Respect the spirits but keep them at a distance — did Confucius really not believe in them?

By Prof. Si-Chen Lee

1. The Master did not speak of the strange, the forceful, the disorderly or the spiritual

Laozi practised himself, knew that the information field (the Dao) existed, and it stands to reason that he would have a site of his own within it. But what about Confucius?

In the Analects, "Yong Ye", chapter twenty-one, the Master says: "To work at what is right for the people, and to respect the spirits while keeping them at a distance — this may be called wisdom." In "Shu Er", chapter twenty, we read: "The Master did not speak of the strange, the forceful, the disorderly or the spiritual." Most people take this to mean that Confucius did not believe in spirits. So when, in August 2000, we first tested Miss T in a finger reading experiment with the word "Confucius" (孔子), we were astonished that she saw an anomaly. In her celestial eye she first saw a dark human figure; the figure then vanished, and the two characters for "Confucius" appeared. The sequence was exactly the same as the result for the word "Laozi" (老子), and it held every time thereafter: whenever the characters for "Confucius" came up, the dark figure appeared first and the characters second. Confucius, it seemed, also had a site in the information field, and his standing there appeared to be exactly the same as Laozi's.

We then tried "Mencius" (孟子) and "Zhuangzi" (莊子), and no anomaly appeared at all: both words were simply written out directly. So the Second Sage did not qualify. It seemed that only the founder of a great school had strength enough to establish a site in the information field. What was going on here? Had Confucius himself cultivated to a high level and connected to the network? Or was it what the psychologist Jung called the "collective unconscious" — two thousand years of collective Chinese belief in and reverence for Confucius shaping a site in the information field?

2. Did Confucius really not believe in spirits?

Did Confucius really not believe in spirits? The Analects, "Shu Er", chapter thirty-three, tells us that Confucius once fell ill and Zilu wished to pray for him. Confucius asked, "Have you actually done so?" Zilu replied, "I prayed to the spirits above and below." Confucius said, "Then I have been praying for a long time already." Clearly, in Confucius's day, illness was something you first worked on at the higher level of mind and of information, adjusting what had gone wrong there — they seem to have believed that a metaphysical world existed.

In the Xici commentary attributed to Confucius we read: "What is above form is called the Dao; what is below form is called a vessel." The human body, artefacts, animals and plants belong to the world of vessels, below form; and above the vessels there is a further world above form, the Dao. Professor Song Guang-Yu of Fo Guang University takes this further in his new book, A Heart-Reading of the Analects. Everyone who studies the Analects, for instance, begins with the "Xue Er" chapter — but learn what, exactly? The Book of Songs and the Book of Documents, the only texts then available? Or "the affairs of the sages"? On the traditional Confucian ideal of "sage within, king without", it should be the affairs of the sages. To be a sage within is to have, inwardly, the keen and clear perception of the ancient sage-kings; to be a king without is to use that perception to discern the principles by which the universe outside runs — the Dao — and to govern the state by them. In modern scientific language, the Confucian method of learning is to communicate with the information field and then draw on the wisdom of heaven and earth to govern.

What, then, of "respect the spirits while keeping them at a distance" and "the Master did not speak of the strange, the forceful, the disorderly or the spiritual"?

The chapters and sections of the Analects are arranged much as a modern book is written: what comes before and after is logically connected, so that a complete argument and story emerge, and any one line answers to the lines around it. To interpret a line you cannot look at that line alone; you have to read it with its context. Unfortunately, when we studied the basic texts of Chinese culture in high school — the Analects, Mencius and the rest — they were mostly explained one isolated line at a time, and the real sense of the Analects was lost. "To work at what is right for the people, and to respect the spirits while keeping them at a distance — this may be called wisdom" means: do well what needs doing, respect the spirits but do not depend on them entirely, and keep room to think for yourself. That is wisdom. Far from denying that spirits exist, the line only asks that you not lean on them completely.

"The Master did not speak of the strange, the forceful, the disorderly or the spiritual" answers to the line above it: "I was not born knowing; I love the ancients and am diligent in seeking to know." Confucius is describing what marks him out: "I was not born understanding so much. It is that in a settled and clear state of mind I perceive things and phenomena keenly, and so come to know a great deal." Making a long observation in a settled state of mind of this kind is, in effect, sitting meditation, and at such a time one must take particular care not to talk loosely of the strange, the forceful, the disorderly or the spiritual, or it becomes easy to go astray in the practice. It is only in answer to what has gone before that one must not speak loosely of such things — nowhere is it denied that spirits exist.

What Confucius taught us, it turns out, was not only the way of kingship in the human world but also the learning of the unity of heaven and humanity: the learning of how to communicate with the information field. And since he seems also to have been able to download information from that field, his having a site there follows as a matter of course.