The anthropologist Patricia May is part of that list of notable Chileans who, from different areas, have questioned our way of living: Gabriela Mistral, Lola Hoffmann, Claudio Naranjo, Francisco Varela, Gastón Soublette, Humberto Maturana. In her case, for decades she has been working on a synthesis between scientific knowledge and spiritual traditions. She does it from the School of the Soul that she directs – “a place that she guides and accompanies the process of conscious and integral awakening of people” –, on a plot of land in the municipality of Colina, in the northern area of Santiago de Chile. It is a countercultural bet: once a week, about thirty people meet to try to connect with a clear, serene, deep center, which they call soul. May and her husband, Sergio Sagüez, who is in charge of the meditation, lead the group. The fundamental questions of human beings are present: who we are, where we come from, where we are going. Diverse people come to this place, but they are all looking for a meaning in life and to break with the dominant culture of ego and stress. A challenge in the age of hyperconnectivity.
It is a sunny and somewhat hot morning in Colina, where Patricia not only has school, but also her home. She receives EL PAÍS at an outdoor terrace inn and offers coffee, nuts and raisins. The sounds of the birds will be recorded in the recording of the interview. The dogs, calm, rest around.
The anthropologist, author of titles such as From the culture of the ego to the culture of the soul, With unconditional followers both in Chile and beyond the borders, she is a small person and, for this reason, has undergone about 25 surgeries throughout her life. “My biography has forced me to go to the limit of spiritual search, but I think that intuition and this vision come to me beyond my biography.” She remembers that at age 13, in 1970, she was in bed for 14 months. That, even though it was not a lonely room, because it was a place full of friends, there were many moments of loneliness. “Of course as a teenager she asked me the questions: why me? “Why me?” says May. But it was at that time when she discovered contemplation: looking out the window, feeling peace and clarity. A peaceful state that, until today, allows you to enter deep dimensions.
The classes that Patricia leads – which are mainly conversations and reflections – are based on knowledge of spiritual traditions and seek to teach how to live from a more serene and sensible center. People who come to the School of the Soul do so after processes of crisis or maturity. “Something awakens in you and you say: the purpose of life cannot be to function, to run, to live at a crazy pace. “I want a life where I can connect with fullness and broader meaning,” explains May, who fills rooms when he offers public talks.
It talks about the mental and spiritual toxicity that circulates especially on the networks. “It is very easy to get caught up in fears and threats. The feeling of hopelessness is global. I think there is a lot of darkness that we are being able to see, that is exposed. And I consider it very good – that the effects of climate change are evident, for example – but it is difficult to bear. In this context, in order to cope with this turbulent time, it is key to cultivate an internal axis that is serene, equanimous and full of meaning. “That allows us to look at the conflict, the crisis, and the hardness of personal life and in general, with a deeper and more transformative meaning,” says the anthropologist who graduated from the University of Chile in 1979.
The way human beings function, the materialistic and economic culture, where everything is reduced to the quantity of things, the activities that are done during the day and the achievements, prevents us from paying attention to the quality of life, to the qualitative, he assures. And he reflects: “Curiously, quality of life is always related to things, not to an internal state of harmony.” For May, “transformative work in the political, economic, social and structural spheres is not enough if the inner change of the human being is not added.” Therefore, the importance of education will appear many times throughout the conversation. And beyond school, the fundamental example that breeders give to children.
She was in her twenties when she was doing her anthropology thesis at her parents' house – she is the granddaughter of the famous Chilean sculptor Marta Colvin – and she had a series of interior experiences from simply learning to be silent, relax, calm down. “They transformed me a lot and opened my consciousness. The experience was simple, but basically it allowed me to connect with something inside that revealed to me a center of fullness, peace, serenity, and life. What is this? I asked myself. Furthermore, it transformed my view of the world. When this happened, I was always very in tune with nature, poetry, and knowledge. But I felt my eyes open.” And since then, she began the path to which, over the years, so many others have joined with her.
At that time he did not have words to explain it to him, but with the passage of time, he understood that “the human being has evolved much more than from the body and culture.” “He has a spiritual nature. There is something transcendent before you are born and after you die,” explains May on this sunny morning in Santiago de Chile, the capital of a country that since 2019 has experienced a social crisis, a pandemic and two failed attempts to change its Constitution. But the anthropologist does not give in to the pessimism that invades Chilean society, according to different surveys, because she believes that “without crisis there is no way to awaken.” She explains it: “In all existences there is a beautiful, noble, ethical center, beyond all our confusions and disturbances. Therefore, I not only have the hope, but the certainty, that humanity will awaken towards another type of culture. A collaborative culture, of connection, of human and planetary fraternity taken to reality.”
Patricia assures that views that integrate and promote the common good have been emerging very strongly, but that they are still on the edges of the paradigm. “And I think that's how it has to be. They have to grow from the inside out and from the edge to the center of the paradigm,” she adds. And she remembers that when she started on a spiritual path, none of this was talked about: ecology, connection with nature, mindfulness, meditation practice and collaborative communities were unknown topics. But it has been the human being himself who has challenged himself, because “the greater the social and mental health crisis, the greater the inner search there is.” “There is something inside that pressures us. The evolution of consciousness has always pressured us in our history. “It pushes and pressures us to look for new perspectives.”
A student of spiritual traditions of all times – Taoist and Zen stand out for the countercultural values of simplicity, humility and simple living, where one is completely present – she turns her gaze to the new phenomena that impact the world in 2024. “My impression is that artificial intelligence will replace the functional, intellectual, logical mind, which will force us to elevate the human to o
ther levels of experience that have more to do with the great vision and spiritual revelation, not necessarily religious. Because artificial intelligence cannot enter the soul of the human being, which leads him to ethics and love,” says May, when she is approaching mealtime at her house far from the city.
It is the search for a space of consciousness and clarity, which is not intoxicated by a mind that does not stop: tomorrow I have to do this, the mental circuits that go around the head over and over again tied to the past and the future, the list of duties, anger, resentment, pain, fear, the desire to excel, envy. The neurotic dialogue that fills a mental and conscious space that, when free, shows something of the human being that is beyond being a man or a woman, rich or poor, sick or healthy, old or young. “In that interior space you can rest and see: this, although it hurts me, does have a meaning. Although I still can't understand it. It emerges as a peace of mind and an equanimity in seeing things,” says May, who speaks of radical confidence. “It is not childish confidence or living without taking natural precautions. No. Radical trust is a trust full of meaning: everything has a deeper meaning, there is a vaster intelligence or wisdom than what my mind can calculate and that vaster wisdom, that which is unfolding in my life, is good. Because from everything I can create an experience of growth.” This point, says May, is what allows, to some extent, to let go and rest.
He describes that the basal state of the contemporary mind is anxiety: not being able to be calm in the present and always having a feeling of desire and discomfort. “I'm missing something, all the time. I'm here, but I would like to be somewhere else. To be otherwise, to have what I don't have, to be what I am not, to be where I am not.” And the fatigue that marks societies: “Lives with a crazy rhythm without any moment to breathe and be calm.” And he makes a beautiful comparison: nature has a rhythm, that of day and night, and our body is full of rhythm. “Our breathing is a rhythm: in and out. Our heart is a rhythm, atoms. Our eyes close and open. And what we have done – and it is at the base of our social and personal illness – is that we have denied the rhythm,” says May, almost at the end of the conversation that could last for hours.
From the School of the Soul, when we leave, the anthropologist will continue swimming against the current of the system and helping others to do so. “In our paradigm, it seems that it would be more productive to organize the closet than to give yourself some time of peace,” says May, and that phrase will remain engraved in this journalist's mind. She talks about the first step necessary to change one's own lives: deciding.
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