Sticks and Stones

One of the ways in which we become very, very well-adapted to living in a physical environment is that we tend to ignore or minimize those messages we hear frequently enough so that they’re familiar but which, at the same time, don’t hold a threat of harming us. If someone reads a lot about spiritual matters, the eastern doctrine of Maya, thus that the world is an “illusion,” rapidly loses whatever thought it might have originally occasioned. It does not seem to be borne out by direct experience. Here the typical reaction is that of Dr. Johnson who, in reaction to hearing Bishop Berkeley’s idealism labeled, by his friend Boswell, as impossible to refute, kicked a stone with great force and said: “I refute it thus.” Funny, yes.

Doctrines of this type are difficult. How can something solid be an illusion? What is rarely offered, by way of counterpoint, is that our most immediate experience of life, self-awareness, is absolutely immaterial. The thought process that went through Dr. Johnson head, the impulse that set his foot in motion, the words he formed before he spoke—all three of these had zero substantiality. So we do have, as it were, two different but equally real experiences of reality. One of these you cannot kick—but you can’t kick without it. And the dead stone that got the kick cannot for the life of it (which it lacks) cry “Ouch!”

Okay. For materialists thought and will and feelings, indeed self-awareness too, are all material. But they haven’t proved their case at all. Hence I ignore them.

Now these doctrines arise from actual experience. It is the experience of the contrast between two worlds, a spiritual and the physical, that gives rise to them. Once the spiritual has really been experienced in a genuine way and for long enough so that it sinks in, the world of matter is discounted, as it were. It is shown to be, in terms of real value, so very much inferior to the material world as to take on the aspect of illusion. Simply to label it thus, as illusion, is not a very sophisticated way to make the point—but the person experiencing the contrast also realizes that it can’t be proved without the experience.

The contrast between the physical and the mental however, are accessible to all of us—and serve as a point from which the hoary old doctrines may be examined. We all of us, virtually all of the time, are living in our minds, not in the physical world. Having one’s tooth drilled might be the exception that proves the rule. And where our minds originate is a great puzzlement. But reasonable reflection on it does suggest several things. One is that mind is vastly superior to matter. Another that it must come from a realm quite different than the one we inhabit now. So there is a mild case, at minimum, for a higher world. And those who have experienced it assure us that it is more real, more solid, than sticks and stones and bones.

Illusion? Why ever not? But the word must be applied with a modifier: relative. This world is relatively less substantial than the subtle world where our minds originated—and where they are bound again. Meanwhile our brains are organized to look out for sticks and stones—and to value only immediate threats and immediate gratifications. It is this, our excellent adaptation, that make us kick the stone or bang the table to make a limited if dramatic assertion of our own superiority.

A Tally of the Theories

What do concepts like the Fall, Maya, Fourth and Higher Dimensions, Alienation, and David Bohm’s Explicit and Implicit orders have in common? And here I might also mention Doris Lessing’s Substance-of-We-Feeling (SOWF). They suggests powerfully that our experience of reality, not least the entire whole we call the cosmos, may be something incomplete.

The Fall, of course, holds the idea of some kind of descent—from something high; in actual usage the concept of a spatial height is not what the Fall means. The spatial reference is a metaphor. Some condition or event is likened to a physical descent. The reason for the Fall, of course, isn’t clumsy climbing but disobedience. The process is also likened to an expulsion—from the Garden—into another and highly deficient realm. Here the imagery is horizontal, but its cause, disobedience, is the same.

The Sanskrit word Maya means illusion; it suggests the unreality of the cosmos. It is said to arise from ignorance, thus the false belief that what we experience has genuine essence. It is an appearance, not the real. Thus the cosmos lacks—reality, reality as fully constituted.

The dimensions above the three spatial (length, width, height) and time, thus a fourth spatial dimension (and successive others) were uncovered by mathematical contemplation. But extra-dimensionality, thus the possible existence of reality beyond the three, or four with time added, quickly captured the fancy of those who believe in a spiritual reality. It provides a modern, math-based “proof” of sorts that the spiritual intuition may be backed by science. We are not really home until we return to the Garden.

Alienation is the core of gnostic beliefs—of which a modern representative is Existentialism. We’re living in a world produced by an underling, the demiurge. Therefore we live as strangers in a strange land—and won’t escape until we know this (gnosis).

David Bohm, the physicist, conceived of a vast enfolded reality of which our cosmos is but a temporarily unfolded bubble. The Big Bang therefore produced a tiny bubble. Here too the symbolism is metaphoric; the Big Bang was a coincidence of the most minute wavelengths. Bohm also suggested, however, that there is a conditioned order, meaning deterministic to a fault, and an unconditioned order, intelligence, perceivable directly in humans.

Lessing’s fictional Fall is caused by the thinning of some mysterious psychic energy in the cosmos, that thinning assigned to a celestial event; it causes human behavior as we know it—but also affects everything else.

As the above illustrates, there is a strong tendency to project explanations of reality using dimensions directly or relatively—height, planes, space-time, distance, and such. The results, taken more or less literally, are incomprehensible. We cannot picture a fourth space dimension; if this table is illusion, it’s still certainly very hard. What precisely is present in the Garden that, if we had it, would make us happy? Harps on clouds won’t do it. At the same time, human intuition unfailingly answers Yes, yes, yes—producing the conclusion that we know something. But we have the devil of a time giving it expression in the language and thought modes of this Fallen world. And the inability also afflicts those few who manage to get a really good look at that Garden, another Dimension, the Implicate Order, or feel the winds of SOWF blowing right strongly a ways beyond Borderzone.

Rohanda or Shikasta?

When we speak of “the Fall,” should we speak of the Fallen World or, instead, of Fallen Man? That’s an interesting distinction for me. Yes, I know. For some the most fundamental feature of the fallen world is that living beings feed on each other: predation. That seems to put evil squarely at the heart of nature—based on sympathy. I wouldn’t want something to hunt and eat me. And that seems also to answer the question simply. Fallen world. A place where the living, to live, eat other living creatures, that has to be a fallen world. End of discussion?

Predation and its link with the Fall comes from Isaiah in two verses (Revised Standard):

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. [11:6]

Isaiah liked this cluster of images. Much later he repeats them:

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
and dust shall be the serpent’s food. [65:25]

In the first volume of her exalted sort of science fiction beyond SF, Canopus in Argos, Doris Lessing projects an image of the planet earth in its paradisaical state, its fallen state, and then again restored. The first volume is called Shikasta, the name of the planet after the Fall, as it were. She derives the word from the Persian word for broken. The earth before the Fall and after the restoration is called Rohanda, derived from fruitful (from Tolkien’s Rohan, I assume). In a most telling chapter showing the restoration, people suddenly notice that predatory animals no longer hunt; they consume vegetation, much as in Isaiah we see the wolf and the lamb grazing side by side.

In my mind the discussion doesn’t really end there. Staying in the West for the moment, I note that vegetation, poor domain, benefits neither from the End of Time in Isaiah nor Lessing’s restoration. Grass still gets eaten. The fruit of the trees is still in peril. We justify the eating of meat by arguing that animals have no meaningful consciousness—and plants even less. But how do we know that?

Expanding our view to encompass the East as well, we see the notion of the Fall extended. The world isn’t just fallen. It becomes entirely illusory, maya. And in Buddhism, where eating meat or destroying even insects is forbidden, the Vegetable Kingdom still remains our prey.

For me the discussion is still open. And in my context the world, as such, seems innocent. And the weight of original sin seems to rest squarely on humanity alone.

(Image: Edward Hicks (1780-1849), “Peacable Kingdom” (link).)

Whose Illusion?

More in touch with the natural world, as on a brief but real Great Lakes vacation, or carefully observing living creatures, as we have been doing here with butterflies—in my own awkward case such experiences invariably produce cosmological notes. And one of these is that the Eastern notion, namely that this world is Maya or illusion, cannot be correct.

I am looking at a wondrous book on Papillons† (in three languages). Here’s a fascinating picture of a certain Grass Moth. And then I’m told that “The Grass Moths, all of which are small, form a large family with a great variety of forms and about 15,000 species worldwide. Many of them can wrap their front wings around their bodies when at rest, so that they are then difficult to make out.” 15,000 species! Of one kind of moth. That’s an illusion? Whose illusion is that? We’re not born knowing such things. Somebody had to count all those varieties of Grass Moths. Well, if Wikipedia has got it right, the Order Lepidoptera, where the Grass Moth belongs, has, all told, an estimated 174,250 species.

On the way home from the pool last night, Brigitte stopped and pointed at a tree. “Look at the bark of that tree,” she said. “Have you ever seen something like that?” We both stared at the trunk of a tree, fascinated now—having passed it at least fifty, sixty times in the past several years.

The notion that the world is an illusion is the interpretation that Eastern traditions give to what is known as the unitive vision. In the West it is interpreted as union with God. Multiple posts on this blog touch on the subject—this experience—which I take to be content-free and energetic in nature. Being that, its interpretation is shaped by the traditions, knowledge, and philosophies of those who have them—therefore by culture.

Western religions are monotheistic; they conceive of the world as created by God. Therefore it can’t be an illusion. An awareness of an enormous contrast, between ordinary experience and this ecstasy, is also voiced in the West, but not quite in the same negative terms as the East has produced. But the Western version, boiled down to its essence, is to say that the world is less than God. The Eastern version drives this to its extreme. The big contrast is that in the West we conceive of God as the absolutely Other—whereas, in the East, the person who has the experience—now of the world, now of Samadhi—is the same person. Therefore it is the experiencer who has the illusion and, for all practical purposes, is also its cause. Logically speaking, he or she is God. But to escape this problem, the East, when pressed to put it into concepts, imagines us as tiny particles of the Ultimate—but still able to create 174,000 species of Lepidoptera? Or is that a collective effort?

The secular version of the experience is Cosmic Consciousness. If the secular has a religious mode at all—and it will have it once it experiences ecstasy—it is pantheistic. Therefore Cosmic Consciousness is a fitting sort of explanation. Oddly enough, the secular version may be the most concise and perhaps accurate; it simply projects energy. In a pantheistic conception, no one is really present, and the Lepidoptera are simply produced by chance variations. That, of course, I find impossible to believe. But that we’re experiencing the cosmos, rather than God, that I think might be right on. Thus I resist assigning the “unitive experience” any transcendental rank. It is content-free but very energetic. The creation, meanwhile, in its extraordinary diversity and intelligent arrangement, tells me that there is more to the world than merely an overwhelming feeling. Ponder the following quote from the same book, this time illustrating two butterflies mating, rear touching rear:

With flying insects which comprise many species, such as dragonflies and butterflies, nature has to make sure that mating cannot take place between representatives of different species. This is achieved by extreme differentiation of the exterior genitalia, so that male and female organs fit together like key and lock. These distinctive features provide the lepidopterist with accurate classifying aids and help him to distinguish between otherwise very similar species. [Papillons, p. 40]

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†Zauberwelt der Schmetterlinge, The Magic of Butterflies, Papillons, by Gunter Steinbach and Werner Zepf, Sigloch, 1998. The image shown (own photography) is of the Common Buckeye, Junonea coenia, not of the Grass Moth. The Buckeye is a butterfly that looks a little like a moth because of its brown coloration.