Moments of Transcendence
I count among my closest friends those who can best be described as true mystics, people whose response to nature is to be literally awash in their feeling of love from the universe. This indescribable feeling of oneness is usually interpreted through the prism of their understanding of the creative act behind the universe. Francis Collins, author of The Language of God, is one such person whose scientific training was overwhelmed by a celebratory moment within nature which led to a realization that the universe had meaning and thus had to have someone who begat it meaning just as it originally gifted life itself. His faith now, while no doubt continuing to have moments of similar transcendence, has sought out a more quantitative foundation one would expect someone of his training to need in order to be sustained.
In these glimpses theists experience God and his love in ways that are unmistakably clear; for spiritual non-theists, this response is understood to be our response to the timeless spirit that is creation. Interestingly, such responses seem to be profoundly and perhaps singularly tied to personality: those of us who are more rational in our orientation may never have such experiences regardless of our religious or spiritual inclinations, while others may almost be unable to complete a day without moments of gratifying transcendence found in periods big and small.
For me, personal encounters with envy know two masters: wealth and spirituality. The former is easily enough understood; the latter less so. A life of penance sought for sins not my own made the desire for sustaining spiritual experience which would be grounded primarily in relationship and change the only hope that made religious pursuits worthwhile. I am thus now challenged to explain my own beliefs (or lack thereof) with the rare moments of spiritual transcendence I feel, when so much of what I and my mystical friends believe is so different. It was with relish today that I discovered a quote from Vladimir Nabokov whose own agnosticism needed to be reconciled with his experiences of other-worldliness:
The highest enjoyment of timeliness is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude
Drawn by any human timeline, nature seems to exist outside of the passage of time: even in its organic sense, the biology of nature defies in its continuity and length our own sense of self. Those rare moments when we are still enough to be enveloped by it are those same when we connect with that which is the other, the timeless, the subjectively eternal. It is this that my mystical friends are connected to, a pulse of life that others such as myself may find in only clumsy ways, but which when experienced pull us towards a state of being that is profound in its transcendent power. We interpret its reality differently but are equally changed by it, even if these moments are rarer for some than others.
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About MysteriousFaith
“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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January 21st, 2008 at 12:01 pm
“It is this that my mystical friends are connected to, a pulse of life that others such as myself may find in only clumsy ways, but which when experienced pull us towards a state of being that is profound in its transcendent power.”
Transcendent power… beautiful.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Ben, found your site via Robb Smith. Great stuff. I’ve added you to my RSS reader. All best, JL