Blog address for all the posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
A
while ago, I was asked how I would portray a feeling of there being
something else; something more than just being born, living for a
while, and then dying; a life that is no better than the lives of intellectual animals.
Sixth Sense
Recently, I was fortunate to be party to an hour long telephone conversation, with someone I have great respect for. We discussed mental health; work environments; comprehension; and channels of communication. In a wonderful previous conversation, we had hovered around the notion of prescience and sixth sense, and I was keen to revisit this topic. I commented that her voice was different this time. Those of you who understand that when our primary sense (sight) is absent there is an idea that our other senses compensate, might also know that if we lose just a tiny part of our outer ear we find the location of a sound to be difficult. Eventually, if the new shape of the outer ear is permanent, we compensate sufficiently well to be almost entirely sure which direction a sound comes from. Our sense of hearing really is very sensitive and very special.
I explained that I had poor and uncorrected vision for decades and as a result listen for nuances in voices probably more than most people. We realised quite soon that we, as humans, pick up on other people’s emotions quite quickly. I suggested that in the absence of face-to-face meetings we are not distracted by body-language, which many psychologists regard as a figurative ‘shout’ of veracity. You can say yes and shake your head at the same time, and almost everyone perceives you ‘saying’, No.
I suggested that in the absence of hearing we have to use abilities of perception that we rarely pay attention to. In effect, we move towards a liminal position of understanding;
‘Right on the threshold of physical and spiritual being’, I said.
‘Sixth sense’, she replied.
‘Rather like our spirits holding up a banner behind us that says something like, ‘Be gentle, I am hurting.’
I don’t read the Bible much any more, but I do recall that there are a few verses that, for me, speak of a realisation that the writer of those verses believes that he has discovered something beyond himself. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth.
From, 1 CORINTHIANS 13 v. 11 – 12 (NIV)
Available online at: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=NIV
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
Love is patient
This is from the well-known piece on love, which is highly recommended to all. From the same source of 1 Corinthians 13:
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
In answer to the question I was asked many years ago, on there being something else, I wrote:
Spirits with banners
- start -
This conversation was beginning to irritate me.
‘I rather think that I may inadvertently be bordering on trying to persuade you to change your views on morality and utilitarianism and nudging you towards an acceptance of a truth. Not unlike taking the red or blue pill in The Matrix. But whose truth?’, I pressed.
Mark’s face didn’t change from his usual mask of implacability, but he did look down for a while, then left and right at the fallen and dismembered bodies we had found. He paused for a while, his mouth open; long enough for one of the local flies to land on his lower lip. His sharp in-breath sucked it in. He rolled it with his tongue and spat, though somewhat languidly.
‘I also feel that there is no
doubt that something or someone is, and has been, whispering so loudly and for
so long that the constant susurration has become part of our
background noise.’
‘Yet’, I offered, ‘if you found yourself suddenly on a planet on which all the people are born blind and only you could see, would you tell them about birds? The blind people might hear wing-beats as the birds fly away before the birds are touched by the people; so those people can never know the bird’s shape or how they move, because they cannot catch one, aside of accidentally, and it may take them millennia to understand the purpose of birds.'
Mark pondered my words. I went on.
'I think you would not!' If they know about birds, they would fear their own shadows when someone might later tear away another veil that is a bar to comprehension. Being blind, all they can know of shadows is a cooler temperature where they lie.
I saw Mark had grasped my meaning. He slowly nodded as he finished my words for me.
'Their simplest reasoning would have them living uncomplicated lives with thoughts of how, to perhaps, till the land and work together for their mutual survival. Who cares if an observer is a flock of birds, and the designers are shadows on a planet with a simple population?’
One or two of the spirits standing by their still-living charges stared at us. Their banners flickered 'Help' and nonsense; the letters changing like old analogue airport departure notices when an event has changed the timetable, except their letters were more like crude brushstrokes. When the letters eventually faded to nothing they gave a final glance at the bodies and left to form a group where they fell into conversation. A few looked, wistfully, over their shoulders at us. I recognised one of them.- end -
The point in the above written piece is that both the characters are aware of something else, and even the gore and violence of death is not sufficient to be considered to be greater in impact than that inherent feeling we have of there being something else we just cannot quite see or touch. The point is that they are ignoring their primary senses and are focusing only on thinking and communicating ideas.