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All spiritual experiences sound like gobbledygook to those who have never had a spiritual experience. That they are beyond rational explanation is a feature, no

All spiritual experiences sound like gobbledygook to those who have never had a spiritual experience. That they are beyond rational explanation is a feature, not a bug.

mistercow 14y ago
They aren't beyond rational explanation. We may not have models that can predict and explain this qualitative phenomena, but I end this sentence with a resounding "yet".
- omarchowdhury 14y ago
  Don't mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon.
  - flatline 14y ago
    There is no finger. There is no moon. This is the fundamental Zen breakdown of the problem, at least. In Theravadan buddhism, the self is like a stick hut standing in a field: you can break it down and deconstruct it stick by stick, and thereby attain Buddhahood. In Zen, there is no hut. You are Buddha, right here and now.
    - virtualwhys 14y ago
      Right here, right now, what is Buddha? The Zen "approach" cannot be explained, much like the teachings of Krishnamurti or Ramana Maharshi, or, as in the case of this thread, the psychedelic experience, or, as in the case of this life, oneself.
- oscilloscope 14y ago
  Characterizing a subjective experience is not the same as experiencing the phenomena. If I look at brainwave data of a monk meditating, my experience is of looking at and interpreting data. I am not meditating.
  - nessus42 14y ago
    The canonical thought experiment from philosophy is called "The Knowledge Argument". In it, you are asked to imagine a super-intelligent but color-blind since birth scientist named Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. (Btw, she's completely color-blind; she only sees in black & white.) Since she knows everything there is to know, surely she knows what it's like to see the color red, right? On the other hand, we feel pretty confident that when she is cured of her color-blindness and is then handed a ripe tomato, she'll say, "OMFG! I never imagined that red would like like that!" So one possible conclusion from this is that it is impossible to know everything (that can be known) scientifically.
    - gnosis 14y ago
      "Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. ... Since she knows everything there is to know" The second assertion does not necessarily follow from the first. There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. Also, there's something that analytic philosophers like to call "qualia", which is what it's like to experience something. That's one thing that would be missing from the above account. To take another example: I could know quite a lot about the neurological processes that underly the sensation of pain in the human nervous system and the brain. However, such knowledge is very different from the sensation of pain itself. Same with sex. You can read up about its physiology all you like, but your knowledge of it is going to be of a quite different order from someone who's actually had sex.
      - nessus42 14y ago
        > There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that. But who knows? Maybe I just did too much acid back in the hippy days. The amount of literature on The Knowledge Argument is staggering, and there are many ways out of the apparent paradox. Frank Jackson who came up with the Knowledge Argument was using it to argue that mental states do not supervene on physical ones. I.e., one's mental states are not uniquely determined in the space of all possible worlds by one's physical state. (He later changed his mind about this, however, and is no longer a dualist.) One way out of dualism is, as you hinted at, is to maintain that even if dualism is false, there are things that you can't know without having a certain concept in your head, and the only way to get the concept in your head is to have a certain experience which puts your mind into a state that you could not get to via pondering alone. Another way out of dualism is to deny that Mary acquired any new knowledge when she sees the ripe tomato. Etc, etc. And the philosophers will probably be arguing about Mary for the next thousand years.
- orasis 14y ago
  The "pragmatic dharma" crowd does a pretty good job of this. Daniel Ingram's book, "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" represents a nice collection (http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/) There is also a good pragmatic map of awakening at http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six... I am also creating an iPhone app for tracking meditation experiences at http://mindblownapp.com/ http://mindblownapp.com/. We currently have a database of over 100 interesting experience that can occur during meditation such as "no self" experiences, spontaneous movement, etc.
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michaelochurch 14y ago
This is one of the reasons I generally avoid discussing spiritual experiences, or reading others'. It's like sex. There are years you spend obsessed with it. Then there are years when it's a normal part of your life-- enjoyable, but not worth moral compromises or stupid risks-- and the obsession seems silly and you're embarrassed to have had such a fixation. I also tend to believe that using any experience as a trophy cheapens it. When you remember something, you actually retrieve the memory and store an updated copy, which means the state in which you recall it will influence the long-term memory. If you turn an experience into a social token, you're recalling it with a cheap mind, and the memory will turn cheap over time. I talked to an experienced meditator about this, and he said he never discusses experiences (except with his guru, when he was younger) because people are either less advanced and will not understand them, or more advanced and have no use for them. Experience isn't the only point, which is my problem with psychedelic drug culture. There are people who use psychedelics for genuinely spiritual purposes, but they seem to be a minority in that world. The culture as a whole seems to be heavy on experience and light on insight and self-development. Look at what Tim Leary turned into. The other thing is that you don't need psychedelic drugs to have "trippy" experiences. Six hours in a sensory deprivation tank will do it. Brainwave synchronization can also have some pretty neat effects-- and safely.

All spiritual experiences sound like gobbledygook to those who have never had a spiritual experience. That they are beyond rational explanation is a feature, not a bug.

mistercow 14y ago

They aren't beyond rational explanation. We may not have models that can predict and explain this qualitative phenomena, but I end this sentence with a resounding "yet".

omarchowdhury 14y ago
Don't mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon.
- flatline 14y ago
  There is no finger. There is no moon. This is the fundamental Zen breakdown of the problem, at least. In Theravadan buddhism, the self is like a stick hut standing in a field: you can break it down and deconstruct it stick by stick, and thereby attain Buddhahood. In Zen, there is no hut. You are Buddha, right here and now.
  - virtualwhys 14y ago
    Right here, right now, what is Buddha? The Zen "approach" cannot be explained, much like the teachings of Krishnamurti or Ramana Maharshi, or, as in the case of this thread, the psychedelic experience, or, as in the case of this life, oneself.
oscilloscope 14y ago
Characterizing a subjective experience is not the same as experiencing the phenomena. If I look at brainwave data of a monk meditating, my experience is of looking at and interpreting data. I am not meditating.
- nessus42 14y ago
  The canonical thought experiment from philosophy is called "The Knowledge Argument". In it, you are asked to imagine a super-intelligent but color-blind since birth scientist named Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. (Btw, she's completely color-blind; she only sees in black & white.) Since she knows everything there is to know, surely she knows what it's like to see the color red, right? On the other hand, we feel pretty confident that when she is cured of her color-blindness and is then handed a ripe tomato, she'll say, "OMFG! I never imagined that red would like like that!" So one possible conclusion from this is that it is impossible to know everything (that can be known) scientifically.
  - gnosis 14y ago
    "Mary who knows everything there is to know about human perception from a scientific point of view. ... Since she knows everything there is to know" The second assertion does not necessarily follow from the first. There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. Also, there's something that analytic philosophers like to call "qualia", which is what it's like to experience something. That's one thing that would be missing from the above account. To take another example: I could know quite a lot about the neurological processes that underly the sensation of pain in the human nervous system and the brain. However, such knowledge is very different from the sensation of pain itself. Same with sex. You can read up about its physiology all you like, but your knowledge of it is going to be of a quite different order from someone who's actually had sex.
    - nessus42 14y ago
      > There may well be more to understanding something than what science can know about it. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that. But who knows? Maybe I just did too much acid back in the hippy days. The amount of literature on The Knowledge Argument is staggering, and there are many ways out of the apparent paradox. Frank Jackson who came up with the Knowledge Argument was using it to argue that mental states do not supervene on physical ones. I.e., one's mental states are not uniquely determined in the space of all possible worlds by one's physical state. (He later changed his mind about this, however, and is no longer a dualist.) One way out of dualism is, as you hinted at, is to maintain that even if dualism is false, there are things that you can't know without having a certain concept in your head, and the only way to get the concept in your head is to have a certain experience which puts your mind into a state that you could not get to via pondering alone. Another way out of dualism is to deny that Mary acquired any new knowledge when she sees the ripe tomato. Etc, etc. And the philosophers will probably be arguing about Mary for the next thousand years.
orasis 14y ago
The "pragmatic dharma" crowd does a pretty good job of this. Daniel Ingram's book, "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha" represents a nice collection (http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/) There is also a good pragmatic map of awakening at http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six... I am also creating an iPhone app for tracking meditation experiences at http://mindblownapp.com/ http://mindblownapp.com/. We currently have a database of over 100 interesting experience that can occur during meditation such as "no self" experiences, spontaneous movement, etc.
- deleted 14y ago
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deleted 14y ago
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michaelochurch 14y ago

This is one of the reasons I generally avoid discussing spiritual experiences, or reading others'. It's like sex. There are years you spend obsessed with it. Then there are years when it's a normal part of your life-- enjoyable, but not worth moral compromises or stupid risks-- and the obsession seems silly and you're embarrassed to have had such a fixation. I also tend to believe that using any experience as a trophy cheapens it. When you remember something, you actually retrieve the memory and store an updated copy, which means the state in which you recall it will influence the long-term memory. If you turn an experience into a social token, you're recalling it with a cheap mind, and the memory will turn cheap over time. I talked to an experienced meditator about this, and he said he never discusses experiences (except with his guru, when he was younger) because people are either less advanced and will not understand them, or more advanced and have no use for them. Experience isn't the only point, which is my problem with psychedelic drug culture. There are people who use psychedelics for genuinely spiritual purposes, but they seem to be a minority in that world. The culture as a whole seems to be heavy on experience and light on insight and self-development. Look at what Tim Leary turned into. The other thing is that you don't need psychedelic drugs to have "trippy" experiences. Six hours in a sensory deprivation tank will do it. Brainwave synchronization can also have some pretty neat effects-- and safely.