Numinous Experience
A while ago at Smugglers Cove a friend told me that she'd heard a lot of positive things about this blog from other readers, who described reading my blog as a "spiritual" or quasi-spiritual experience. I'm not sure whether my humble writing is worthy of such a heavy compliment, but it was nice to hear.
Scientists occasionally describe numinous experiences - overwhelming emotional feelings related to understanding (or not understanding) one's place in the universe or relation to important or meaningful things. The first chapter of Richard Dawkins' "God Delusion" describes being "overwhelmed by a heightened awareness" and being "tearful with the unheard music" while contemplating the microcosm of ants, beetles, and bacteria in the soil underfoot or the macrocosm of stars in the sky. Richard Feynmann wrote poetry with similar themes. Jane Jacobs noted that "even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water … arouse awe and wonder." Sam Harris talks about a "rare range of self-transcending experiences to feel at one with nature". Dan Dennet talks about "the moment when you forget yourself and become better than you ever thought you could be in some way, and see in all humbleness the wonderfulness of nature." Aldous Huxley wrote about "the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendous".
When I was a kid, my religious friends would ask me I hadn't ever felt "the presence of the Holy Spirit". I said no, because I didn't know what they were talking about. They took my answer as evidence of a self-inflicted hole in my life and an affirmation of their religious worldview. "How sad and shallow his life must be, to never experience what I experience." It wasn't until much later that I realized that's what they were talking about and yes, I have numinous experiences all the time. Reality is cool. Being alive to experience it is more cool. Appreciating this good fortune and the recursive appreciation of your appreciation even moreso.
The difference is that I don't need to attribute the origin, experiences, quality, and outcomes of being alive to anything more than the breathtaking beauty of natural process. Perhaps as a mirror of my childhood friends, I see people who don't think that this is enough - people who fill their lives with fantasies of UFOs or Gods or spirits or "energies" - as filling a self-inflicted hole in their lives. The real history of real people is more engaging than any ghost's story told through a medium. The real story of how the earth formed and life spread is more compelling than all the world's creation myths together. The ways that the real fundamental forces interact with real matter are more amazing than Qi, prana, phlogiston, or élan vital. And the real mysteries presented to us by the natural world are inevitably far more captivating than the plot holes in stories written by people.
The universe is way cool. You are not looking in the right places if you do not feel absolutely overwhelmed by understanding that coolness on a daily basis. If anything I've written here can help you have your own numinous experience by understanding something you didn't before, I am grateful to be able to have that role.
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." -Carl Sagan
Scientists occasionally describe numinous experiences - overwhelming emotional feelings related to understanding (or not understanding) one's place in the universe or relation to important or meaningful things. The first chapter of Richard Dawkins' "God Delusion" describes being "overwhelmed by a heightened awareness" and being "tearful with the unheard music" while contemplating the microcosm of ants, beetles, and bacteria in the soil underfoot or the macrocosm of stars in the sky. Richard Feynmann wrote poetry with similar themes. Jane Jacobs noted that "even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water … arouse awe and wonder." Sam Harris talks about a "rare range of self-transcending experiences to feel at one with nature". Dan Dennet talks about "the moment when you forget yourself and become better than you ever thought you could be in some way, and see in all humbleness the wonderfulness of nature." Aldous Huxley wrote about "the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendous".
When I was a kid, my religious friends would ask me I hadn't ever felt "the presence of the Holy Spirit". I said no, because I didn't know what they were talking about. They took my answer as evidence of a self-inflicted hole in my life and an affirmation of their religious worldview. "How sad and shallow his life must be, to never experience what I experience." It wasn't until much later that I realized that's what they were talking about and yes, I have numinous experiences all the time. Reality is cool. Being alive to experience it is more cool. Appreciating this good fortune and the recursive appreciation of your appreciation even moreso.
The difference is that I don't need to attribute the origin, experiences, quality, and outcomes of being alive to anything more than the breathtaking beauty of natural process. Perhaps as a mirror of my childhood friends, I see people who don't think that this is enough - people who fill their lives with fantasies of UFOs or Gods or spirits or "energies" - as filling a self-inflicted hole in their lives. The real history of real people is more engaging than any ghost's story told through a medium. The real story of how the earth formed and life spread is more compelling than all the world's creation myths together. The ways that the real fundamental forces interact with real matter are more amazing than Qi, prana, phlogiston, or élan vital. And the real mysteries presented to us by the natural world are inevitably far more captivating than the plot holes in stories written by people.
The universe is way cool. You are not looking in the right places if you do not feel absolutely overwhelmed by understanding that coolness on a daily basis. If anything I've written here can help you have your own numinous experience by understanding something you didn't before, I am grateful to be able to have that role.
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." -Carl Sagan