The Cure of Souls

Having attended in a civic capacity a number of ceremonies for the licensing of ministers entering a life of religious and community service, I was intrigued by the words used in these services referring to ‘the cure of souls’. The conveying of this daunting responsibility was an essential part of each installation and so was a task with which all of the new priests were duly charged.
In this way coming across the concept of the ‘cure of souls’ despite its long standing in a purely religious context, I was struck by the thought that if the 'cure of souls' was a concept more broadly understood it would resonate more widely with the needs of society today at a personal level and in our social and economic interactions.
This country, along with others in the western world, faces a profound moral and spiritual malaise as well as the economic one to which it is closely linked. By ‘spiritual’ I mean an awareness of ourselves as moral beings, respect for self and others, curiosity about the cosmos and reverence for nature, and society beyond the self.
The problems that have taken root run very deep both individually and institutionally and our increasingly unequal society has been denuded of its essential moral foundation and so has been turned into the worst version of itself.
We have, both individually and severally, been beset by the emotional and spiritual shallowness of the modern ‘developed’ world with its greed, selfishness, deceptions, disloyalty, narrowness of vision and an increasing instability that is sometimes referred to in reverential tones as 'change'. But it is certainly indisputable that the world is in an unsettled state and so are its people.
There is a particular doctrinal interpretation to the concept of 'the cure of souls' in a religious context - along with a heavy injunction when the newly appointed minister is so charged. But a much wider interpretation is possible in that many of the needs of the discontented, distressed or neglected spirits in our society today may be satisfied in kindred ways also of value.
In this context I interpret 'soul' in the sense of being a deep and abiding mental construct within the mind of the person representing the fundamental self including the basic character, internalised beliefs and conscience of the individual. This interpretation can be extended beyond the individual to the common ground of a community or of a nation or ideally of the living entities of the world itself. And while the translation of 'cura' in cura animarum as ‘cure’ rather than as ‘care’ is possibly archaic, its time may have come again. In any case, caring and curing frequently go hand in hand.
All this is so since there is much in the modern world that points to the need for healing rather than simply care-taking and the routine, frequently self-centred, satisfaction of our needs and maintenance of our physical nature. This is so however widely or narrowly we choose to define the terms ‘cure’ and ‘soul’ – should such definitions, possibly missing important essence, prove to be of value.
The subtle process of the healing of the spirit in general terms can take place outside a purely religious context - and it can have many down-to-earth forms. A good example is the work of charities such as St. Basil's, based in Birmingham, who work with young people at high risk of becoming homeless, devoid of meaningful relationships and disconnected from mainstream society. Many of these youngsters have, in the worst possible start in life, been rejected by their parents.
At an inspiring event held by this charity I was impressed by the remarks of youngsters who had been profoundly helped - indeed cured. What they had to say was moving, poignant and revealing. Examples of their statements are: 'I can now forgive', 'I can now accept myself', 'It is possible for me to love', 'I can now live.' Such honest and telling expressions emanating from the hearts of these once-troubled younger people surely represent a secular soul-cure.
With a narrow focus the ‘cure of souls’ takes it as given that we have a common understanding of what is meant by 'soul' - and that all human beings, perhaps not exclusively, possess one. The soul as a permanent but physically undetectable entity uniquely possessed by a person was impressed upon the populace and accepted without question by most people for centuries.
But in today's simultaneously enriched and diminished society this has been discarded or at least lost sight of - along with the diminished public standing of the self-moderating and much-to-be-desired concept of 'conscience'. But conscience is something that most ordinary people have at a deeper level remained aware - although the understanding of what is meant by 'soul' certainly varies and is more diffuse.
The title of Carl Jung’s work: ‘Modern Man in Search of a Soul’ reflects the view that something is missing. In the book Jung suggests that there is a need in people to discover or rediscover that they have a soul, thought of as the very essence of themselves – what we are at the core of our being, the heart of our personality. According to Jung, mankind needs a ground of general ideas and convictions that will give real meaning to the lives of individuals and enable people to identify places for themselves as part of the Cosmos.
Eugene Marais' reflective and wistful book ‘The Soul of the White Ant’ also suggests that the broader concept of ‘soul’ may be extended to collective entities. In Marais’ study these were colonies of social insects - and we may note that it is not only termites that live together in a social structure with productive but highly unequal relationships.
Jung also envisaged a soul-like entity existing beyond the individual in his concept of the ‘collective unconscious’. He believed that all human beings were linked to the ‘collective unconscious’. What is said of individuals regarding cure of the soul may also be applied collectively. Our society has over time become a soulless one with the idolatry of money and unquestioned subservience to 'the market' - whatever that much abused concept may mean.
Concern for the welfare of ailing and malnourished souls is not new. The concept has existed in some form or other for over two thousand years. As one illustration, scholars tell us that above the shelves in the great and lamentably long destroyed Library of Alexandria there was written this legend: “The place of the cure of the soul”. In both literal and metaphorical senses this inscription says much about how this learned culture viewed the human condition.
The concept of the cure of souls, in its most broad interpretation, could also extend to the Platonic notion of the ‘world-soul’ seen to be inherent in all things. This also relates to some of today's environmental movements and James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia - the hypothesis that organisms and their environs form a complex and self-regulating entity - although the consequences of natural 'regulation' under growing stress may not all be desirable.
We hear a great deal about physical well-being these days. There are clear connections with healthy minds (mens sana) and physical well-being may reflect the 'in corpore sanem' (in a healthy body) dimension but may also, in excess, represent merely physical self-indulgence. Genuine physical well-being is certainly desirable, but there is an even greater need for what Seneca referred to as ‘euthymia’ - the well-being of the soul. Euthymia will surely be the condition of the soul that has received its cure by one means or another.
In more modern times Melvil Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey system of book classification, took the view that public libraries had to be instruments that were of easy use “for every soul”. It is noteworthy that Dewey chose to use the expression ‘every soul’ rather than ‘every mind’ or ‘everybody’. And we note with concern the threats that are posed to public libraries today.
In fact there is to some extent common ground between libraries and places of worship in the cure of souls. These establishments provide - or should I say in these all-but-forsaken times 'have provided' - inspiring places of reflection with subtle cues and aids to that desirable end. There is also the commonality of the reverence of silence and in addressing, in largely compatible ways, what many people feel that they lack in the modern world.
This is not simply knowledge - and it is certainly not what is so often passed off these days as ‘information’ to be ‘mined’ and with which we are incessantly deluged - but meaning. It is a point of great concern that libraries and places of worship have been placed under severe financial pressures at a time when what they both can provide what people feel is most needed.
The agencies of modern business and commerce generate enormous quantities of this dross, trivial, self-serving, misleading and ready to be explored and exploited 'information'. We would be wise to set aside the derivative and meaningless language of sales promotion paraded before us. There is an anaesthesia of meaning that is induced by today's saturated media environment.
Distinct from all such dross are the methods of scientific enquiry in gaining understanding. Science generates the most reliable knowledge humanity can obtain for itself, all of it in principle testable, some of it profound, and as we see when long accepted explanations turn out to be special cases or approximations, sometimes provisional. So, given their field of enquiry and their careful methods it is not at all surprising that many scientists acquire a devout disposition when investigating nature. All knowledge gained by 'natural philosophy' can be subject to revision or empirical rejection when it is subjected to critical appraisal.
The insights of science in the realms of the very small and the very large are unexpected, profound and inspiring but can also be deeply perplexing. But while science stimulates wonder, enquiry and some measure of meaning, it has not as yet been able to supply the depth and personalisation of meaning that many people seek. I do not believe that it is simply a question of time – which may in any case stretch to centuries - complementary approaches are also needed.
Our supposedly 'connected' world is one in which people are in fact increasingly disconnected from personal contact and cut off from their inner selves by fashionable and absorbing gadgets and the unconscious and habitual escapisms of ‘staying connected’ and ‘keeping busy’. It is a world that mistakes superficiality for substance and of restless and vogueish modernity that has increasingly detached human beings from the essence of themselves, from each other and from wider moral and spiritual considerations.
In all of this we certainly cannot look to consumerism for the cure of ailing souls. Nothing could be further from what is needed than this vain quest in shrines of shopping, physical or electronic, for emotional well-being gained through personal consumption. As Lord Sacks so eloquently expressed it “The consumer society is in fact the most efficient mechanism ever devised for the creation and distribution of unhappiness”.
More than this, today’s consumerism has the characteristics of a social disease - one that is much in need of a cure - and it will lead, inevitably, to a condition of deep personal and social disappointment.
‘Consumption’, it is interesting to note, is a word that was at one time used to describe a state of serious ‘ill-being’ - tuberculosis, a wasting illness. The subjects of waste and degeneration ironically are still appropriate in a different sense today. The cure for the restless dissatisfaction of advertising-driven consumption lies in the healthy and harmonious life centred in the common good.
To establish the essential reconnection, one with another and between our everyday and inner selves, we should look beyond that which is immediate, empirical and testable and also incorporate that which is intuitive, ineffable and lasting.
We must look to a realm that offers more than dry rationality and which includes intuition and a measure of transmitted - but neither unquestioned nor enforced - wisdom. This may enable people to rediscover the reverence for the world and all that lies beyond, for self and for community and the sense of worth that resides at the heart of the world religions - although not within their extremities.
The depths are unfathomable, and there is a proper place for the contemplative as well as the cognitive process in the progression of human understanding. This oftentimes unquiet relationship can, with open minds, be a productive tension leading to the convergence of the mental processes for gathering understanding.
These balanced approaches can, taken together, discern meaning, purpose, value and responsible self-awareness in these days of conscience dimmed. Such understandings should be consistent with the lasting conclusions of science (which, it is worth noting, do not always remain precisely as currently understood).
This wider perspective drawing on all sources of insight will, in rebuilding personal and collective identity, begin to displace the soulless and dissatisfying void that lurks in the hearts of so many people. As Jung pointed out, meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything.
But this searching aspect of the cure of souls may involve a journey that has no recognisable conclusion – and meaning itself may also be provisional, but ‘cure’ is an ongoing process too.
There is no reason why we should expect to know when this most profound of quests has ended - or indeed to expect it to terminate at all. In the words of the poet Alejandra Pizarnik: "If the soul were to ask, ‘Is it still far?’ you must answer: ‘On the other side of the river, not this one, the one just beyond.’"