The Mouse in the Machine

There are two ways of experiencing beautiful things. We can think about them, or they can just be. Lounging in a deep-cushioned chair, on a moderate evening, perhaps on a well tended lawn that gently slopes to the edge of a narrow beach, a cold Chablis in our hand, occasionally sipping from it, not so much watching as letting the falling sun paint a pallet of color on the soon-to-be night sky -- just being there, with nature unfolding -- we lose our sense of Self. I suppose it's difficult to be of an absolutely clear mind -- with nothng in the picture but impressions of things like beautiful sunsets -- but in theory, it's possible. The self can disappear into emptinesses of that sort, hide away, as it were, overcome by a world that simply is.

Perhaps at such times even the things of beauty themselves vanish, their places taken by stillness, silence . . . nothing. We forget we are real. We experience the world (or something) unconsciously. We may react to unconscious experiences, react in a discernible way. At the simplest level we may experience joy or sorrow, but these are simply the measuring rods we consciously apply (without trying to) to the totality of experience. Even in cases where the measures are not taken, our bodies nevertheless know the physical counterparts of joy and sorrow. Those are moments that "can just be."

True, having been in one of those moments of pure Being, we may, moments later, reflect and find ourselves joyful or sorrowful for having been there, but by that time, the moments of pure Being have come and gone. We have become "objects" again, "objectively" assessing the world of things.

Our culture is made of objects we have consciously thought about, things we have applied words to, oils to, music to. These are views of the world we can consciously express. But our lives as we live them are determined by all our experiences, not just those of which we are conscious. We experience beauty as it is beyond the possibility of expression, beyond the poetry and the music. In that world, we exist seamlessly. We cannot be separated from it. Only in the world of things, the world of culture, can we conceive of ourselves as separate things. Only in that objectified world do those inventions we call art have meaning and beauty of the reflective sort. That's the world we see, not the world we experience.

In the world of culture we have made an object even of God. He is something "out there," a real something that "thinks" and "feels" and "has a son." He's something that fits neatly into the world we have made with our words and pictures. He's a "he."

In the world of culture, we blog. We make up stuff to say to others like ourselves, and when we do it well, and the others reply saying nice things about us and our "philosophical ramblings," we experience joy. (Or sorrow when the others refer to our stuff as the "philosophical ramblings" they actually are.)

In the world of culture we have manufactured, seams always appear, gaps between our "truths." But that was bound to happen. Words are clever codes we've invented, and as good as they can be made to unfold when expressed by master wordsmiths, they fall short of describing the smooth, seamless infinitude of the world as it is. It is not because there is no truth that we never quite speak it truthfully. We fail because our codes are inadequate.

Perhaps our musical experiences come closer, since we seem to be able more easily to forget where and who we are when in their thrall. The world created by music seems on occasion not of this world but of some other where time and distance cannot intrude. God seems to be there in that world, not as a thing, but as the final and perfect expression of what ultimately is. Music creates for us a kind of reproducible satori, an awareness of the whole of Being and of a truth that cannot be made into words. We can, of course, trace the notes, the rhythms, and the rise and fall of musical sound to human artificers, but we may yet within the musical experience find the soul of God.

Perhaps we can intellectually relate all aesthetic experiences to similar views of eternity. We may completely explain color and meter and the semiotics of language. We may learn the physics of our neurological machines, know them so well that we may even convince ourselves that God is "in the numbers." But the experiences of joy and sorrow, the frightening mixture of them we find in our most poignant flights into the beyond, cannot be explained by a knowledge of words or notes or "things" of any sort. They seem to lie simultaneously outside and within the dimensions of space and time. They are wholly unlike ideas and objects, different in a way that itself is different. There, in our suspicion of a difference between body and soul, resides the reality of what we mean when we speak of what it means to be truly human.

If we could not doubt that this were so, it would not be real.