This is the normal human condition and nothing to be surprised by. We don’t understand anything at all when we have never seen it before and barely even heard about it. How could it be otherwise?
My many-named reader has a question to my previous entry. He asks: “How do you tell the difference between seeing another dimension, divine inspiration and a hallucination?” The short answer is, as I warned at the start of the entry, that you need experience. But as I was about to gently rebuke my reader for forgetting the beginning of the entry before getting to the end (for this could in no way be the fault of my communications skills, of course), I realized that there is more than one dimension even to practice. There is length, of course, but also breadth.
For instance, because I have watched hundreds of hours of anime, I can tell Japanese apart from other languages or from simple babbling, even if I only understand a little and cannot use it. Simply the act of observing means that you will be able to tell things apart eventually. But not without practice, and not after five minutes or even an hour or two. Or at least the ability would not stay long after only an hour or two.
But how can I know that Japanese language does in fact exist and is not an elaborate hoax? Perhaps the Japanese actually speak Chinese, but push this delusion of a separate language on foreigners for political reasons or just to laugh at us behind our backs. (Not that they would need something so elaborate for that – I am sure they do that quite a bit anyway, and with good reason.)
If I had seen only one animated movie in Japanese, then this would certainly be a possible scenario, if not plausible. But as it happens, I have watched a broad range of anime from different publishers, and read about even more that others have watched. This is what we may call a broader experience, in contrast to just longer. For instance if I had only seen The Laws of Eternity, even if I saw it every week, it would not be a very broad experience in Japanese culture. It might have left me a better person than if I had seen all those others, most of which are not very edifying, but I would not have much basis for an opinion about Japanese language, much less the rest of their culture.
This is the case with people who restrain their interests to a very narrow range. In the example of spiritual practices, which I wrote about in my previous entry, there are sects who teach that your only spiritual practice needs to be chanting a particular short phrase over and over for the rest of your life, as often as possible. While this certainly has some effect, it is a narrow approach in the sense that we cannot easily know whether the effect comes from the object of their worship, the particular sounds of the chant, or simply the practice of repeating something an extraordinary number of times.
To further complicate things, sects tend to strongly discourage experimenting with variations of the practice, much less experimenting with the practices of other sects. Sure, members of other sects claim to be happy too, but what do they know about true happiness? And besides, the demons may just be deluding them into thinking that they are happy. After all, if you were a professional demon, wouldn’t you be willing to make people happy for a few years if you could get them to Hell afterwards? (This does not apply to our sect, of course, since we know true happiness when we see it. Besides, it is written in our holy Scripture that we are right, and we know our holy Scripture is true because the Scripture says so.)
The behavior of the sect members is actually quite reasonable. Why risk a good thing for something uncertain? Better the god you know than the devil you don’t. Still, it makes for a narrow experience, not too unlike the fan who only watches the same movie over and over again.
On the other hand, the “butterfly”, “supermarket” or “salad bar” approach to spirituality has its own drawbacks. The most obvious is that people tend to pick only the parts they personally like. But if a child starts to eat only the food he likes best, do only the homework he likes and only show up for P.E. classes if they are fun, he is unlikely to be heading for a long and happy life. If he has parents, they will hopefully tell him to change his ways. Likewise if you use this approach in your spiritual life. If you have a spiritual “father”, he is sure to tell you in no uncertain terms to Eat Your Greens.
Each tradition has its own internal structure or consistency. This is certainly not to say that they are all equal, much less identical. What I mean is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and if you only keep picking parts, you will not get that “more”, that wholeness or totality. Just saying. I am not really the right person to go all out against this, since I have a double helping of curiosity at the very least.
On the bright side, the great religions have each quite a broad range of spiritual tools. For instance if you are a Christian, there is no need to Hare off to Krishna or canter over to El Cantare just to add the spice of variety to your life. (If you go for other reasons, it is not like I could stop you anyway.) You may never have run into all of these in Sunday School in the Church of Our Saints in Middle Littlewick, but actually there is both prayer, meditation, contemplation, Lectio Divina and even chanting (although mostly in liturgy). And of course if you are part of a congregation, there are probably various rituals also trying to drag Eternity into time (or time into Eternity).
On the other extreme, Buddhism has a heap of different meditation schools, many of which are not quite religious in the western sense of the word, although some are. The contrast between some of the techniques taught is staggering, certainly on the same scale as the difference between some branches of different religions.
This was very long, but the short of it is: There are a number of different spiritual practices, a few of which I am familiar with from experience, and many more from the experience of others. While the effects of them differ to some extent, there are also many striking similarities.
Then there is the whole thing about religious versus secular meditation / observation, but I am working on a different entry about that.
So how can we tell things apart? We cannot without practice. The practice can be long or broad or both. It can also differ in depth, so I guess we have 3 dimensions there as well. If you have mainly one of these dimensions, I suppose it may be hard to perceive the others clearly. If you have none of them, I don’t see why you would even try. Humans need years to even learn to dress themselves. There is no way we can become proficient with the mind without watching it firsthand for some time. But I believe it is worth it, for a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
You should be worried about your mental health. Living alone all the time and reading up on bizarre ideas that have no connection to the world IS NOT HEALTHY.
There is concrete proof that the Japanese language is real and there is nothing that suggests that it is a hoax..
There is NOTHING that suggests what you saw while mediating is real. Sitting there doing nothing but breathing for a few hours will cause your mind to imagine things. That fact that people meditate and expect divine inspiration doesn’t help.
Relax, man. I am not seriously proposing that the Japanese language does not exist. It was just a simile. A comparison. A parable, if you will. But my case is actually stronger than I presented it, for while I have never actually been to Japan, I have been to meditation, so to speak. If you haven’t, then you really should stop and ask yourself: Why do you have so strong opinions about something you know nothing about?
Or could it be that you have tried meditation and experienced something scary? This happened to a classmate of mine. It is hard for me to imagine, but glimpsing your own subconscious might well be a disturbing experience.
I also wonder what it is you think I have seen. The truth is that I am not much of a visionary, my observation rarely takes the shape of actual visuals. Even the voices in my head are almost never actual voices, but simply thoughts that “think themselves” without my conscious decision. So I am a pretty bland meditator as such things go. I wonder again about your strong reaction, it seems out of proportion to something that has been a normal, healthy habit for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people through the ages. It is not like I invented this. Meditation is at the core of the world’s great religions, and is also practiced by people of no religious inclination in order to improve their body and mind. It is definitely connected to the world, and in a good way.
If you want to criticize, then let’s take it a bit further:
There is no concrete proof of ANYTHING, and there is nothing that PROVES that what Magnus sees when he is NOT meditating is real.
As I tell my students at some point every year, whatever age or subject I’m teaching, if any of them can PROVE to me that they exist, I’ll give them an A for the rest of the year without them having to raise a finger for the rest of the class.
(I dropped this bomb on my sister when she was in seventh or eight grade, and she thought about it for a minute then replied that if she was merely a figment of my imagination she was going to sleep in the next day . . . )
While one cannot prove certain things like the fact we exist, other people have minds, that we are all living in the matrix, that flying unicorns exist in other space, Ganesha exists.
There are things that suggest that people have minds (we make decisions, write blogs, etc..). While it is possible that everyone else is a robot there is nothing to back it up.
Likewise there is nothing that suggests that that we live in the Matrix.
If I came out and claimed that there were unicorns controlling us and our emotions and I discovered this as the result of mediation you’d think that I was insane.
And rightly so, because that is not how meditation works. Which you would know if you either practiced it or read about it seriously.
If someone claimed to be in better shape, less stressed and able to eat more without gaining weight because they were running regularly, would you mock them by saying that you could claim you could fly because of your experience with running? Probably not, because you or people you live with actually do have experience with running. The thing is, if you actually practice something, you get a feel for what it does and does not cause. But when you talk about things you know nothing about, it has only a vague entertainment value. Kind of like virgin teen girls writing about gay sex. (Actually, that is a real example. Google yaoi if you don’t believe it.) Nobody can stop you, but you are likely to cringe when you look back later.
I never claimed that meditation did not have health benefits or it was a negative thing to do.
The fact is that the things you see while meditating are nonsense. Like guardian angels, another dimension in the mind etc.
And I wrote at the outset that these were not physical dimensions. I also tried to convey that your guardian angel is in your subconscious psyche. It is certainly nothing like the angels on a Christmas tree. You are surely intelligent enough to remember something from the beginning or the middle of an article until the end. Yet you still insist on seeing these things as external, in which case they certainly makes no sense.
I ask you again to reflect on why you have so strong opinions about this. Could the be that the debate is not really with me, but with a part of yourself?
I’ve seen most of The Matrix, I think, and it was an interesting premise. I didn’t so much connect it with Descartes, though, as I did with people becoming confounded and alienated with/from themselves and society because of the line between “real” and “not real” becoming blurred.
I don’t like solipsism, but if you are going to go off on someone’s beliefs (and/or sanity), you really kind of have to take it down to the solipsistic level and consider whether you are (or at least might be) as silly as you are saying the other person is by putting YOUR views forward. Or that you might be being silly to be bothered by such things as someone’s blog.
I don’t state things as clearly as Magnus does, obviously, and his viewpoint doesn’t always coincide with mine. It is funny, though, that with a little thought I can at least tell where he’s coming from, and I am a better person for having stretched my mind around it, if nothing else.
Seeing something from another’s perspective is not something that most people do very often, so coming here and reading Magnus’ posts is a beneficial thing for me. It doesn’t spread anything hateful or negative, and if I sometimes find the viewpoint something other than my own, I am certainly not forced to adopt it. (And I tell him all about it, usually via e-mail.)
If you come here with that mindset, then this is a pleasant place. If you disagree, fine, it can still be a pleasant place just to be exposed to perspectives that are not your normal ones and to discuss them with someone who will listen with an open mind. Intelligent discussions are almost never bad things.
But do remember . . . YOU came HERE to his blog. Magnus did not force any of this on you, so being rude about what he writes is just unnecessary.
Sorry. I know I’m extremely unenlightened, but I do feel the need to stand up for a friend, and since this is an online forum, my graceless words are the only tool I have for doing so.
Thank you for standing up for me, Kristi. You are a wonderful friend, and thinking of you makes me happy and grateful for all our many years of friendship.
But in this case, the guy has already kind of apologized (and I really know how hard that is for a guy – to quote one of my early spiritual teachers, Elias Aslaksen, “it is easier to abase oneself a hundred times before God than to take back a little bit of what is said to a human.” So Crispy earned a massive upgrade of esteem in my eyes right there. ^_^
(Of course that would not work for you, since you have nothing to apologize for, and I already adore you. I have no idea what you would have to do to get more stars here… walking on water perhaps? Please try at the shallow end first though. Going off the deep end is my privilege, it seems…)