“Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.”
Bhagavad Gita
In the first video of this two-part series, we examined one of most fundamental questions of life: “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” This question, as we saw, points to the profound mystery that grounds all being – or what in the West has traditionally been referred to as God. In this video we explore how an awareness of this mystery, and a disposition of awe and wonder toward it, can help elicit one of life’s greatest forms of experience.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Most people seek wisdom and understanding through words and propositions. They read books, listen to lectures or podcasts, and hope that in so doing they will become more knowledgeable. Questions that are unanswerable with language, such as the question ‘why is there something, rather than nothing’, are often dismissed as having little practical value. What this view overlooks, however, is that not all understanding is a product of language, reason, or even thought. Or as Iain McGilchrist writes in The Matter With Things:
“Nothing is less true than that we understand something only when we express it in language. On the contrary, language at times places a barrier between us and understanding, substitutes a crabbed expression for a living reality, and pretends to ‘explain’ it – away.”
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things
An offhand dismissal of questions that cannot be answered with words also overlooks the fact that the most powerful agent of change, and the primary path to learning about the world, is experience. We cultivate skills through experience, we grow wise through our experiences, and it is life’s most moving experiences, of both sorrow and joy, that leave the greatest mark on our existence. If we are asked to put our experience into words, this often proves difficult, particularly when it comes to life’s most profound experiences. Or as the 20th century British philosopher and author Bryan Magee writes:
“How does one say the Mona Lisa, or Leonardo’s Last Supper? The assumption that everything of significance that can be experienced, or known, or communicated, is capable of being uttered in words would be too preposterous to merit a moment’s entertainment were it not for the fact that it has underlain so much philosophy in the twentieth century…direct experience which is never adequately communicable in words is the only knowledge we ever fully have.”
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher
When we adopt a disposition of awe and wonder to the great unknown toward which the question ‘why is there something, rather than nothing’ points, we open the possibility of a transcendent experience. And this experience can teach us far more about life than the words of any philosopher, scientist, or psychologist ever could.
“To be human is to feel a deep gravitational pull towards something ineffable that, if we can just for once get beyond words and reasons, is a matter of experience, and to which we reach out, silently, though not without misgivings; something outside our conceptual grasp, but nonetheless present to us through intimations that come to us from a whole range of unfathomable experiences we call ‘spiritual’. This has been true of humanity the world over and throughout time, and is true now as much as ever; no advance in science can have anything to say about it one way or the other.”
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things
The type of experience to which McGilchrist is referring has been referred to as a religious, mystical, or peak experience and in the remainder of this video we will use the latter term. But while the name of this experience varies, there is a remarkable similarity in the content of the experience no matter if the person having it is a Buddhist monk, a Christian mystic, or someone who doesn’t subscribe to any particular religion. The 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow, who undertook an extensive study of these experiences, explained them in the following way:
“The peak experience is felt as a self-validating, self-justifying moment which carries its own intrinsic value with it. It is felt to be a highly valuable – even uniquely valuable – experience, so great an experience that even to attempt to justify it takes away from its dignity and worth. As a matter of fact, so many people find this so great and high an experience that it justifies not only itself but even living itself. Peak-experiences can make life worthwhile by their occasional occurrence. They give meaning to life itself. They prove it to be worthwhile. To say this in a negative way, I would guess that peak-experiences help prevent suicide.”
Abraham Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences
