One of the reasons why cosmic models interest me is because the starting point for everything, for me, is to build up a big picture as rapidly as possible. Whenever in the past we’ve moved into a new area, I’ve always wasted a lot of gas getting a feel for the whole metro area, quickly and hands on, of course. Look and see. Long before I knew my own neighborhood even reasonably well just north of Detroit, I’d driven the whole length of Interstates 94, 696, 275, 75, 96 and the Lodge Freeway and knew what they were trying to do. I start with a map and then try to fill in the details, the big chunks first. In the process you discover that some freeways aren’t finished yet, that Outer Drives are broken, that beltways aren’t buckled, etc.
When it comes to border zones, particularly the regions beyond the border at the entrance of which barriers bar the way, the difficulties are much greater, but not insurmountable. Some people claim to have been over there. You can read reports and study ancient maps. In this process geographies of the beyond are possible—but they do resemble the strange things medieval authors produced, all from hearsay, just sitting someplace in a monastery. Foolish of me to be one of these monks, but the itch is irresistible.
A certain discipline helps in building or judging models. That discipline is to subject models to a test of comprehensiveness. Let me illustrate this. Despite my very strong conviction that the human mind, the soul, or consciousness (I tend to use these words interchangeably) is radically different from matter, a difference in kind, not merely of degree, I’m very resistant to cosmic models that make humanity the center of reality or of a divine project. Why? Because the visible universe is incomprehensively vast. It’s incommensurable with the human. Now, mind you, I’ve no problem crediting that an invisible, subtle, spiritual cosmos may coexist with the physical—indeed that the two may be meaningfully related. Such a hypothesis seems reasonable to me. But I’m forced to conclude that the human phenomenon itself (even extended to include all life) is most decidedly a minor something—even if I assume, as I actually do, that it is part of a greater spiritual reality. I see us as temporarily marooned, as it were, marooned in matter. That we should take ourselves seriously is good and proper. We have our own legitimacy. I merely object to making human fate central—because we are so incredibly small.
Another aspect of applying a test of comprehensiveness is to see if a model accommodates the whole range of reasonably discoverable experiences reported by humanity. Where dogmatic elements in some cosmology deny such experiences ex cathedra I see a problem. Two examples are Christian denial of the possibility of reincarnation and materialists’ denial of miracles. I also have problems with the way most faith systems explain miracles. But I have no difficulty accepting Thomas Aquinas’ definition in Summa Contra Gentiles: “Those things are properly called miracles which are done by divine agency beyond the order commonly observed in nature.”* My inclination, to be sure, is to understand “divine agency” in my own way, thus not in a manner that narrows the agency to the usual, narrow human conception.
A final comment on cosmologies derived from revelation as this word is usually understood in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim faiths. I accept the notion of revelation much in the same way as I accept miracles, thus as something that reaches us from a higher order. But revelation is acquired by means of the human consciousness and is therefore subject to filtering by existing knowledge, culture, and understanding. Genuine truth reaches us, but the interpretation of it as the literal word of God is, when subjected to a test of comprehensiveness, contradicted by the contents of these scriptures themselves. A real stumbling block, for me, for instance, is the concept of a chosen people.
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*I found this quote in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Miracles,” here.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Hierarchy of Faculties
We have a tendency to associate the real with the tangible, the sensory. We can’t touch thoughts and therefore it seems that they cannot hurt us. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” At the trivial level the old saying is true enough, but not in social reality. A sentence of death from the high bench has killed many people. And many millions have perished at the commands of rulers throughout time. An intention killed them—and you can’t touch intentions either. They turn physical as if by magic. Nonetheless, we live so embedded in the physical that we give it more value than higher faculties like intuitions and seemingly immaterial perceptions that reach us from the patterns of things.
What is in closer conformity with reality is that experience is basic. We’re very loyal to our experiences and defend them doggedly against abstract contradiction. Experience, however, is not by any means self-explanatory; it’s simply a datum; thus error can enter into the situation if the experience is wrongly interpreted. My rule of thumb is to trust experience above all but to test its explanation, in myself as well as in others, by the use of reason. But if the reasoning attempts to deny, denigrate, or nullify my experience, I will reject that logic no matter how pristine. The other side of the equation, therefore, is that experience is a test of reason. Thus we make progress in understanding the world.
The very highest forms of experience—of the sacred, the numinous, the poetic, the visionary—are very much real experiences. But they are impossible to share; for others to confirm such matters, they too must undergo something analogous. Attempts to share tend to take artistic forms. And those who “understand” such communications have to have what E.F. Schumacher, quoting the scholastics, called adaequatio—adequacy.* Some people get it, some don’t. The difference is that some are prepared by experiences, others lack them. The Sufis say that “the secret protects itself.” This is another way to say the same thing. We can’t grasp what we haven’t experienced. The outsider will interpret reports of experiences that exceed his or her adequacy in terms of personal experience, thus using a lower framework. And here errors are likely—not least assigning such experiences to lunacy. For this reason it’s pointless to argue about matters of this sort with those who begin to bristle defensively. Their opposition is perfectly logical. Even to consider in a neutral, tentative way what someone else is claiming is already a sign of advanced preparation. Therefore the stance or attitude of the other party foreshadows the reaction that will follow.
If reality encompasses a vast spectrum from the subatomic upward, including the material, the mental, and the spiritual, one might say then that sticking with stones is to limit oneself. Therefore the higher faculties, although very much more difficult to interpret, are of higher ranges of reality. You’ve got to get used to the altitude before you can operate with a modicum of competence there.
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*Developed in A Guide for the Perplexed, Harper & Row, pp. 40-60.
What is in closer conformity with reality is that experience is basic. We’re very loyal to our experiences and defend them doggedly against abstract contradiction. Experience, however, is not by any means self-explanatory; it’s simply a datum; thus error can enter into the situation if the experience is wrongly interpreted. My rule of thumb is to trust experience above all but to test its explanation, in myself as well as in others, by the use of reason. But if the reasoning attempts to deny, denigrate, or nullify my experience, I will reject that logic no matter how pristine. The other side of the equation, therefore, is that experience is a test of reason. Thus we make progress in understanding the world.
The very highest forms of experience—of the sacred, the numinous, the poetic, the visionary—are very much real experiences. But they are impossible to share; for others to confirm such matters, they too must undergo something analogous. Attempts to share tend to take artistic forms. And those who “understand” such communications have to have what E.F. Schumacher, quoting the scholastics, called adaequatio—adequacy.* Some people get it, some don’t. The difference is that some are prepared by experiences, others lack them. The Sufis say that “the secret protects itself.” This is another way to say the same thing. We can’t grasp what we haven’t experienced. The outsider will interpret reports of experiences that exceed his or her adequacy in terms of personal experience, thus using a lower framework. And here errors are likely—not least assigning such experiences to lunacy. For this reason it’s pointless to argue about matters of this sort with those who begin to bristle defensively. Their opposition is perfectly logical. Even to consider in a neutral, tentative way what someone else is claiming is already a sign of advanced preparation. Therefore the stance or attitude of the other party foreshadows the reaction that will follow.
If reality encompasses a vast spectrum from the subatomic upward, including the material, the mental, and the spiritual, one might say then that sticking with stones is to limit oneself. Therefore the higher faculties, although very much more difficult to interpret, are of higher ranges of reality. You’ve got to get used to the altitude before you can operate with a modicum of competence there.
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*Developed in A Guide for the Perplexed, Harper & Row, pp. 40-60.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Hans Jonas
Precisely because Christianity came to dominate the civilization of the West—it was the successful competitor among many others as the Roman Empire fell apart—its competitors are much less known. One of these was Gnosticism; it manifested in several different strands; these never fused into a single major religion. To speak of a “gnostic religion,” therefore, is to use a metaphor. Those who wander into these woods soon discover that the written remains are sparse, essentially inaccessible without major archeological help (in a manner of speaking). The historical, sociological, and intellectual background is opaque. The texts are, ultimately, tedious. Indeed the interest in Gnosticism today—and stretching back about a century—is itself proof that Western civilization (it used to be called Christendom) is beginning to fall apart. We have entered precisely the same kind of historical period in which Gnosticism once flourished. It was itself one of the “new age” phenomena of the Roman imperial period.
But there is an interest. And with that in mind I would suggest that people with a serious interest in understanding Gnosticism should obtain The Gnostic Religion, written by Hans Jonas. The book originally appeared in 1958. It is available today as a paperback from Amazon and other sellers. Jonas’ is a comprehensive presentation of the subject, placed in its own historical context. He carefully preserves, but properly sorts, the confusions and complexities. He lays out the significant doctrines in sufficient detail, traces the branches of Gnosticism, and, at the end, he also attempts to link the phenomenon to his own era. To put it in a nutshell, he links Gnosticism to existentialism. Which, by the way, initially surprised me. But after pondering the matter, I saw the justice of Jonas’ joining of the two. And, yes, I’d read the whole mind-numbing length of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I’ve lived on the Borderzone a long time. I began, in my youth, with people like Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard. I once actually read a whole paragraph of Husserl! Heiddegger’s name is one I recognize, and I can give a decent capsule of his central concerns. So I had, you might say, the minimal adequacy to recognize where Hans Jonas was coming from—and whither he was headed.
If the last paragraph is intimidating, it is meant to be. Life on the Borderzone is not light entertainment; it can be used for that—but then so can most things. The materials I present here, however, will benefit the solitary few who hear the call to understand in a genuine way. And where Gnosticism is concerned, a good starting point is Jonas’ book.
Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was a German-born philosopher; he died in the United States. He studied under Husserl and Heiddegger and was drawn to Gnosticism by presentiments within those doctrines of similarities to his own existential leanings. Jonas had many careers—and in philosophy at least three. His earliest phase was the study of Gnosticism and the linking of it to modernity. Later he became what might be called an environmentalist. And last, he developed his own existential view of biology and life in general, casting it in ethical terms.
Gnosticism, for me, is a window into the realms beyond—with an emphasis on the beyond. After having read The Gnostic Religion, encouraged by the powerful insights contained within it, by its synthesizing powers, by the hint that, as the next step, Jonas might advance into the brighter light by means of Gnosticism, I spent around fifty dollars to acquire Jonas’ chief later writings. But this time I was disappointed. When I look through the existential window, I see Being, as it were; but the hard existentialist—and Jonas was of this variety—when he looks through that window, he sees Nothingness. And then the Stoic bravery is to act responsibly despite the yawning nihil over there. But that doesn’t make sense to me. Then, again, I’m of the next generation over.
But there is an interest. And with that in mind I would suggest that people with a serious interest in understanding Gnosticism should obtain The Gnostic Religion, written by Hans Jonas. The book originally appeared in 1958. It is available today as a paperback from Amazon and other sellers. Jonas’ is a comprehensive presentation of the subject, placed in its own historical context. He carefully preserves, but properly sorts, the confusions and complexities. He lays out the significant doctrines in sufficient detail, traces the branches of Gnosticism, and, at the end, he also attempts to link the phenomenon to his own era. To put it in a nutshell, he links Gnosticism to existentialism. Which, by the way, initially surprised me. But after pondering the matter, I saw the justice of Jonas’ joining of the two. And, yes, I’d read the whole mind-numbing length of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I’ve lived on the Borderzone a long time. I began, in my youth, with people like Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard. I once actually read a whole paragraph of Husserl! Heiddegger’s name is one I recognize, and I can give a decent capsule of his central concerns. So I had, you might say, the minimal adequacy to recognize where Hans Jonas was coming from—and whither he was headed.
If the last paragraph is intimidating, it is meant to be. Life on the Borderzone is not light entertainment; it can be used for that—but then so can most things. The materials I present here, however, will benefit the solitary few who hear the call to understand in a genuine way. And where Gnosticism is concerned, a good starting point is Jonas’ book.
Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was a German-born philosopher; he died in the United States. He studied under Husserl and Heiddegger and was drawn to Gnosticism by presentiments within those doctrines of similarities to his own existential leanings. Jonas had many careers—and in philosophy at least three. His earliest phase was the study of Gnosticism and the linking of it to modernity. Later he became what might be called an environmentalist. And last, he developed his own existential view of biology and life in general, casting it in ethical terms.
Gnosticism, for me, is a window into the realms beyond—with an emphasis on the beyond. After having read The Gnostic Religion, encouraged by the powerful insights contained within it, by its synthesizing powers, by the hint that, as the next step, Jonas might advance into the brighter light by means of Gnosticism, I spent around fifty dollars to acquire Jonas’ chief later writings. But this time I was disappointed. When I look through the existential window, I see Being, as it were; but the hard existentialist—and Jonas was of this variety—when he looks through that window, he sees Nothingness. And then the Stoic bravery is to act responsibly despite the yawning nihil over there. But that doesn’t make sense to me. Then, again, I’m of the next generation over.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The Song of the Pearl - II
Most people today who’ve even bothered to read the original of this Gnostic tale, to which a pointer is provided in the last posting, will tend to be baffled that any modern person could possibly take it seriously—much less as a valuable indicator of anything real. Here is a tale the grasp of which requires a certain kind of mind able, at least temporarily, to detach itself from the conventional scientific/rational mode of thought. Here we have the story of a person dispatched as a child into a foreign country by his parents to snatch a pearl guarded by a gigantic serpent. Why? So that, possessing it, the child will be enabled to become the heir of a kingdom? That’s what the text says. The entire premise, taken at its literal value, is nonsensical. Why would a child be sent to foreign parts? There are no giant serpents guarding magical pearls. What is back-story here? In what way is the child (already the offspring of a king) required to fetch a pearl to be the heir? What’s in that pearl? And, having said this much, we haven’t actually gone much farther than the first three paragraphs, roughly, of the story. Pure nonsense.
My first reaction, therefore, is to try to understand the context. I see this tale as a vivid illustration of a theory. The story would only make sense to an audience that already knew the concepts to be illustrated. It would then become a memorable way of holding in mind what the doctrine, in conceptual form, already contains. Fairy tales all work the same way. There is a hard content the tale illustrates. Elements of Cinderella and of Snow White carry echoes of the Song of the Pearl; and some have associated it with the biblical tale of the Prodigal Son. The Acts of Thomas, in which this tale is embedded, date from the third century of the current era. I doubt that people in that time believed in gigantic serpents either—or in magical pearls. What we are therefore dealing with here is a theory dressed as a tale. But it can be put in conceptual language too.
To extract that meaning, I note the following. The child originates in another world; it has a high status and is surrounded by luxury. It is sent away to a distant and dangerous place in order to obtain something of value that will qualify it later for its appointed role in life. Those who send it are aware of what they’re doing. They replace the child’s fancy garment with a simpler one. They send off the child assisted by two guides. But the guides eventually depart. The child adapts to its new environment. He meets a noble companion with whom he lives and shares his property. Eventually, in the process of participating in the new reality, he falls into forgetfulness and sleep. But his parents become aware of this development; they manage to send a message to awaken the now grown-up person. The message causes the man to remember something already imprinted on his mind—his status and mission. Thereafter he obtains the pearl relatively easily. Indeed, in some sense, the pearl is the remembering, the recapture of the child’s lost knowledge—in Greek its gnosis. This is, after all, a Gnostic tale, and knowledge is salvation. During the journey back, he leaves his earthly covering behind and dons the glorious, bejeweled garment he had left behind.
We could get sophisticated here and say that the two guides (why two?) are the hero’s earthly parents; the noble youth he meets and lives with may be a stand-in for a female, not a lad but, instead, a mate, and recognize, in the symbol of the serpent, his body itself, a vast network of circulation and of nerves. The pearl held by the serpent is itself the child now turned into a youth—who, by taming the serpent, by subordinating the body, obtains the great gift of transcendent knowledge.
What interests me in this story, as I’ve already noted in the last post, is that the tale describes what appears to be a necessary process. Life on this plane, based on this theory, has a definite value. It teaches something that, in that other order, the “East” of the tale, is difficult or impossible to get. The entire process is marked by intentionality: the child is sent, guided, has a companion for a while, and is then awakened by a message from on high. Once this message has reached him, his efforts to subdue the snake are accomplished with very little drama. There is no major battle here between the valiant prince and the dragon. For these reasons I view this kind of cosmology as developmental. It provides an explanation of the descent that, if all goes well, if the sleep is interrupted, if the message reaches its target, is followed by an ascent, the agent involved richer by the process.
I would conclude this by pointing out that so many of the stories we first heard as children—in which heroic women and men overcome obstacles and challenges, fight monsters or wicked witches to discover themselves, at the end, to be queens and kings—all of these tales carry the message contained in that letter that the hero of the Song of the Pearl receives from the East. But these are just children’s tales…. So? So back to reality. Let me get on the Internet and check out how my derivatives are doing….
My first reaction, therefore, is to try to understand the context. I see this tale as a vivid illustration of a theory. The story would only make sense to an audience that already knew the concepts to be illustrated. It would then become a memorable way of holding in mind what the doctrine, in conceptual form, already contains. Fairy tales all work the same way. There is a hard content the tale illustrates. Elements of Cinderella and of Snow White carry echoes of the Song of the Pearl; and some have associated it with the biblical tale of the Prodigal Son. The Acts of Thomas, in which this tale is embedded, date from the third century of the current era. I doubt that people in that time believed in gigantic serpents either—or in magical pearls. What we are therefore dealing with here is a theory dressed as a tale. But it can be put in conceptual language too.
To extract that meaning, I note the following. The child originates in another world; it has a high status and is surrounded by luxury. It is sent away to a distant and dangerous place in order to obtain something of value that will qualify it later for its appointed role in life. Those who send it are aware of what they’re doing. They replace the child’s fancy garment with a simpler one. They send off the child assisted by two guides. But the guides eventually depart. The child adapts to its new environment. He meets a noble companion with whom he lives and shares his property. Eventually, in the process of participating in the new reality, he falls into forgetfulness and sleep. But his parents become aware of this development; they manage to send a message to awaken the now grown-up person. The message causes the man to remember something already imprinted on his mind—his status and mission. Thereafter he obtains the pearl relatively easily. Indeed, in some sense, the pearl is the remembering, the recapture of the child’s lost knowledge—in Greek its gnosis. This is, after all, a Gnostic tale, and knowledge is salvation. During the journey back, he leaves his earthly covering behind and dons the glorious, bejeweled garment he had left behind.
We could get sophisticated here and say that the two guides (why two?) are the hero’s earthly parents; the noble youth he meets and lives with may be a stand-in for a female, not a lad but, instead, a mate, and recognize, in the symbol of the serpent, his body itself, a vast network of circulation and of nerves. The pearl held by the serpent is itself the child now turned into a youth—who, by taming the serpent, by subordinating the body, obtains the great gift of transcendent knowledge.
What interests me in this story, as I’ve already noted in the last post, is that the tale describes what appears to be a necessary process. Life on this plane, based on this theory, has a definite value. It teaches something that, in that other order, the “East” of the tale, is difficult or impossible to get. The entire process is marked by intentionality: the child is sent, guided, has a companion for a while, and is then awakened by a message from on high. Once this message has reached him, his efforts to subdue the snake are accomplished with very little drama. There is no major battle here between the valiant prince and the dragon. For these reasons I view this kind of cosmology as developmental. It provides an explanation of the descent that, if all goes well, if the sleep is interrupted, if the message reaches its target, is followed by an ascent, the agent involved richer by the process.
I would conclude this by pointing out that so many of the stories we first heard as children—in which heroic women and men overcome obstacles and challenges, fight monsters or wicked witches to discover themselves, at the end, to be queens and kings—all of these tales carry the message contained in that letter that the hero of the Song of the Pearl receives from the East. But these are just children’s tales…. So? So back to reality. Let me get on the Internet and check out how my derivatives are doing….
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Song of the Pearl - I
The world’s mythologies seem to agree that humanity once lived in a perfect world: Paradise. The names we use are unimportant if they mean the same thing. So what happened? We find two explanations. One is that humanity sinned; as punishment we were expelled from Paradise into a harsher world. The other is that humanity was tempted to realize special pleasures or powers it hoped to gain in a realm it couldn’t see; once we descended into that lower realm, we got caught and entangled. In essence the two stories are the same. To sin is to want and grasp a lesser good. Both in the Christian and in the Hindu models, the same motives have the same consequence. Welcome to the Vale of Tears in one case, Welcome to the Wheel of Karma in the other. Notice that in both cases a vast community is involved. We see this most clearly in the Christian doctrine in which the guilt of the original couple clings to all of their descendants. The only rational way to see this is to assume that Adam and Eve stand for humanity as a whole. And let’s not get excessively rational. These are myths and we must understand them at the poetic level. Debates about sin clinging to DNA, for instance, are out of place; they’re not poetry but quibbling. Notice also that in both cases the lower state is due to individual decision; descent or exile is chosen by a free act of the will.
There are, however, two other myths on offer. Today they are minority views—and the views of very small minorities at that. One is the Mazdean (Zoroastrian) belief according to which we are here because we volunteered to take part in an act of creation. God willing I’ll get to that one in another post. The other is that we were sent in order to develop, rendered in the terminology of obtaining a great prize. In both of these myths we are innocent as we set out. In the other two models we are already guilty on arrival, even as “innocent” babes. In all of these models—whether innocent or guilty as we come—we can fail in our mission and, if we do, we remain in the realm of darkness. That realm of darkness is defined in different ways: in Christianity it is hell, in Hinduism and Gnosticism it is another life, in Mazdaism it is life with the dark force that represents one polarity of existence. Here I want to give a sketch of the last, the developmental model.
That model is succinctly rendered as the Song of the Pearl, sometimes as the Hymn of the Soul, found in one of the apocryphal books of the New Testament, The Acts of Thomas, embedded in that book but dating from an earlier time. You can read that song here. To reach the actual text, search for “108”; that search will put you at its beginning within the book. The song is quite short and easily read and there is the benefit of getting the information at first hand. But I will summarize it.
The story concern the son of a king who, in early youth, is sent from the “East” [read Paradise] down to Egypt in order to fetch a great prize, a pearl held by a devouring serpent. The child is stripped of its ceremonial garment and clothed in a yellow garb, provisioned and sent down. The child is guided at first but, at the borders with Egypt [read our world] he is left to himself. He remains conscious of his past until he partakes of the local food; it causes him to forget his real status (son of a king) and his glorious past home. He falls into a deep sleep from which he awakens only when at last a special letter, aimed at awakening him again, reaches him. This then causes him to remember why he came to Egypt and what he had to do. He proceeds to obtain the pearl by charming the serpent into sleep, obtains the pearl, and begins the trip home. Arriving there he strips off the filthy garment he had worn in Egypt [his body] and puts on the bejeweled garment of his native land [the spiritual body]. In due time he presents the pearl to the king.
The Song of the Pearl is usually classified as a Gnostic myth, but one finds it in various forms in Sufic and other traditions as well. Having reached us in the Acts of Thomas, it was obviously also valued by the early Christians.
Let me now add three personal reactions to this tale—and to models of development in general. These are summary in nature. I’ll use a future post to look at the myth in some detail. It takes more space than I have here.
First, let me strip away the mythical form and simply assume that a soul-community, an “order of the soul,” has discovered that life in the harsh confines of the material order is capable of educating souls—meaning to “draw out,” to realize hidden potentials. If we take that to be a plausible concept, namely that souls can be educated and improved, and that certain environments and experiences can further that development, the model starts sounding reasonable. But that model only becomes acceptable if we further assume that the majority of souls on earth will benefit, will gain something real from the process. This is not difficult to accept. The vast majority of people are decent—they live, struggle, and pass on. The degrees of improvement would vary, as they do in all models of education; and some few would fail.
Second, I would point out that near-death experience reports tend to confirm this model. They do not confirm all models in the same way. In many NDEs, the individual, wishing to go on and to realize the obviously superior values available on that side of the Borderzone are told that they must return; their time has not yet come; they have things still to accomplish. Some individuals also know this and return on their own accord, not because they’re urged.
Third, this model features a good deal of interaction between this realm and the higher one, the “East.” The soul is sent from there with appropriate provisions. It is guided on the way down, it is assisted while down here (although I’ve omitted that from my summary), it receives an enlightening “letter” from above. My own experience and observation is that communications, of sorts, do reach us here in various forms, most notably but not solely by means of intuitions and inspired revelations.
More on this in future posts.
There are, however, two other myths on offer. Today they are minority views—and the views of very small minorities at that. One is the Mazdean (Zoroastrian) belief according to which we are here because we volunteered to take part in an act of creation. God willing I’ll get to that one in another post. The other is that we were sent in order to develop, rendered in the terminology of obtaining a great prize. In both of these myths we are innocent as we set out. In the other two models we are already guilty on arrival, even as “innocent” babes. In all of these models—whether innocent or guilty as we come—we can fail in our mission and, if we do, we remain in the realm of darkness. That realm of darkness is defined in different ways: in Christianity it is hell, in Hinduism and Gnosticism it is another life, in Mazdaism it is life with the dark force that represents one polarity of existence. Here I want to give a sketch of the last, the developmental model.
That model is succinctly rendered as the Song of the Pearl, sometimes as the Hymn of the Soul, found in one of the apocryphal books of the New Testament, The Acts of Thomas, embedded in that book but dating from an earlier time. You can read that song here. To reach the actual text, search for “108”; that search will put you at its beginning within the book. The song is quite short and easily read and there is the benefit of getting the information at first hand. But I will summarize it.
The story concern the son of a king who, in early youth, is sent from the “East” [read Paradise] down to Egypt in order to fetch a great prize, a pearl held by a devouring serpent. The child is stripped of its ceremonial garment and clothed in a yellow garb, provisioned and sent down. The child is guided at first but, at the borders with Egypt [read our world] he is left to himself. He remains conscious of his past until he partakes of the local food; it causes him to forget his real status (son of a king) and his glorious past home. He falls into a deep sleep from which he awakens only when at last a special letter, aimed at awakening him again, reaches him. This then causes him to remember why he came to Egypt and what he had to do. He proceeds to obtain the pearl by charming the serpent into sleep, obtains the pearl, and begins the trip home. Arriving there he strips off the filthy garment he had worn in Egypt [his body] and puts on the bejeweled garment of his native land [the spiritual body]. In due time he presents the pearl to the king.
The Song of the Pearl is usually classified as a Gnostic myth, but one finds it in various forms in Sufic and other traditions as well. Having reached us in the Acts of Thomas, it was obviously also valued by the early Christians.
Let me now add three personal reactions to this tale—and to models of development in general. These are summary in nature. I’ll use a future post to look at the myth in some detail. It takes more space than I have here.
First, let me strip away the mythical form and simply assume that a soul-community, an “order of the soul,” has discovered that life in the harsh confines of the material order is capable of educating souls—meaning to “draw out,” to realize hidden potentials. If we take that to be a plausible concept, namely that souls can be educated and improved, and that certain environments and experiences can further that development, the model starts sounding reasonable. But that model only becomes acceptable if we further assume that the majority of souls on earth will benefit, will gain something real from the process. This is not difficult to accept. The vast majority of people are decent—they live, struggle, and pass on. The degrees of improvement would vary, as they do in all models of education; and some few would fail.
Second, I would point out that near-death experience reports tend to confirm this model. They do not confirm all models in the same way. In many NDEs, the individual, wishing to go on and to realize the obviously superior values available on that side of the Borderzone are told that they must return; their time has not yet come; they have things still to accomplish. Some individuals also know this and return on their own accord, not because they’re urged.
Third, this model features a good deal of interaction between this realm and the higher one, the “East.” The soul is sent from there with appropriate provisions. It is guided on the way down, it is assisted while down here (although I’ve omitted that from my summary), it receives an enlightening “letter” from above. My own experience and observation is that communications, of sorts, do reach us here in various forms, most notably but not solely by means of intuitions and inspired revelations.
More on this in future posts.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Passion or The Human Problem
The problem of evil arises in the context of theodicy. In certain times and under certain circumstances, theodicy is necessary and laudable. Those with a simple but ardent faith do not perceive the problem of evil and never think of blaming God; the mystics, who are at the other end of the spectrum, arrive at the same conclusion but by much experience. Neither of these polar stands rests on analysis. Intellectual approaches, focused on the real world, produce the problem in the first place; hence theodicy, which is an intellectual tool, is applicable in order to deal with the seeming contradiction of a good and all-powerful God and a world bristling with evil. Another kind of problem, however, remains after theodicy has done its work. It is the human problem. How to explain suffering?
Passion is one of those wonderfully ambiguous words. Its basic meaning is “suffering”; this becomes obvious when we consider that “passivity” comes from the same root. The common understanding of passion today is that it is a powerful sexual attraction and, by extension, attraction to anything else (“a passionate stamp collector.”) According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the sexual passion is a relatively new use of the root, dating to the sixteenth century. In Roman times passion was plain suffering, hence in Catholicism people speak of the “passion of Jesus,” meaning his crucifixion. Behind the Latin stands the Greek equivalent, pathos, with the same meaning.
Ponder for a moment the interestingly problematical relationships between freedom, evil, and suffering. Suffering is linked with evil (is evil) in that it is bad; suffering is involuntary when physical evil is its cause (to use Leibniz’s categories of kinds of evil); it arises from injury, disease, or the destruction of valuable properties by natural disasters; but passion in the sexual sense is also physical: we suffer our hormones. Sin is evil because it is the free choice of a lesser good; this is what Leibniz calls moral evil. The problem is especially visible in this category. We suffer whether we sin or we restrain ourselves. If we use our will to overcome temptation, we suffer the loss of something we desire; if we yield, we may achieve a lesser good but lose a higher, and suffering will be a consequence. We suffer physical evil without using choice; we suffer when we do use choice. We can’t win!
The problematical character of our state is made even more plain when we consider that gladly willing what is good is painless; the only time free will actually raises its ugly head is when we want something we shouldn’t. At that point, and only at that point, does the freedom of the will actually matter, and when we then exercise it rightly, we will suffer the loss of something we want—even if it’s nothing more than simple peace and quiet. Real decision-making is always painful—because it only matters when it is!
The human problem is that we find ourselves between the rock and the hard place. But this paradoxical situation actually has a catch. When we suffer gladly, whether it is involuntary pain or the pain imposed by our own right choices, a transformation takes place within us that is very difficult to describe but quite real. It is also cumulative. We change. Something takes place within us. We grow. The converse is also true. If, on the whole, we avoid pain at any cost and live for the moment, if we harden our conscience so that the echoes of the collateral damage we cause are less obvious and audible, we also diminish. That process is also cumulative. Here I’m talking about obvious truths readily observable in every possible category of activity, be it the neglect of body, maintenance, relationships, economies, you name it.
One interesting upshot of such a contemplation is that it produces an alternative model of reality as well. One that I’ve suggested a number of times before is that an order of the soul may have become voluntarily entangled in matter, drawn by its appetite for new experience. But another one is that the dimension in which we find ourselves is meant to serve development—the development of a higher form of that which we are. This is the model of life on earth as a school of hard knocks. The hard knocks will temper us and raise us to a higher level in a spiraling course of development—or, conversely, cause us to slide downward. We may be participating in this process voluntarily, as the Mazdean religion teaches, for example; or we may be here for correction, which is compatible with the Christian view. But, in any case, we must be prepared for the assaults of passion—be they pleasurable or just plain suffering.
Passion is one of those wonderfully ambiguous words. Its basic meaning is “suffering”; this becomes obvious when we consider that “passivity” comes from the same root. The common understanding of passion today is that it is a powerful sexual attraction and, by extension, attraction to anything else (“a passionate stamp collector.”) According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the sexual passion is a relatively new use of the root, dating to the sixteenth century. In Roman times passion was plain suffering, hence in Catholicism people speak of the “passion of Jesus,” meaning his crucifixion. Behind the Latin stands the Greek equivalent, pathos, with the same meaning.
Ponder for a moment the interestingly problematical relationships between freedom, evil, and suffering. Suffering is linked with evil (is evil) in that it is bad; suffering is involuntary when physical evil is its cause (to use Leibniz’s categories of kinds of evil); it arises from injury, disease, or the destruction of valuable properties by natural disasters; but passion in the sexual sense is also physical: we suffer our hormones. Sin is evil because it is the free choice of a lesser good; this is what Leibniz calls moral evil. The problem is especially visible in this category. We suffer whether we sin or we restrain ourselves. If we use our will to overcome temptation, we suffer the loss of something we desire; if we yield, we may achieve a lesser good but lose a higher, and suffering will be a consequence. We suffer physical evil without using choice; we suffer when we do use choice. We can’t win!
The problematical character of our state is made even more plain when we consider that gladly willing what is good is painless; the only time free will actually raises its ugly head is when we want something we shouldn’t. At that point, and only at that point, does the freedom of the will actually matter, and when we then exercise it rightly, we will suffer the loss of something we want—even if it’s nothing more than simple peace and quiet. Real decision-making is always painful—because it only matters when it is!
The human problem is that we find ourselves between the rock and the hard place. But this paradoxical situation actually has a catch. When we suffer gladly, whether it is involuntary pain or the pain imposed by our own right choices, a transformation takes place within us that is very difficult to describe but quite real. It is also cumulative. We change. Something takes place within us. We grow. The converse is also true. If, on the whole, we avoid pain at any cost and live for the moment, if we harden our conscience so that the echoes of the collateral damage we cause are less obvious and audible, we also diminish. That process is also cumulative. Here I’m talking about obvious truths readily observable in every possible category of activity, be it the neglect of body, maintenance, relationships, economies, you name it.
One interesting upshot of such a contemplation is that it produces an alternative model of reality as well. One that I’ve suggested a number of times before is that an order of the soul may have become voluntarily entangled in matter, drawn by its appetite for new experience. But another one is that the dimension in which we find ourselves is meant to serve development—the development of a higher form of that which we are. This is the model of life on earth as a school of hard knocks. The hard knocks will temper us and raise us to a higher level in a spiraling course of development—or, conversely, cause us to slide downward. We may be participating in this process voluntarily, as the Mazdean religion teaches, for example; or we may be here for correction, which is compatible with the Christian view. But, in any case, we must be prepared for the assaults of passion—be they pleasurable or just plain suffering.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
What's the Problem?
Why is “the problem of evil” such common currency in Western thought? We find it in theology and also in popular outcries: “How could a just God permit something like this?” There is even a highly developed branch of philosophy specifically devoted to the subject, theodicy, a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in light of the existence of evil.
I’m somewhat addicted to looking up etymologies because they help me understand what people once meant when they first coined words. Theodicy comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and for right or justice (dike), hence god-justification or god-defense. But let’s move on. The need for theodicy arises because Christian theology developed an elaborate specification of God’s attributes over the medieval centuries; these attributes included omniscience, omnipotence, and absolute goodness. Based on the Judaic transmission, viewed as divine revelation—thus God’s own self-disclosure—Christian theology also pictures God as the sources and creator of everything by a conscious and deliberate act. The problem of evil develops out of this definitional enterprise. When we apply our reasoning here, it becomes very easy to see that a Being of such overwhelming power and superiority must be responsible for evil in the world. And here arises the problem.
Aristotle suggested that unless we begin with a law of non-contradiction, we cannot know anything. That principle, in Aristotle’s words is that “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect.”† The presence of evil in the world contradicts God’s overwhelming and original power and goodness. This then sets out the issues that theodicy then proceeds to explain so that the contradiction is removed.
In the West the name most closely associated with theodicy is that of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). He wrote Théodicée, evidently coining the word. In the manner of that time a one-word title was rarely used. The full version is Essays of theodicy on the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. The essence is already in the title, and the theme, crassly summarized, is that God created the best of all possible worlds; in that world freedom is present as a perfection—without it, after all, the world would be a mere deterministic machine. But once you make room for freedom—all hell breaks out. Not Leibniz’s actual words, I hasten to add, but a phrase that sticks in the mind. Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the Sufi philosopher, is sometimes credited with having said the same thing; Ghazali said something like that, but his context was different. Speaking of the world he said: “It is not possible that there is something better, more perfect, more complete.” He was not philosophizing but commenting on God’s transcendence. One source is here.
Deriving evil, particularly moral evil, from the presence of freedom is a potent argument. It serves as theodicy in that God gave created agencies freedom, which is a good. The evil arises from its abuse. That an omniscient God would know in advance that freedom will be abused and will thus produce suffering and pain—that God should therefore have denied his creatures freedom—represents more of the same presumption that those indulged in who began giving God all kinds of attributes in the first place. My personal inclination is to adhere to another western tradition, negative theology. This formulation has its roots in Neoplatonism, ultimately pointing back to Plato and his school. Augustine, within the Christian fold, leaned in this direction too. The Kabbalists also share this view. It is that the reality of God really is transcending. You cannot know anything about it. For people like us there is just as much evil as for the other side, but there is no problem of evil because it is pure presumption in us to try to pin it on the Absolute.
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†Metaphysics, IV 3 1005b19–20.
I’m somewhat addicted to looking up etymologies because they help me understand what people once meant when they first coined words. Theodicy comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and for right or justice (dike), hence god-justification or god-defense. But let’s move on. The need for theodicy arises because Christian theology developed an elaborate specification of God’s attributes over the medieval centuries; these attributes included omniscience, omnipotence, and absolute goodness. Based on the Judaic transmission, viewed as divine revelation—thus God’s own self-disclosure—Christian theology also pictures God as the sources and creator of everything by a conscious and deliberate act. The problem of evil develops out of this definitional enterprise. When we apply our reasoning here, it becomes very easy to see that a Being of such overwhelming power and superiority must be responsible for evil in the world. And here arises the problem.
Aristotle suggested that unless we begin with a law of non-contradiction, we cannot know anything. That principle, in Aristotle’s words is that “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect.”† The presence of evil in the world contradicts God’s overwhelming and original power and goodness. This then sets out the issues that theodicy then proceeds to explain so that the contradiction is removed.
In the West the name most closely associated with theodicy is that of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). He wrote Théodicée, evidently coining the word. In the manner of that time a one-word title was rarely used. The full version is Essays of theodicy on the goodness of God, the freedom of man and the origin of evil. The essence is already in the title, and the theme, crassly summarized, is that God created the best of all possible worlds; in that world freedom is present as a perfection—without it, after all, the world would be a mere deterministic machine. But once you make room for freedom—all hell breaks out. Not Leibniz’s actual words, I hasten to add, but a phrase that sticks in the mind. Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), the Sufi philosopher, is sometimes credited with having said the same thing; Ghazali said something like that, but his context was different. Speaking of the world he said: “It is not possible that there is something better, more perfect, more complete.” He was not philosophizing but commenting on God’s transcendence. One source is here.
Deriving evil, particularly moral evil, from the presence of freedom is a potent argument. It serves as theodicy in that God gave created agencies freedom, which is a good. The evil arises from its abuse. That an omniscient God would know in advance that freedom will be abused and will thus produce suffering and pain—that God should therefore have denied his creatures freedom—represents more of the same presumption that those indulged in who began giving God all kinds of attributes in the first place. My personal inclination is to adhere to another western tradition, negative theology. This formulation has its roots in Neoplatonism, ultimately pointing back to Plato and his school. Augustine, within the Christian fold, leaned in this direction too. The Kabbalists also share this view. It is that the reality of God really is transcending. You cannot know anything about it. For people like us there is just as much evil as for the other side, but there is no problem of evil because it is pure presumption in us to try to pin it on the Absolute.
——————————
†Metaphysics, IV 3 1005b19–20.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Two Faces of Janus
To continue for a little longer on the subject of morality, it strikes me that ethics may be pictured as the Roman god called Janus, a figure with two faces looking in two directions. Janus was the god of gates, of entries (alas, perhaps of border regions too) looking back and ahead. We get our January from this figure because Janus was also the god of endings and beginnings. But my purpose in using the symbol here is to emphasize that the ethical impulse we carry within us is at every step opposed by contrary impulses. Nothing is better known. That is why ethics gets the emphasis it does. No one preaches that we should eat or breathe. That, sire, (as Samuel Johnson might say), you can be sure shall be accomplished.
I concluded the last posting by pointing out that the moral impulse in us indicates a vector, a direction, some place we wish to reach: one face of ethics. Its other face is the resistance to this impulse everywhere manifest and at so deep a level that in the Christian tradition we call it original sin. Janus is a very good symbol for summing up the confusions and contradictions of “being of two minds”; no sooner decided on a path than the other mind has a better idea—and the struggle, therefore, is endemic. As Goethe aptly said:
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,In the cosmic models I’ve discussed in other posts, the notion of one order entering and becoming entangled in another serves as an explanation of why life as we know it, a purposive striving, exists in a universe where nothing analogous is visible to us. The ethical impulse is thus that which “lifts from the dust” and the “savage love-lust” is the other face of our experience which clings desperately to the world. We may very well have this two-faced duality because we only see the one clearly, the world; and the other one, the domain of our origins, we see very dimly by intuition only. We cling to the familiar; we do so in ordinary life as well; we do so even when it is suboptimal; the new seems dangerous. So we cling. But something in us, a secret knowledge we can’t quite grasp firmly enough, tells to go on. Hence the struggle. The curious aspects of this suspension between two realities, only one of which we clearly see, is that the explanation of our entanglement in matter will probably become known to us only after we’ve managed to escape it.
One wills to part itself from the other,
One holds fast with savage love-lust
To the world with hard organic force,
The other lifts itself by power from the dust
To the domains of higher ancestors.
[Faust, Act I.]
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Image courtesy of this site concerned with Freemasonry.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Ethics, Morality, and Custom
O tempora! O mores! [Cicero]The concept of morality, which as a child I encountered as rooted in divine commandment, therefore of transcendental origin, acquired that special sense during the Christian centuries of our civilization. Our own form of that word was coined by Marcus Tullius Cicero [104-43 BC]; Cicero was seeking a good translation of the Greek word ethikos, meaning exactly the same thing as morality. The Greek itself came from ethos, meaning “custom” or “usage,”; hence if we wished to use a word equivalent to Cicero’s moralis, we ought to translate it as “customary.” The Latin for customs, of course, is mores, singular mos. The Latin moralitas was a later addition used in ecclesiastical Latin.
Now, to be sure, customs change, and long before Cicero already the concept had taken on pretty much the same transcendental flavor I tasted as a child, namely as a higher law or standard—illustrated by Cicero’s own sighing comment above: “Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!”—implying that they had deteriorated from a permanent and higher standard up in the sky. Similarly, an additional meaning of ethos is “character,” a concept humanity has always treated as a permanent and enduring state. A person whose behavior undergoes frequent and abrupt changes in response to circumstances is not considered to have character but a lack thereof. I still remember the contemptuous flavor of the German adjective charakterlos, meaning, literally, character-less; those so designated were, indeed, beneath contempt.
This brief definitional walk-around the subject thus shows the curious duality of the moral, as something usual, accustomed, sanctioned, relied upon, and practiced by an entire society, the mores—as well as a permanent standard from which individuals and groups can deviate with regrettable results.
What I detect here is an interesting indication (as in the sense of “economic indicator”) of the real rooting of morality—not at all in custom, although that’s where we anchor the words we use—but in some permanent quality of the inner agent that we are beneath the flesh and bones. Down there in the invisible self we have an innate perception of right and wrong, good and bad. We also, obviously, collectively favor one side of this duality; if we didn’t then the notion of customs could not have become intimately associated with morality. We favor the good for practical as well as transcending reasons. It is the indicator of the vector that we are trying to follow in our collective quest. I have attempted to sketch various cosmic models to indicate where that vector points, namely to some possibly lost state of greater happiness or higher development lost because we erred.
Another and concluding note on this subject. The whole concept of “situation ethics” is based on the denial of absolute moral standards; thus Cicero’s plaint about the tempora would have to be viewed as whining and sentimentality. Whatever the mores are, that is what they are. They evolve with circumstances and are defined pretty much by what some majority concludes is good. Someone out here on the edge of the Borderzone might wonder: “Is that, perhaps, how we came to be in this vale of tears in the first place?”
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Random Element in Borderline Phenomena
The word stochastic, nowadays routinely used as a synonym for random, comes from the Greek root for the word “guess” or “aim.” Since guesses have a hit-and-miss character, the association with randomness is natural. In the realm of psychic powers—certainly one of the routes of access into the Borderzone—on-and-off performance is usual; moreover, even those who’ve learned to trust these abilities have major difficulties confirming them. Outer events must come to the aid of the experience. An example will make this plain. Suppose that you find yourself thinking of somebody you haven’t thought of in a while. If five minutes later the telephone rings and that person is on the other end of the line, saying: “It’s been a while,” the case for either telepathy or precognition may be inferred. But suppose that no one calls. In that case a telepathic contact may still have taken place—but there is no way to tell for sure.
In the world of paranormal research, it is common knowledge that a phenomenon of decay takes place. A particular test or procedure, say a remote viewing experiment, will have very good results at first, meaning statistically significant results above a chance distribution, but, with time, and often when more subjects are drawn into the experiment, results not only decay but may, in fact, develop a negative significance: they become worse than chance would predict. This phenomenon, along with the general rarity and weakness of psi phenomena, is presently at the forefront of some investigations in the paranormal field. A leading and very original figure is J.E. Kennedy. A link to Kennedy’s important papers is here; anyone wishing to delve into this subject in some depth might learn a great deal from the contents.
As Kennedy astutely notes, the very character of the psi phenomenon may be viewed in a positive way rather than as an obstacle by serving as an indicator of the nature of this phenomenon. We have to ask ourselves why it is that psi phenomena are weak, unreliable at times, stunningly accurate at others, and not only rare but on-again and off-again. Some hypothetical models of reality accommodate this phenomenon better than others. Therefore the missy or lossy character of the psychic is itself a kind of evidence.
It is also very exploitable—for gain. People use the paranormal to gain money and attention; some use it to attract those people who want to be stimulated, entertained, or reassured; others exploit the field as a target for debunking. The number of skeptical sites on the web is almost as large as the number of flaky or commercial promoters. This exploitive activity (it’s a free country, it’s a free market) makes it quite difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Whether in the library or on the Internet, the same confusion reigns. Those who want to penetrate to the core of this matter in a genuine quest to understand are a tiny minority with very limited resources.
The Rorschach inkblots, used in psychiatric practices to induce spontaneous reactions from patients, viscerally demonstrate how the paranormal range of experiences can be used “for profit,” as it were. The inkblot shown (courtesy of Wikipedia, here) has a purely ambiguous meaning—if any. Similarly, psychic experiences, while they have an outer story and a meaning, are scientifically ambiguous precisely because they are subjective, stochastic and therefore resistant to repetition and experimental verification, and therefore uncertain. Such experiences are also, I must underline, opaque to the psychic as well in one sense: the psychic is no wiser about the regions from which visions or cognitions come than those who hear the psychic’s pronouncements. The field therefore serves as a general-purpose ink blot in which believers and skeptics both can see what they please.
My own approach is based on understanding the patterns of things. It is a structural approach. I am inclined to imagine how reality might be structured to accommodate all of the observable phenomena within it—not least the experiences of psychics but also those of the believers and the skeptics—and those of organic nature, of the inorganic, and so on. This preoccupation, entirely not-for-profit, is motivated by curiosity. What I get is useless knowledge, in the usual sense of the word. But it is useful to me—and in the public domain because others like me might find it equally…useless. In future posts I’ll go deeper into aspects of the paranormal from this perspective—trying to see where pieces of it might fit a pattern.
In the world of paranormal research, it is common knowledge that a phenomenon of decay takes place. A particular test or procedure, say a remote viewing experiment, will have very good results at first, meaning statistically significant results above a chance distribution, but, with time, and often when more subjects are drawn into the experiment, results not only decay but may, in fact, develop a negative significance: they become worse than chance would predict. This phenomenon, along with the general rarity and weakness of psi phenomena, is presently at the forefront of some investigations in the paranormal field. A leading and very original figure is J.E. Kennedy. A link to Kennedy’s important papers is here; anyone wishing to delve into this subject in some depth might learn a great deal from the contents.
As Kennedy astutely notes, the very character of the psi phenomenon may be viewed in a positive way rather than as an obstacle by serving as an indicator of the nature of this phenomenon. We have to ask ourselves why it is that psi phenomena are weak, unreliable at times, stunningly accurate at others, and not only rare but on-again and off-again. Some hypothetical models of reality accommodate this phenomenon better than others. Therefore the missy or lossy character of the psychic is itself a kind of evidence.
It is also very exploitable—for gain. People use the paranormal to gain money and attention; some use it to attract those people who want to be stimulated, entertained, or reassured; others exploit the field as a target for debunking. The number of skeptical sites on the web is almost as large as the number of flaky or commercial promoters. This exploitive activity (it’s a free country, it’s a free market) makes it quite difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Whether in the library or on the Internet, the same confusion reigns. Those who want to penetrate to the core of this matter in a genuine quest to understand are a tiny minority with very limited resources.
The Rorschach inkblots, used in psychiatric practices to induce spontaneous reactions from patients, viscerally demonstrate how the paranormal range of experiences can be used “for profit,” as it were. The inkblot shown (courtesy of Wikipedia, here) has a purely ambiguous meaning—if any. Similarly, psychic experiences, while they have an outer story and a meaning, are scientifically ambiguous precisely because they are subjective, stochastic and therefore resistant to repetition and experimental verification, and therefore uncertain. Such experiences are also, I must underline, opaque to the psychic as well in one sense: the psychic is no wiser about the regions from which visions or cognitions come than those who hear the psychic’s pronouncements. The field therefore serves as a general-purpose ink blot in which believers and skeptics both can see what they please.
My own approach is based on understanding the patterns of things. It is a structural approach. I am inclined to imagine how reality might be structured to accommodate all of the observable phenomena within it—not least the experiences of psychics but also those of the believers and the skeptics—and those of organic nature, of the inorganic, and so on. This preoccupation, entirely not-for-profit, is motivated by curiosity. What I get is useless knowledge, in the usual sense of the word. But it is useful to me—and in the public domain because others like me might find it equally…useless. In future posts I’ll go deeper into aspects of the paranormal from this perspective—trying to see where pieces of it might fit a pattern.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Communications III: People with Paranormal Talents
When we hear about people with paranormal gifts, can we say that they “communicate with the beyond”? I’ve had a few (fewer than five) unambiguous experiences of telepathy. In these experiences communications reached me, but invariably from living people, thus persons alive and well in the ordinary physical order. I’ve had one unambiguous dream of the future, reported here. Its content dealt with a future event in my ordinary life. Nevertheless—but stretching the concepts quite a bit—I include the experiences of people with paranormal talents as pointing at the beyond, not necessarily in the sense of communicating with it but in the sense of entering it temporarily in some way in order to recover information useful in this dimension.
What do I mean by such people? I include psychics and saints of a certain type, specifically those (of the latter) who’re able to heal, see the future, and read minds. In this category I also put people in whose vicinity strange things happen beyond healings: they can find lost things; they appear somehow to arrange things so that problems are solved; etc. The powers of these people range from relatively low to rather spectacular; some few are able to control them better; these individuals can also hide them at will. Saints with gifts are most certainly functionally psychics; they are called saints because they stem from intensely religious cultures or subcultures; they also tend to assign their gifts to supernatural agencies. As do some psychics, of course. I’m sure that we are dealing here with a clustering of experiences that arise everywhere. The interpretation of these experiences—by those who have them and by society—are culturally determined. Cultures in which concepts like “psychic” or “saint” have no currency have their own labels. But descriptions of these people match those found in the West.
Are these people real—or are they faking? I’ve no doubt that they are real. The only reason some few charlatans pretend to have powers is because such powers exist in others and collective knowledge and memory testifies to their deeds. You’ve got to have the real before the imitators make their appearance. Of course they are present—and a good thing too. What would the skeptics do without them?
Problems surround this field. Psychic powers are rarely if ever under the full control of people who have them. The weaker the power the more stochastic it is. In the exercise of these powers, the counterparties involved also need some kind of talent. Even the great healers cannot heal everyone. “Faith” must be present. But faith in this sense is itself a paranormal power, not just a strong thought that willfully asserts: “I believe. I do!” These matters unfold beneath the level of rational mentation. For these reasons psychic detectives, to use an example, do not invariably solve every crime. If they did, such detectives would be in very great demand and pull down very high salaries. But that some psychic detectives, in some instances, do solve hopelessly deadlocked cases is also true.
The presence of such people in the population and the exercise of these powers, when they do work, do seem to me to substantiate the hypothesis that it is possible temporarily to step out of the physical order, temporarily to gain visions from another perspective, and (and especially in the case of healings) bring energies to bear that can produce “miraculous” effects. If you assume, as I do, that two orders are involved, one placed above the other but each one governed by real laws of the universe, then the term “miraculous” loses its sense of “arbitrary intervention by agencies” out of this world. My own interest in these matters is strictly limited to understanding. I don’t seek such powers and all that is imagined to go with them. Most of the people who have such powers in much greater measure than the ordinary human could probably tell you all the hardships that go with a talent that “bloweth where it listeth” as John’s Gospel speaks of the spirit, as of the wind, in 3:8. What I conclude from the presence of these people with paranormal talents is that we are living on the edges of another order; we are generally shielded from it (understood either positively or negatively), but certain arrangements in our make-up permit us sometimes to act from or with the aid of phenomena accessible there.
Now a comment or two about the specific concept of “communications.” In the case of psychics generally, one does not encounter the claim of communications with spirits. Whatever range of the beyond the psychics reach, it is not evidently populated by spirits. The saints, to be sure, experience visions and communications with transcendental figures, but the content of these messages is almost always of a moral or theological portent. There is one famed exception. It is the case of Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth century scientist-seer who claimed to have visited heaven and hell, to have held converse with the angels, indeed to have communicated with the departed. Swedenborg, however, is a very special case and requires separate consideration.
What do I mean by such people? I include psychics and saints of a certain type, specifically those (of the latter) who’re able to heal, see the future, and read minds. In this category I also put people in whose vicinity strange things happen beyond healings: they can find lost things; they appear somehow to arrange things so that problems are solved; etc. The powers of these people range from relatively low to rather spectacular; some few are able to control them better; these individuals can also hide them at will. Saints with gifts are most certainly functionally psychics; they are called saints because they stem from intensely religious cultures or subcultures; they also tend to assign their gifts to supernatural agencies. As do some psychics, of course. I’m sure that we are dealing here with a clustering of experiences that arise everywhere. The interpretation of these experiences—by those who have them and by society—are culturally determined. Cultures in which concepts like “psychic” or “saint” have no currency have their own labels. But descriptions of these people match those found in the West.
Are these people real—or are they faking? I’ve no doubt that they are real. The only reason some few charlatans pretend to have powers is because such powers exist in others and collective knowledge and memory testifies to their deeds. You’ve got to have the real before the imitators make their appearance. Of course they are present—and a good thing too. What would the skeptics do without them?
Problems surround this field. Psychic powers are rarely if ever under the full control of people who have them. The weaker the power the more stochastic it is. In the exercise of these powers, the counterparties involved also need some kind of talent. Even the great healers cannot heal everyone. “Faith” must be present. But faith in this sense is itself a paranormal power, not just a strong thought that willfully asserts: “I believe. I do!” These matters unfold beneath the level of rational mentation. For these reasons psychic detectives, to use an example, do not invariably solve every crime. If they did, such detectives would be in very great demand and pull down very high salaries. But that some psychic detectives, in some instances, do solve hopelessly deadlocked cases is also true.
The presence of such people in the population and the exercise of these powers, when they do work, do seem to me to substantiate the hypothesis that it is possible temporarily to step out of the physical order, temporarily to gain visions from another perspective, and (and especially in the case of healings) bring energies to bear that can produce “miraculous” effects. If you assume, as I do, that two orders are involved, one placed above the other but each one governed by real laws of the universe, then the term “miraculous” loses its sense of “arbitrary intervention by agencies” out of this world. My own interest in these matters is strictly limited to understanding. I don’t seek such powers and all that is imagined to go with them. Most of the people who have such powers in much greater measure than the ordinary human could probably tell you all the hardships that go with a talent that “bloweth where it listeth” as John’s Gospel speaks of the spirit, as of the wind, in 3:8. What I conclude from the presence of these people with paranormal talents is that we are living on the edges of another order; we are generally shielded from it (understood either positively or negatively), but certain arrangements in our make-up permit us sometimes to act from or with the aid of phenomena accessible there.
Now a comment or two about the specific concept of “communications.” In the case of psychics generally, one does not encounter the claim of communications with spirits. Whatever range of the beyond the psychics reach, it is not evidently populated by spirits. The saints, to be sure, experience visions and communications with transcendental figures, but the content of these messages is almost always of a moral or theological portent. There is one famed exception. It is the case of Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth century scientist-seer who claimed to have visited heaven and hell, to have held converse with the angels, indeed to have communicated with the departed. Swedenborg, however, is a very special case and requires separate consideration.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Communications II
In the spiritualistic context, communications are understood as messages between two agents, one embodied and one a spirit—with the medium acting as an enabler or intervenor. Here the activity is equivalent to “conversation” or to “exchange.” But what is it that is being exchanged? Meanings capable of being rendered into concepts.
In ordinary experience, however, we also encounter all kinds of other forms of communication that don’t display real-time “give-and-take” characteristics. Examples are signs and broadcasts. These are messages put out by an agency on purpose; the message has a meaning; but when it is issued, no one in particular is being addressed; the target is everyone in general. These broadcasts are in the “Hear ye, hear ye!” category. They also convey concepts. The message may be spoken or written or may simply be an image, thus a left-pointing arrow to indicate a sharp curve on a highway.
A particularly interesting form of this “broadcast-style” communication is music. For purposes of discussion, let’s eliminate words set to music as in songs or operas and stick to pure compositions of sound. These musical messages have structure. In that they aren’t random noise, they have meaning. If we stick to clear and obvious forms, we can identify the seeming intention behind the music, or its the content. It may be rousing, martial, passionate, pastoral, sensuous, innocent-childish, tense (used in movies), lulling, exalted, transcending, and so on and so forth. Music therefore has a meaningful content usually labeled as emotional. The feelings aroused are a good match for other experience that produce the same emotions. Yet another way of looking at music is to see it as a structured form of energy. Its conceptual content is diffused; its feeling content is concentrated. Within the boundaries of the emotion, the listener can apply any number of fitting concepts to the sound. To put this more emphatically, the individual who hears the music is free to interpret it conceptually using his or her own ideas as they happen to occur. The ideas are not explicitly present in the music, but the music is compatible with the ideas. An eerie, tense piece of music may be added to a ghost-movie, a spy-thriller, the story of a lovable dog about to encounter a snake, a marital conflict, and on and on. The eerie music, however, is incompatible with love-scenes or birthday parties or the birth of a baby—unless the newborn just happens to be Damian.
I’ve gone in this direction—broadcasting, music—by way of introducing a speculation. It is that meaningful flows of energy, thus structured forms of energy, may be reaching us in this dimension from the order of the soul. I don’t conceive of these as coming from active agencies, thus angels or demons; others use yet other words for immaterial agents. I think of these flows as part of the normal environment of the soul-order, flows that have a dynamic behavior. The individual’s inner state can draw such energies towards itself; if the inner state is high, it will draw high energies; if the state is low, it will draw negative forms of the same energy appropriately structured.
Now here I’m really reaching, thus I’m engaging in pure speculation, but I think that experience provides a foundation of evidence for it. To give that experience a recognizable name, let me call it inspiration. Everyone experiences inspiration, but it is particularly obvious to those engaged in the arts. You have a general idea, a feeling and a fuzzy concept of what it is you’re trying to express. And suddenly the inspiration is right there. The hands start moving, images begin to flash, the words begin to flow. This last process, a reaction to the inspiration, is the action of the person, I believe. But the inspiration that triggers it is energy attracted by the inward groping of the agent’s will. Inspiration will flow—if the individual is at all in a listening state. But the result is due to the individual. A confused, unskilled, careless person will produce a chaotic sort of work, no matter how strong the inspiration is. The highly skilled, intelligent, and disciplined person will produce a fine piece of work even from a faintly-perceived inspiration. Great works of art signal very high gifts, very deep listening, and very strong flows from the beyond.
With this I have at least outlined how communication from the beyond, from another order, reaches ordinary people on more or less a daily basis. This is a hypothesis, of course. The reason why I find it plausible is because I’m certain that our consciousness, mind, soul—you name it—originates elsewhere and, in its normal operation, it uses energies from its native order even on the material plane. What we call inspiration is the noticeable manifestation of this linkage. It may very well be present in many other ways of which we remain unaware. One of the reasons why we notice it is because it surprises us. We get the most wondrous ideas when we are “in the zone,” as the phrase has it. We know full well what kinds of results we usually get. Great art, even a fortunate poem, is inexplicable in the ordinary way.
Some individuals are quite dense and “hear” very little of this heavenly music; at the other extreme are very gifted people who literally swim in the current. Being closed or open to the flow does not automatically translate into tangible achievements. Two factors are involved. To be effective in translating the inspiration, the individual must be competent in the tooling of this world as well. It did not in the least surprise me, therefore, that in Sufi teachings—one of the most mystical approaches to reality—the minimum qualification of the initiate is that he or she should be a “householder,” meaning somebody who’s already proved his or her competence in getting things done in the real world.
In ordinary experience, however, we also encounter all kinds of other forms of communication that don’t display real-time “give-and-take” characteristics. Examples are signs and broadcasts. These are messages put out by an agency on purpose; the message has a meaning; but when it is issued, no one in particular is being addressed; the target is everyone in general. These broadcasts are in the “Hear ye, hear ye!” category. They also convey concepts. The message may be spoken or written or may simply be an image, thus a left-pointing arrow to indicate a sharp curve on a highway.
A particularly interesting form of this “broadcast-style” communication is music. For purposes of discussion, let’s eliminate words set to music as in songs or operas and stick to pure compositions of sound. These musical messages have structure. In that they aren’t random noise, they have meaning. If we stick to clear and obvious forms, we can identify the seeming intention behind the music, or its the content. It may be rousing, martial, passionate, pastoral, sensuous, innocent-childish, tense (used in movies), lulling, exalted, transcending, and so on and so forth. Music therefore has a meaningful content usually labeled as emotional. The feelings aroused are a good match for other experience that produce the same emotions. Yet another way of looking at music is to see it as a structured form of energy. Its conceptual content is diffused; its feeling content is concentrated. Within the boundaries of the emotion, the listener can apply any number of fitting concepts to the sound. To put this more emphatically, the individual who hears the music is free to interpret it conceptually using his or her own ideas as they happen to occur. The ideas are not explicitly present in the music, but the music is compatible with the ideas. An eerie, tense piece of music may be added to a ghost-movie, a spy-thriller, the story of a lovable dog about to encounter a snake, a marital conflict, and on and on. The eerie music, however, is incompatible with love-scenes or birthday parties or the birth of a baby—unless the newborn just happens to be Damian.
I’ve gone in this direction—broadcasting, music—by way of introducing a speculation. It is that meaningful flows of energy, thus structured forms of energy, may be reaching us in this dimension from the order of the soul. I don’t conceive of these as coming from active agencies, thus angels or demons; others use yet other words for immaterial agents. I think of these flows as part of the normal environment of the soul-order, flows that have a dynamic behavior. The individual’s inner state can draw such energies towards itself; if the inner state is high, it will draw high energies; if the state is low, it will draw negative forms of the same energy appropriately structured.
Now here I’m really reaching, thus I’m engaging in pure speculation, but I think that experience provides a foundation of evidence for it. To give that experience a recognizable name, let me call it inspiration. Everyone experiences inspiration, but it is particularly obvious to those engaged in the arts. You have a general idea, a feeling and a fuzzy concept of what it is you’re trying to express. And suddenly the inspiration is right there. The hands start moving, images begin to flash, the words begin to flow. This last process, a reaction to the inspiration, is the action of the person, I believe. But the inspiration that triggers it is energy attracted by the inward groping of the agent’s will. Inspiration will flow—if the individual is at all in a listening state. But the result is due to the individual. A confused, unskilled, careless person will produce a chaotic sort of work, no matter how strong the inspiration is. The highly skilled, intelligent, and disciplined person will produce a fine piece of work even from a faintly-perceived inspiration. Great works of art signal very high gifts, very deep listening, and very strong flows from the beyond.
With this I have at least outlined how communication from the beyond, from another order, reaches ordinary people on more or less a daily basis. This is a hypothesis, of course. The reason why I find it plausible is because I’m certain that our consciousness, mind, soul—you name it—originates elsewhere and, in its normal operation, it uses energies from its native order even on the material plane. What we call inspiration is the noticeable manifestation of this linkage. It may very well be present in many other ways of which we remain unaware. One of the reasons why we notice it is because it surprises us. We get the most wondrous ideas when we are “in the zone,” as the phrase has it. We know full well what kinds of results we usually get. Great art, even a fortunate poem, is inexplicable in the ordinary way.
Some individuals are quite dense and “hear” very little of this heavenly music; at the other extreme are very gifted people who literally swim in the current. Being closed or open to the flow does not automatically translate into tangible achievements. Two factors are involved. To be effective in translating the inspiration, the individual must be competent in the tooling of this world as well. It did not in the least surprise me, therefore, that in Sufi teachings—one of the most mystical approaches to reality—the minimum qualification of the initiate is that he or she should be a “householder,” meaning somebody who’s already proved his or her competence in getting things done in the real world.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Communications with the Beyond
Although the title will immediately suggest contacting the departed by the mediation of a medium, I would suggest at least two other modes whereby communications from the soul-order beyond reach people. One mode is fairly routinely experienced and not viewed as unusual, transcendental, or weird in any way. The other one depends upon the extraordinary powers some few people develop or carry from early years. But let me first address the obvious, talking to the dead.
Spiritualistic Phenomena. Let me start here by explicitly expressing my own opinion on such communications so that those seeking positive reinforcement can avoid irritation and just click away to somewhere else. True: the rather extensive literature persuades me that such communications do indeed take place, but I’ve come to think of them as almost useless means of learning anything useful beyond knowledge much more easily obtained by other means—namely that another world (or worlds) beyond exist. The analogy I would suggests is learning something about China by means of interviewing derelicts and unfortunates on the margins of Chinese society in great cities like Shanghai, Beijing, or Hong Kong. Real mediums exist, I think, but the field is ripe with temptations to exploit gullible people. In the paranormal domain, spiritualism is almost impossible, therefore, to study in structured and rational ways.
I come to these conclusions for a number of reasons. What reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) suggest is that disembodied souls have a devil of a time communicating with the living—and the reason for this that I’ve suggested is that they lack access to the instruments by which to reach people in bodies. Those people are equally “blind,” as it were, to the other reality because the functioning of their bodies interferes with seeing the soul dimension. This suggests that unusual circumstances are required for any kind of communication. The central figure here becomes the medium. Virtually all mediums go into trances while they “channel” the other world. That word is suggestive. It suggests that the medium is a tool rather than an agency. The medium absents herself (most mediums are women). She gets out of the way. The spirit on the other side appears to take over the medium’s “instruments,” principally her vocal chords and, presumably, certain functions of her brain. Hence mediums often speak in strange voices. And there are rare cases where the other party in fact comments on the difficulties of using the medium’s body. Many mediums also make use (or are made use of by) a guide or a “control,” thus another spirit on the other side, who is well matched to the medium and in turns transmits information from a third party—the departed.
This suggests to me that some minimal form of at least partial possession is a necessary aspect of the spiritualistic phenomenon. A spirit must gain access to a living person; that person has to get out of the way, accomplished by the trance; then communications of a sort commence. The maintenance of this strange duality—two agencies using the same body—is difficult, chancy, and tiring to the medium. I for one see the medium’s gifts as ill-used in such communications for reasons that have to do with the other aspect of this phenomenon: its fundamentally banal content.
In years of looking at this phenomenon from time to time, I have yet to discover anywhere any information regarding the “beyond” which cannot be found with much less hocus-pocus in the writings of speculators, moralists, and other authors on values or cosmologies. There is nothing much there. What a person can discover is proof that life continues after this stint on earth, but for that we do not need to talk to some departed grandpa who still remembers the pet dog’s name. If the reader is interested in confirming this, I would suggest the excellent web site of SurvivalAfterDeath.org.uk accessible here. This site reproduces many original papers and extracts from the psychical literature reaching well into the nineteenth century; there is much else there as well on psychical research beyond spiritualism.
I will defer discussion of the other two categories of communications to future posts because this entry, as I observe, has already reached its appointed length.
Spiritualistic Phenomena. Let me start here by explicitly expressing my own opinion on such communications so that those seeking positive reinforcement can avoid irritation and just click away to somewhere else. True: the rather extensive literature persuades me that such communications do indeed take place, but I’ve come to think of them as almost useless means of learning anything useful beyond knowledge much more easily obtained by other means—namely that another world (or worlds) beyond exist. The analogy I would suggests is learning something about China by means of interviewing derelicts and unfortunates on the margins of Chinese society in great cities like Shanghai, Beijing, or Hong Kong. Real mediums exist, I think, but the field is ripe with temptations to exploit gullible people. In the paranormal domain, spiritualism is almost impossible, therefore, to study in structured and rational ways.
I come to these conclusions for a number of reasons. What reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) suggest is that disembodied souls have a devil of a time communicating with the living—and the reason for this that I’ve suggested is that they lack access to the instruments by which to reach people in bodies. Those people are equally “blind,” as it were, to the other reality because the functioning of their bodies interferes with seeing the soul dimension. This suggests that unusual circumstances are required for any kind of communication. The central figure here becomes the medium. Virtually all mediums go into trances while they “channel” the other world. That word is suggestive. It suggests that the medium is a tool rather than an agency. The medium absents herself (most mediums are women). She gets out of the way. The spirit on the other side appears to take over the medium’s “instruments,” principally her vocal chords and, presumably, certain functions of her brain. Hence mediums often speak in strange voices. And there are rare cases where the other party in fact comments on the difficulties of using the medium’s body. Many mediums also make use (or are made use of by) a guide or a “control,” thus another spirit on the other side, who is well matched to the medium and in turns transmits information from a third party—the departed.
This suggests to me that some minimal form of at least partial possession is a necessary aspect of the spiritualistic phenomenon. A spirit must gain access to a living person; that person has to get out of the way, accomplished by the trance; then communications of a sort commence. The maintenance of this strange duality—two agencies using the same body—is difficult, chancy, and tiring to the medium. I for one see the medium’s gifts as ill-used in such communications for reasons that have to do with the other aspect of this phenomenon: its fundamentally banal content.
In years of looking at this phenomenon from time to time, I have yet to discover anywhere any information regarding the “beyond” which cannot be found with much less hocus-pocus in the writings of speculators, moralists, and other authors on values or cosmologies. There is nothing much there. What a person can discover is proof that life continues after this stint on earth, but for that we do not need to talk to some departed grandpa who still remembers the pet dog’s name. If the reader is interested in confirming this, I would suggest the excellent web site of SurvivalAfterDeath.org.uk accessible here. This site reproduces many original papers and extracts from the psychical literature reaching well into the nineteenth century; there is much else there as well on psychical research beyond spiritualism.
I will defer discussion of the other two categories of communications to future posts because this entry, as I observe, has already reached its appointed length.
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