Tonalities of Being

If someone is incapable of hearing the difference between intervals of a fifth and a fourth, a musical career is not recommended. If a friend of yours cannot achieve a grasp of verb declensions, you will not take any lofty linguistic or philological ambitions seriously. Similarly, we must recognize that there exists a certain tonality of being which conditions perception of philosophical and religious facts. If this perception is lacking, better to pursue some entirely different field. [Henry Corbin in The Voyage and the Messenger, a collection of lectures and essays, North Atlantic Books, 1998, p. 5-6]

Around here we (read members of the family) were much taken with E.F. Schumacher’s book, A Guide for the Perplexed, years ago. In that he discusses the concept of adequacy, taken from the scholastic concept of adequatio rei et intellectus, thus the correspondence between the “thing” and the understanding of it. Sounds dry, but isn’t. I have the suspicion that St. Thomas and many others of that era meant something much more, using the word “intelligence,” than that word has come to mean in our times. The subtlety of that word, adequacy, becomes nicely visible in the quote from Henry Corbin; Corbin’s examples carry the wider meaning nicely. He means what people say when they have problems translating an understanding into concepts but say, instead, “I know it when I see it.” Hence Corbin’s nice word, tonalities. Music escapes the usual approach which must break things in order to parse them, and in the breaking something escapes the definition.

Adequacy has served us well. It makes one tolerant of those who simply cannot hear the music.

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.