Sick-Mindedness

The subject of adequacy, touched on in my last post, has corollaries that throw a light on various stands that people take: atheism, agnosticism, belief, and so on. We operate under an assumption of absolute human equality, which is true enough when we view ourselves as physical beings, but even at the physical level there are exceptions to the rule when we include various handicaps people have at birth or acquire by accidents: the blind, the deaf, the mute, the paralyzed.  

Some experiences leave a much deeper imprint than others. One such for me was reading William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience as a freshman in college—indeed I was reading him in the auditorium awaiting the first event, the welcoming ceremony. It introduced me to the notion that there may be at least two different kinds of people. James called these sick-minded and healthy-minded; the words he used are highly revealing of a bias, of course. The first kind have a vastly different experience of religion than the second; for the second it is a social, for the first an inner something. Indeed, reading that book then, I reacted aggressively to the term, sick-minded. I was then a convinced atheist; yet I knew myself to belong to that category nonetheless.

Sick-minded? Why that designation? Those who are sensitive to currents in reality that reach beyond the strictly physical and social tend to be less smoothly adapted to the world. There are things out there, felt, perceived, but never seen—but, for this type of person, real. Sensitivity is one way to described it; awake is another—awake to something more. Now if there is something more than atoms and electromagnetism out there, the sick-minded are more adapted, not less. But the healthy-minded, who don’t feel these currents much, feel more at home—because those currents point beyond this realm.

The interesting difference here is that we can all share (handicaps aside) the physical realities; but sharing realities that manifest beyond the reach of sensory organs is possible only with those who also sense them. Those capacities are internal, invisible, and beyond “objective,” meaning material, reach. I may know I have a soul, but I can’t trot it out and have it dance for you—whether it is a graceful ballet or a Ka Mate rugby haka.

The reality of the Beyond that the sick-minded feel also ultimately escapes intellectual approaches. Words, concepts, signify “things,” existences. If those things are physical, objective, tangible, measurable, they belong to the objective category and are thus matters about which people can constructively argue. But those things that lack this physical characteristic, i.e., they are inner phenomena, can only be discussed by those who “see” them. Therefore intellectual debate about God’s existence, let us say, or realms beyond, angels and principalities, are only possible between people who are adequate. All else belongs to the struggle for ordinary power in which, alas, both sick- or healthy-minded people tend to engage—until they know better.