At the beginning of the Neolithic period, almost 10,000 years ago, people were hunters and gatherers. During the so-called Neolithic Revolution, which probably began southeast of the Mediterranean, a major socio-cultural change took place within a very short period of time. According to today’s scientific view, the cultivation of crops and domestic animals developed during this period. Hunters and gatherers became farmers and shepherds.
Even at that time, climate change and periods of drought were causing people problems. The adaptation of farm animals and cultivated plants, and possibly migration, were a means of coping with the changes and fluctuations in the climate 10,000 years ago. Even at the end of the Bronze Age (around 800 BC), strong climatic fluctuations, natural disasters, migration and wars led to the collapse of established cultures within a very short period of time, thus creating a certain cultural openness for the subsequent Iron Age. In this respect, there are certain similarities with our situation today.
Thus, epoch follows epoch, with a rise, a heyday and the subsequent decline, in which chaos, hardship, war and migration prevail.
Migration. A reaction from the distant past
Migration always seems to have played a role in major cultural upheavals. The question arises as to whether there is also a cause in humans themselves that triggers the impulse to migrate. For scientists, one such cause is that in times of need, humans unconsciously fall back on reaction patterns that have been ingrained in them throughout human history. In the early stages of human development, humans were hunter-gatherers, and so there are scientists who see the urge to travel far away as an impulse of this prehistoric development of humans. This means that, in addition to external necessities, the microcosmic experience of migration can also trigger the impulse to travel far away. Research is finding genes in the gene pool of individual people that are typical of groups of people who often live thousands of kilometres away. There may therefore also be phylogenetic causes that lead people to go abroad and settle in places where they must first feel foreign.
Foreignness as a mirror of the innermost being
People who go travelling in this way usually never feel at home in their adopted country. In old age, some people return to where they were born in order to die there. Perhaps they have travelled abroad in search of something that they were ultimately unable to find there. They looked outside for what they could not find outside: a true home. This suggests the idea that being a stranger also has an ontological cause or a cause rooted in the human being.
Is there something in man that makes him a stranger in his own life? There are many people on the autistic or ADHD spectrum today who feel very alien in this world. They are born into a world that they do not understand, even as children. They often have special talents and gradually learn to adapt. However, their inner nature is such that they remain strangers, usually for the rest of their lives. They live inconspicuously in society. Others begin to search for the cause of what they´re feeling. They search for a spiritual path to follow.
The mysterious path leads inwards
We have looked at some scientific facts so far. There are reaction patterns and cultural developments in human history that can be an expression of alienation.
These cognitions are the fruits of modern times, in which rationalisation, individualisation and materialisation have developed to a climax. The philosopher of religion Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) even spoke of an “endpoint” at the beginning of the last century. Something flew into his observation, something mysterious, which is only quietly (re)emerging in the modern, scientifically characterised world. It is a gentle tone that could be expressed in the words of Novalis: “And the mysterious path leads inwards”. Deep inside, there is silence, reflection, where the ego structure created in modern times slowly dissolves again and becomes something new, something with more freedom and love. There, the silent conception of another person develops inconspicuously, and this person looks at the whole development from a less scientific point of view, the truth of which, however, is on a par with the scientific one.
Dark and light epochs
In his book The New Middle Ages, published in 1924, Berdyaev describes how the cycles of civilisation follow one another like waves. Everything has a beginning, develops to a climax and then dissolves again. There are light and dark cycles or epochs that alternate. Each day is followed by a night and then another day. In cultural terms, he describes the Middle Ages as a dark epoch, which was followed by the Renaissance and the modern era with increasing brightness.
There is something ambivalent about these cycles, because the Middle Ages, which Berdyaev categorises as a nocturnal epoch, simultaneously has something mysteriously sacred, spiritual and at a hidden depth. Now is a time of darkness on a cultural level, in which people are perhaps able to have deep experiences in their own being. The cultural darkness leads them to a closer contact with their essential nature and gives rise to completely new ideas, thoughts and perspectives. The invisible forces combine to form a new pattern, which then forms the basis for a subsequent development when a new day, a new cultural epoch of daylight begins. It distances man from the primordial ground again and directs his spiritual energies towards a new material development.
We are immersed in the night
Berdyaev states that with the beginning of the 20th century, we have entered the night, a new dark epoch that is like a new Middle Ages. According to Berdyaev, the powers of the past modern age, its visions, have been exhausted, and many people sense that something new must come. On the one hand, spiritual views are coming to light very openly in some cultural areas; on the other hand, people are more individualistic, self-centred and superficial than ever before.
These ambivalent currents lead many people to feel alienated from the world. They turn inwards in order to come to terms with the mysterious depths that lie hidden within themselves. On the outside, the zeitgeist is dividing society and radicalising it. It is a time of great poverty on the one hand and glittering parties on the other.
The brothers Z.W. Leene and Jan Leene (later: Jan van Rijckenborgh) saw this development coming at the same time as Berdyaev. Berdyaev founded a religio-philosophical academy near Paris, while the Leene brothers founded the Spiritual School of the Golden Rosy Cross in the Netherlands in order to form a group of people interested in Gnosticism who would be prepared for the new development. Both were opportunities to bring the knowledge of the primordial ground in which all life is anchored back to life in the consciousness of humanity.
From I to We
The increased awareness of the primordial ground leads to many people becoming increasingly alienated from their cultural environment. Such times reinforce a feeling of helplessness and insecurity, and some are born with a sense of alienation. For them, a painful process begins that separates the spiritual and mental dimensions of their being from matter. The deeper a person is entangled in matter, the more painful the process of detachment. At the same time, a reorientation takes place that prepares for a new dawn.
The increased interest in indigenous ways of life also seems to show that, after the strong mental individualisation that reached its peak at the end of the modern era, people are now once again striving more towards the power of the heart. The heart stimulates the longing for unity, for belonging.
For Berdyaev, a soul structure of this kind was an essential element of the people of the Middle Ages. When he speaks of a “new Middle Ages”, he does not mean that people are returning to the past. Just as a deepening of the soul began at the beginning of the Middle Ages, people today are reacting to stronger impulses from the core of their being. Through them, everything that has gone before can be raised to a new level of consciousness.
As humanity, we have once again entered the night. Cultural structures, people themselves and our planet are changing at great speed. The increasing power from the primordial ground is causing many people to react with a feeling of alienation. The power from within divides humanity into two groups. Those who feel alienated have the opportunity to rediscover the unity of being human. The other group will prepare for the coming day of a new cultural epoch.
Nicolai Berdjajew, The new middle age, Otto Reichel Verlag Tübingen 1927 (German)
