Just had that… I don’t know it’s weird. Just had that little feeling, you ever get that funny little feeling Vuja De? No, not Deja Vu. This is Vuja De. This is the strange feeling that somehow, this has never happened before. And then it’s gone..
-George Carlin
Turns out that knowing something and feeling as if you know something are actually two different experiences. We almost always experience the two simultaneously, which is why it is such a strange novelty to even suggest that one can exist without the other. A simple peek at the edge cases shows how this dissonance shows up in daily life. Everyone knows someone who is slightly more OCD than themselves, which is to say that everyone is also somehow somewhat OCD. Obsessive compulsive behavior, some suggest, is the result of knowing something without having the feeling that you actually know that thing. An example used by Robert Burn during his book tour google talk (On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not), is the typical OCD experience of returning to the house to make sure the gas stove is turned off. If one does not feel as if they know for certain that the gas is turned off, then they will think that it may not be turned off, in which case they must return and turn it off again. The cycle repeats, even after close scrutiny because the information used to turn the stove off was not matched up with the META information about whether or not the information used to switch it of was accurate. Conversely, one who experiences the feeling of knowing without having any subject matter with which to associate that feeling of knowing, may feel a general sense of knowing about everything. This content-less knowing, Robert Burn argues, is actually the basis for mystical experience and a feeling of unification with God.
There’s an interesting little paradox in that argument however, and that is this. Is the feeling of knowing something without an associative known fact necessarily a feeling of knowing that points to nothing? What if the feeling of knowing that comes without specifics actually is a feeling of knowing something about everything. It could be the case that if one has a feeling of knowing without knowing what they know, that they actually do know what their feeling is about, and that would be knowledge of the UNDEFINABLE. Yes, it could be the case that one’s feeling of knowing is actually without content, but that would be indistinguishable from the feeling of knowing something about which nothing can be known. If this is the case, then indeed, Madmen and Mystics may be one in the same.
Here’s something interesting I just found {I love google}
Attempts to diminish the status of such drug-induced mysticism by dubbing it *instant religion’ need not detain us here. Nor need we be unduly disturbed by the fact that psychiatric case-records abound in descriptions of similar subjectively evaluated mystical experience. The problem of distinguishing between madmen and mystics, which we shall take up later, is one most religious communities have had to face.
For our purposes all we need to note for the moment is the universality of mystical experience and the remarkable uniformity of mystical language and symbolism. We also require, however, a neutral term to denote the mental state of the subject of such experiences. Here I shall employ the word *trance’, using it in its general medical sense which the Penguin Dictionary of Psychology conveniently defines as: *a condition of dissociation, characterized by the lack of voluntary movement, and frequently by automatisms in act in thought, illustrated by hypnotic and mediumistic conditions.’ So conceived, trance may involve complete or only partial dissociation, and is often accompanied by exciting visions, or *hallucinations’, the full content of which is not always subsequently so clearly recalled as in the two experiences quoted earlier.
As is well known, trance states can be readily induced in most normal people by a wide range of stimuli, applied either separately or in combination. Time-honored techniques include the use of alcoholic spirits, hypnotic suggestion, rapid over-breathing, the inhalation of smoke and vapours, music, and dancing; and the ingestion of such drugs as mescaline or lysergic acid and other psychotropic alkaloids. Even without aids, much the same effect can be produced, although usually in the nature of things more slowly, by such self-inflicted or externally imposed mortification’s and privations as fasting and ascetic contemplation (e.g. *transcendental meditation’). The inspirational effect of sensory deprivation, implied in the stereotypical mystical *flight’ into the wilderness, has also been well documented in recent laboratory experiments.
from, Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism.
by Lewis, I. M. (1971).
Hey, what do you know, the year I was born…
So what question do I want to ask, and why? I can’t say for sure but I feel like it’s about something really important. I could actually find the answer without realizing it. That reminds me of David Deutsch’s ideas on good and bad explanations. Can it be otherwise? Can the explanation have variations and still result in the same conclusions? Unfortunately, I believe his criteria only works within the realm of what’s known and what can actually be experienced. Consider his argument about the existence of prolific proof of the existence of gravity with objects accelerating through curved space-time all around the early hunter gatherer societies. I’d argue that explanations can actually be right, even if they can’t be proven (or can’t be disproven, according to Popper’s definition of a scientific theory). Why is disprovability such a rigorous criteria for what’s considered a scientific question and what’s considered an esthetic question? How long do we have to wait for Godel? Haha, that’s funny: Waiting for Godel! Yes, we are waiting for Godel and his incompleteness theorem to trickle down into the white man dominated realm of empirical science. According to Kuhn’s argument in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, old paradigms don’t die, but people who believe in them do. Well, that’s not necessary, people, particularly if someone has some hard and fast obvious evidence about the ever-present undefinable. No problem there, just peel back some of that everydayness and stick your measuring device into the implicit underlying order all around you. Just like the hunter gatherers, my friends, can’t you see? The proof is everywhere. And when that time comes when you feel like you know something about everything, ask yourself, is this one of those moments where your brain is failing to match your sense of knowing with something specific, or are you actually having a feeling of knowing about everything that is actually about everything?
Sticking an array of photosensitive resistors on an old black and white t.v. will certainly allow me to monitor static, but exerting influence through purely psychic means? That’s another story altogether. Still, it may be the case that returning absolutely no positive results of conscious effects on the physical world is exactly what needs to happen in order for some psychic intentional consciousness to affect the other NON physical realm, which many years from now, scholars will claim was always already all around us.
Oh, and then there’s this: The ever expanding, ever widening bottleneck of knowing how to do stuff. I love this place!
Wearable Divination Device With Microphone (Sensing In) and PhotoResistor (Sensing Out)
