In Western cultural spheres we associate the miraculous with God. The word itself has much less explicit roots. In Latin it comes from “wonder,” or “to wonder at” (mirari). Translators of the Bible from the Greek used “miracle” for three Greek words that occur in scripture: “sign” (semeion), “wonder” (teras), and “power” (dynamis). Translated into Latin, in turn, these are signum, prodigium, and virtus. (My source is the ever-helpful Online Etymology Dictionary here).
I find this fascinating. The Latin-rooted “miracle” principally points to our reaction or emotion to something astonishing, thus to our wonder. But in Biblical reference that same word also points at sign, omen, or portent (all contained in the meaning of a prodigy). That meaning suggests a higher source beyond the visible without specifically naming it. Miracle is also used to translate power, but presumably a power unusual enough to be wondered at. To sum this up, a miracle suggests a message as well as an unusual power—and one or both elicit our wonder.
That this communication comes from God is an assumption—or a projection that we make. Nothing wrong there if “God” is used as a word to signify “the greater unexplained.” In our theologies, however, we have vastly expanded on that phrase and given this word many and dense meanings in addition. The mere presence of a miracle, however, does not identify the source of the sign or of the power in any explicit way. The traditional habit within Christendom, however, has been to assign this fact to God, and to define God from other sources as being such-and-such a Being. But I’d insist that our assignment of a phenomenon to a source is not a proof of the source.
C.S. Lewis provides a good example of a Christian apologist who uses Jesus’ miracles in efforts to prove that Jesus was God. What Christian traditions tell us is that Jesus performed miracles or that such occurred in his vicinity (the woman healed by touching his robe, for instance). Anything beyond that is a projection. In the Christian tradition miracles performed by saints or taking place in their vicinity are not used to assert that the saints themselves were God. Here, therefore, we have two very different ways of explaining the miraculous. In one case the person was divine. In all other cases, God was still at work, but the person was just an ordinary if a holy human being. The New Age would call the saint a “channel.”
We do not, of course, view miraculous events as natural events. They’re unexpected, unexplained, and extraordinary. Does that mean that God cancels the laws of nature he has himself ordained? That view introduces an arbitrary element into reality (at least as I see things). An alternative explanation of the miraculous may work equally well. It is that miraculous events represents manifestations of an order of nature not usually visible in our dimension but nonetheless still a natural power that is perfectly at home in this realm too—and that its source is a power (dynamis) not usually seen. The power develops in individuals whose actions (or mere presence) give expression to it. Here I would emphasize the plural. Many people have manifested such powers over time. Meanwhile the three definitions of the miraculous remain intact. The presence of this power is indeed a sign—of other realms of possibility. And our wonder is, of course, simply a reaction to the unusual.
The presence of this power has effects that seem to transcend nature—but miracles are signs, not conceptually framed messages. The doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, cannot be derived in any way from the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. What miracle makers do does not seamlessly support what miracle makers say. If a hard link existed between the doing and the saying, conceptually contradictory doctrines arising in different traditions would all have to be true, and Aristotle wouldn’t like that. Thus, for instance a trinitarian doctrine of Christianity and a unitarian doctrine in Islam would both be true in the same way and in the same respects. Miracles are associated with both traditions—indeed are reported in every religious tradition of humanity, some of which have yet other and awkward conceptual formulations of reality.
What miracles prove, as best as I can make it out, is that our concepts of the limits of nature are too narrowly drawn, that powers exist beyond what we consider normal, that their manifestations are associated with faculties that emerge in a few human beings, and that what these people say has merit, but not absolute divine sanction. That the miraculous is Good, and that by implication it also teaches The Good, is also clear to me. But the conceptual formulation of that good is a human construct always and ever strongly influenced by then prevailing knowledge and circumstances.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
If People are Genuine Agents . . .
A post on Siris here recently gave a fascinating if brief quote from a paper by Jeremy Waldron, of the New York University School of Law, entitled Image of God: Rights, Reason, and Order. The paper itself is accessible here, but to get it you have to download the paper with a click. The phrase in the title, Image of God, refers to Genesis where God is quoted saying, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Waldron examines this framing as the potential foundation for human rights—which is a rather refreshingly traditional look at a thoroughly modern notion, namely inalienable human rights. I’d never linked the two myself, revealing how alienated I’ve become from modernity—and it was therefore refreshing for me, too, to imagine that the endless hue and cry about rights might actually have something to do with a fundamental tenet of my own thought, namely that people are genuine agents, thus belong to another order than matter—which exhibits no agency at all.
By interesting coincidence, a C-Span discussion just a week or so ago about Economics and Environmentalism, both labeled secular religions, featured a theologian who, in commentary, cited the same verse in Genesis to speak about dominion. The verse is:
A third coincidence was a New York Times article today reporting that modern medicine has now succeeded in nearly fail-safe early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, producing a dilemma. Should the patient be told—especially in light of the still persistent incurability of the disease? To tell the patient is tantamount to announcing a sentence to senility. I got to thinking about that. The dilemma is deep indeed. If people are genuine agents, they have the right to know. They have the right to have an opportunity to make such arrangements as they still can in their outer and inner affairs before the disease claims them. They also have the right to refuse. But to refuse, they have to know something, don’t they? The problem is real. Is it right to impose a burden of responsibility on a person? I think yes. Because we are real agents, each and every one of us, and knowing is better, even when painful, than not. In the long run. And there is a longer run even beyond death.
The pleasing aspect here is that the times, they are a changing. Ever more frequently, you hear Reality discussed in the clear even in our media.
By interesting coincidence, a C-Span discussion just a week or so ago about Economics and Environmentalism, both labeled secular religions, featured a theologian who, in commentary, cited the same verse in Genesis to speak about dominion. The verse is:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Genesis 1:26.The theologian was at pains to point out that, in this verse, dominion meant caring and responsible oversight by a created being endowed with agency by the Highest—with emphasis on care and keeping rather than selfish exploitation for limited ends. Brigitte noticed this first and then drew my attention to it. I watched the replay with great pleasure. The traditional ways of seeing Reality are returning. You see and hear them on TV these days in the least expected places.
A third coincidence was a New York Times article today reporting that modern medicine has now succeeded in nearly fail-safe early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, producing a dilemma. Should the patient be told—especially in light of the still persistent incurability of the disease? To tell the patient is tantamount to announcing a sentence to senility. I got to thinking about that. The dilemma is deep indeed. If people are genuine agents, they have the right to know. They have the right to have an opportunity to make such arrangements as they still can in their outer and inner affairs before the disease claims them. They also have the right to refuse. But to refuse, they have to know something, don’t they? The problem is real. Is it right to impose a burden of responsibility on a person? I think yes. Because we are real agents, each and every one of us, and knowing is better, even when painful, than not. In the long run. And there is a longer run even beyond death.
The pleasing aspect here is that the times, they are a changing. Ever more frequently, you hear Reality discussed in the clear even in our media.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Realm of Shades
Many years ago already, long before the Internet dawned, I’d reached a kind of tentative conclusion. It was that the soul-realm nearest to ours is a subtle world, to be sure, but primitive or of a lower order. I based this solely on trying to understand why it is that the majority of mediums and psychics report nothing of interest from “over there.” When such psychics occasionally write book-length expositions, these books are thick with mounds of pious clichés. Mind you, I had also reached the conclusion that mediums do communicate with the beyond; some may be, but the majority are not frauds. But if I accept that they do—communicate—and with another realm—a good explanation for that might be that these psychics are mostly interacting with a lower realm—not with the peaks of the soul-order. Back in those days I also became acquainted with near-death experience (NDE) reports. The vast majority of those concern a distinctly superior realm; not all of them, mind you; but so-called “negative NDEs” tend to be kept out of books because reports like that would certainly dampen the sales of this new genre of spiritual literature. But I’m interested in reality, not in obtaining feelings of consolation. The very presence of negative NDEs also supports my view that lower realms exist—and probably closer to ours than the heavenly.
In the new age of the Internet, evidence for this conclusion has become much more readily available. Not only have populations become literate, but the web provides people an opportunity to share experience that (say in the eighteenth century) would never have reached print. Hundreds if not thousands of people with psychic gifts at various levels have web pages now; these are often linked to many others so that one has access to a huge deposit of raw data. The sites are extremely mixed in character, of course, but with the right background and a well-developed feel for such material, one can discover multiple sites where their authors are actually reporting experiences—and often skillfully enough to be enlightening.
Content of this kind tends to repel those culturally advanced—the very people who ought to take an interest. Few of the authors are educated in the round or deeply or have absorbed the western philosophical, literary, or scientific culture well enough to stand firm. By and large they’re off the reservation where the academically-trained are comfortable. Not that that surprises me. What proportion of the population is?—thus qualified, I mean. Moreover, many of these people have been coping with unusual abilities that society these days routinely and automatically classifies, minimally, as mental disorder. Therefore, on these sites, the authors keep saying, over and over again, that they are sane, well-adapted to ordinary life, employed, not crazy, not delusional, believe me, take my word for it, and other emphatic phrases no doubt occasioned by the social consensus which holds out a stiff arm in attempts to marginalize these people.
At the same time, and by way of contrast, to someone deeply steeped in the lore of the borderzone going as far back as we are able, in every culture around the globe, what these people have to say has a familiar ring. The very fact many of these people themselves are almost never familiar with ancient human traditions that say the same thing (although the labeling may be different) tells me that I’m reading about actual experience if couched in modern structures of reference. To point at one particular phenomenon, we might take the fact that humanity has always reported on demons and evil spirits, but in the modern setting these entities are rendered as alien abductors who perform unpleasant physical examinations aboard space ships. Ancient people—who’d never heard of aliens or space ships (space in our sense was not a concept for them)—used other language to report “encounters,” often negative, while they were in certain states.
I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the realms tradition labels as hell and heaven both have their basis in the actual experience of living people who, for some reason, are more open to the invisible dimension than the majority. NDEs and similar psychic experiences have painted the higher levels while ordinarily occurring psychic abilities have produced what humanity has called the underworld, Hades, hell, or the realm of shades. Are the shades that remain behind, as it were, the pool from which souls incarnate again? Is this a very populous realm? Does it take special energy—call it grace—for a soul to reach more paradisaical vistas? Is that famous tunnel we encounter in near-death reports a transit through a lower zone of shades? I wonder. But I’m not surprised that notions of a heavenly and of a darker world are universally found in human societies. There seems to be empirical evidence for them, even if not reported by a majority.
In the new age of the Internet, evidence for this conclusion has become much more readily available. Not only have populations become literate, but the web provides people an opportunity to share experience that (say in the eighteenth century) would never have reached print. Hundreds if not thousands of people with psychic gifts at various levels have web pages now; these are often linked to many others so that one has access to a huge deposit of raw data. The sites are extremely mixed in character, of course, but with the right background and a well-developed feel for such material, one can discover multiple sites where their authors are actually reporting experiences—and often skillfully enough to be enlightening.
Content of this kind tends to repel those culturally advanced—the very people who ought to take an interest. Few of the authors are educated in the round or deeply or have absorbed the western philosophical, literary, or scientific culture well enough to stand firm. By and large they’re off the reservation where the academically-trained are comfortable. Not that that surprises me. What proportion of the population is?—thus qualified, I mean. Moreover, many of these people have been coping with unusual abilities that society these days routinely and automatically classifies, minimally, as mental disorder. Therefore, on these sites, the authors keep saying, over and over again, that they are sane, well-adapted to ordinary life, employed, not crazy, not delusional, believe me, take my word for it, and other emphatic phrases no doubt occasioned by the social consensus which holds out a stiff arm in attempts to marginalize these people.
At the same time, and by way of contrast, to someone deeply steeped in the lore of the borderzone going as far back as we are able, in every culture around the globe, what these people have to say has a familiar ring. The very fact many of these people themselves are almost never familiar with ancient human traditions that say the same thing (although the labeling may be different) tells me that I’m reading about actual experience if couched in modern structures of reference. To point at one particular phenomenon, we might take the fact that humanity has always reported on demons and evil spirits, but in the modern setting these entities are rendered as alien abductors who perform unpleasant physical examinations aboard space ships. Ancient people—who’d never heard of aliens or space ships (space in our sense was not a concept for them)—used other language to report “encounters,” often negative, while they were in certain states.
I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the realms tradition labels as hell and heaven both have their basis in the actual experience of living people who, for some reason, are more open to the invisible dimension than the majority. NDEs and similar psychic experiences have painted the higher levels while ordinarily occurring psychic abilities have produced what humanity has called the underworld, Hades, hell, or the realm of shades. Are the shades that remain behind, as it were, the pool from which souls incarnate again? Is this a very populous realm? Does it take special energy—call it grace—for a soul to reach more paradisaical vistas? Is that famous tunnel we encounter in near-death reports a transit through a lower zone of shades? I wonder. But I’m not surprised that notions of a heavenly and of a darker world are universally found in human societies. There seems to be empirical evidence for them, even if not reported by a majority.
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Necessary “Over Against”
Sometimes, when I wake from a dream, the thought occurs: “Lord, I sure hope that life after death isn’t like dreaming.” The maddening aspect of dreaming is that there is no genuine “over against.” Everything appears to issue from the dreaming self—the scenery, the characters, the action. I do not consciously feel the process whereby this generation actually takes place; but what I sometimes become aware of is that I can modify the situation, never much but, yes, just a little, and always in my favor. Objects sometimes appear just when I need them; in my falling dreams I always manage to slow down and land smoothly, and so on. But these more or less conscious interventions are infrequent; and most of the time they wake me up.
Most characteristically of all, in dreams—where the environment is clearly unstable and unreal, however awesome, beautiful, confusing, or threatening—consciousness of the kind I call hard (thus a distanced, separated, observing, judging self-consciousness) is also entirely absent. That mental “over against” is also conspicuously lacking. And when it does awaken, as it tends to when things get really hoary, the dream is doomed to end like the descent of a lead curtain.
The substance of dreams is clearly thought, associative thought. It can be quite complex thought, thus for instance a memory of some situation which also holds within it the conscious reaction to it that I had when I first lived it. The judgments I made about the situation, e.g., “That’s awful,” do not display as an abstract judgment, however, but are mirrored back in the arrangements which I see in the dream, awful, ugly arrangements. A great power of image-forming thus seems to reside at a level below that of consciousness. Not surprisingly, therefore, the mediaeval view was that the imagination is part of the sensory apparatus. Notions like Henry Corbin’s that imagination is a higher, spiritual power are not thereby denied; his thought may be rendered by saying that imagination also has a higher form of which the dreaming brain’s uncanny skills are a lower manifestation.
The substance of dreams is unreal because they’re memories—but dynamically manipulated. The dream self is also just a memory of our self as an experiencer—and equally dynamically reactive. Memory must be functioning or else the dream would not be remembered; the emotions arise because the body dumbly reacts to what it sees with hormonal responses. These responses are quite the same as (although stronger) those we get reading a novel or watching a show. The core self, in such situations, withdraws but does not entirely go away—hence if some jarring element intrudes, we protest; if not, we feel the sudden withdrawal of the semi-dream state when the credits begin to roll. And we’ll move our bodies just a little by way of marking a kind of awakening.
All this of course makes a very strong case for the materialistic view of consciousness—as I’ve noted here before. I reject that explanation because it is incomplete and does not comprehensively explain the entirety of our experience. But the materialistic view is well-founded in partial observation. The frontal lobes are sleeping, and the primitive brain plays; or, watching a show, the frontal lobes at least relax to let us enjoy the drama.
But if I’m right the question then arises: Where is that core self when we undergo our convoluted and often quite bizarre dream-experiences? It might have to be absent so that the body can recover from the stress of real awareness. It might be absent because it too needs to be refreshed in an environment where the stresses of materiality are gone and it can then breathe freely, as it were. What I don’t buy is that self-consciousness is merely a brain function. But if it is, I certainly don’t have to worry about spending my after-life in the tohu va-bohu of the dream tale that never ends, never stops, and my stupid self can never trust the ground on which it treads.
Most characteristically of all, in dreams—where the environment is clearly unstable and unreal, however awesome, beautiful, confusing, or threatening—consciousness of the kind I call hard (thus a distanced, separated, observing, judging self-consciousness) is also entirely absent. That mental “over against” is also conspicuously lacking. And when it does awaken, as it tends to when things get really hoary, the dream is doomed to end like the descent of a lead curtain.
The substance of dreams is clearly thought, associative thought. It can be quite complex thought, thus for instance a memory of some situation which also holds within it the conscious reaction to it that I had when I first lived it. The judgments I made about the situation, e.g., “That’s awful,” do not display as an abstract judgment, however, but are mirrored back in the arrangements which I see in the dream, awful, ugly arrangements. A great power of image-forming thus seems to reside at a level below that of consciousness. Not surprisingly, therefore, the mediaeval view was that the imagination is part of the sensory apparatus. Notions like Henry Corbin’s that imagination is a higher, spiritual power are not thereby denied; his thought may be rendered by saying that imagination also has a higher form of which the dreaming brain’s uncanny skills are a lower manifestation.
The substance of dreams is unreal because they’re memories—but dynamically manipulated. The dream self is also just a memory of our self as an experiencer—and equally dynamically reactive. Memory must be functioning or else the dream would not be remembered; the emotions arise because the body dumbly reacts to what it sees with hormonal responses. These responses are quite the same as (although stronger) those we get reading a novel or watching a show. The core self, in such situations, withdraws but does not entirely go away—hence if some jarring element intrudes, we protest; if not, we feel the sudden withdrawal of the semi-dream state when the credits begin to roll. And we’ll move our bodies just a little by way of marking a kind of awakening.
All this of course makes a very strong case for the materialistic view of consciousness—as I’ve noted here before. I reject that explanation because it is incomplete and does not comprehensively explain the entirety of our experience. But the materialistic view is well-founded in partial observation. The frontal lobes are sleeping, and the primitive brain plays; or, watching a show, the frontal lobes at least relax to let us enjoy the drama.
But if I’m right the question then arises: Where is that core self when we undergo our convoluted and often quite bizarre dream-experiences? It might have to be absent so that the body can recover from the stress of real awareness. It might be absent because it too needs to be refreshed in an environment where the stresses of materiality are gone and it can then breathe freely, as it were. What I don’t buy is that self-consciousness is merely a brain function. But if it is, I certainly don’t have to worry about spending my after-life in the tohu va-bohu of the dream tale that never ends, never stops, and my stupid self can never trust the ground on which it treads.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Angels, Angels Everywhere
Last night, passing my bookcase on the way to bed, I sort of swept along a book I hadn’t looked at ever, it seemed, and it promised me a few thoughts to take into my dreaming. Angels, by Paola Giovetti, an Italian lady described on the Internet as a “giornalista e scrittirice, nata a Firenze risiede a Modena.” Just love the sound of that language. The book was published in 1993, a trade paperback with colored pictures and a text, priced then at $22.95. My library here evidently bought it immediately, but had already discarded it by December of that year—and I must have picked it up then. It’s been on my shelf since. I’ve discovered that my library resolutely tosses anything that hasn’t been checked out in five years—but some things, evidently, are shown the door much faster.
It turned out to be a sincere sort of work. Beautiful pictures, a text thoroughly footnoted, four pages of bibliography, nicely and carefully written to settle gently, as it descended, on all believers be they inspired by traditional religious faiths or the breath of the New Age…without either camp feeling the least possible unease. Hence, of course, everything is an angel. Serendipities hide them much as near death experiences unveil them. This produced a number of reactions in me—after I woke up this morning, not as I read. One was that the unseen reality is a perfect receiver of any kind of projection, much like brush-shadows are at twilight. The other was triggered by the discussion of guardian angles, regarding the curious nature of that concept. What an extremely boring assignment it would be to shadow and guide some fellow as he stumbles through his life trying to influence his actions while unable to compel him to do anything at all—because, as my author assures me, free will is God’s most precious gift to us. Words flow from the pen without at times stirring up even a single thought. Is it really logical to be given free will and also a guardian angel? Who cannot guard us or even mildly influence us if we’re inclined to make havoc? Does conscience need an administrative assistant?
Mind you, the book’s overall effect is positive. Indeed the book is well worth having.
The question in my mind is how really to account for the feeling that underlies this book and also renders its message acceptable to the average reader—not least to me.
What is the nature of that feeling? It is that a certain benevolence does really seem to be present in reality and actually does manifest, if only sometimes—in developments, events, and our experiences of them. There is a feeling, certainly present in me, suggesting something, some invisible field, something that does appear to communicate, yet without interfering. Serendipitous events are such communications. They have the character of confirmation: Yes. I am there!
This is the “ground” that calls for some kind of integration into the dismal daily. And some people search for the meaning and use the concept of the angel to build a picture. The reality, however, is not fleshed out by labeling certain experiential clusters with this name or that.
It turned out to be a sincere sort of work. Beautiful pictures, a text thoroughly footnoted, four pages of bibliography, nicely and carefully written to settle gently, as it descended, on all believers be they inspired by traditional religious faiths or the breath of the New Age…without either camp feeling the least possible unease. Hence, of course, everything is an angel. Serendipities hide them much as near death experiences unveil them. This produced a number of reactions in me—after I woke up this morning, not as I read. One was that the unseen reality is a perfect receiver of any kind of projection, much like brush-shadows are at twilight. The other was triggered by the discussion of guardian angles, regarding the curious nature of that concept. What an extremely boring assignment it would be to shadow and guide some fellow as he stumbles through his life trying to influence his actions while unable to compel him to do anything at all—because, as my author assures me, free will is God’s most precious gift to us. Words flow from the pen without at times stirring up even a single thought. Is it really logical to be given free will and also a guardian angel? Who cannot guard us or even mildly influence us if we’re inclined to make havoc? Does conscience need an administrative assistant?
Mind you, the book’s overall effect is positive. Indeed the book is well worth having.
The question in my mind is how really to account for the feeling that underlies this book and also renders its message acceptable to the average reader—not least to me.
What is the nature of that feeling? It is that a certain benevolence does really seem to be present in reality and actually does manifest, if only sometimes—in developments, events, and our experiences of them. There is a feeling, certainly present in me, suggesting something, some invisible field, something that does appear to communicate, yet without interfering. Serendipitous events are such communications. They have the character of confirmation: Yes. I am there!
This is the “ground” that calls for some kind of integration into the dismal daily. And some people search for the meaning and use the concept of the angel to build a picture. The reality, however, is not fleshed out by labeling certain experiential clusters with this name or that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)