Reclaiming the Miraculous — Part 1 of 3

Reclaiming the Miraculous

Most of us suspect we don’t really know what life is. But really knowing you don’t know takes some work. It requires you to clearly see that your story is just a story; and to become conscious of the deep mystery at its foundation. —Tim Freke

It’s not possible to be certain about the nature of reality—to know what’s “really happening.”

At the same time, something certainly seems to be happening: what we call “experience.”

If we can hold both of these at once with precision—something people rarely do—a remarkable and unexpected thing happens. A deep part of our psyche that was bracing itself against the unknown—one that we may not even have known we had—begins to unclench. Claims that once sounded “woo” become self-evident.

The profound ennui and meaninglessness devouring our civilization: their source becomes obvious. As does a way out.

Our world is not one of “pitiless indifference,” as we’ve been telling ourselves. It is one of pure, miraculous magic. Not the naive sense of “miraculous.” A precise, defensible one.

Far from being irrational, this is the inevitable result when reason is taken to its logical conclusion.

Look around at this remarkable experience called “life.” Take a moment to really soak it in.

What is it? What’s causing it?

The answer seems obvious: there’s a physical world, you experience it through your brain, etc.

But how do you know it’s not all a simulation, or a dream, etc.? You don’t. But what’s worse is, you can’t even call those possibilities “unlikely.”

To calculate those odds, you’d need some knowledge about whatever is outside this reality—which is, by definition, inaccessible1. So the feeling that they’re “unlikely” is just that: a feeling.

Yet even if we understand this intellectually, it’s not like that feeling goes away. A visceral kind of certainty remains about our usual view. It is this illusion we’re trying to interrupt.

Can you even be sure there was a reality before five minutes ago? Maybe it all spontaneously popped into being, fully formed, exactly then, with only the appearance of a real past (including planted evidence, false memories, etc.). Again, how can you evaluate the probability without trusting knowledge from before five minutes ago—which would be plainly circular?

Even Occam’s Razor cannot help you here, since it’s only justified based on “past” evidence.

In fact, for all you know, reality is magically popping into existence right now. When? Now. Yes, now. There was no “two seconds ago.” You’re imagining it.

Sure, maybe this possibility is no more likely than any other. But it’s not any less, either. And any attempt to refute it ends up in circularity.

Just let yourself recognize: I genuinely do not—cannot—know what this is.

You’re not doing anything weird. You’re just being completely honest (possibly for the first time).

If you really let it sink in—especially that this may be the first moment—you’ll feel the ground start to wobble under your feet. A kind of giddy, almost uncanny feeling will overtake you. It’s not new or foreign. It’s what things are like before we put conceptual overlays on them.

Take your time (“time”) with this, until this starts to happen. Even if you’ve done this before, do it again now. Don’t just imagine or recall what it’s like. Don’t just think “been there, done that.”

A common way we prevent this from happening is reassuring ourselves. We think: “so what? By definition, it can’t make any difference.” If you do that, none of the rest of this piece will make sense. So it’s worth trying until you start to feel the shift.

Even if you do, you’ll probably find that your usual beliefs keep trying to reassert themselves—even though you can prove they are unjustified. It feels like “oh come on, get real.” What’s going on there?

Something in us cannot tolerate us seriously questioning our reality.

What would happen if you got underneath that part of yourself?

Although you cannot say precisely what is happening, it’s undoubtable that something is happening, isn’t it? Or at least, that it seems to be2?

Don’t just think about this. Look at the vibrant, wondrous experience engulfing you. Really drink it in. All the sights, sounds, textures, etc.

If you begin to doubt that something really seems to be happening, simply notice how doubt seems to be happening. This isn’t an idea. Not a philosophical argument. Just look, as a child might. Don’t label it—“consciousness” or whatever. Labels can always be doubted.

Don’t proceed until you are left with absolutely no doubt. Until you feel the self-defeating nature of doubting this.

So on one hand, you’re engulfed in something completely undoubtable. On the other, any “explanation” for it is utterly meaningless. Unjustifiable. You don’t even have reason to believe you’ve experienced anything before this very moment.

Which moment? This one. Which one? This one. Etc.

Again, you’re simply doing the most honest thing possible: remaining with the one thing you can be completely sure of, while relaxing all unjustified (and unjustifiable) beliefs about what it “is” or what’s “causing” it.

If you manage to rest in this apparent paradox—nailing both halves with perfect precision—a creeping recognition will begin to dawn.

You’re in direct contact with something literally beyond explanation. Not in some “woo-woo” or hand-wavy sense. Provably. Inescapably. And yet, here it is—radically, almost magically alive.

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. —Hafiz

Here’s what happens when I first do this: I fear I’m being irrational or superstitious. How can something be genuinely mysterious? That just means that we haven’t found an explanation yet. Surely science will eventually solve it (if it hasn’t already). My very real brain is just having a trippy experience, that’s all.

But why do I think that, when I’ve just proven it is no more “likely” than any other explanation? Doesn’t it mean I’ve abandoned the profound honesty I was modeling just a moment ago? Why do I feel the need to do that?

Even if science “solves” it, won’t this exercise still be available to me? No matter how “true” that solution is, I will still be not one whit more justified in believing it.

There’s also the fear that I will lose the ability to function. But is that true? I’m learning to stop confusing the map with the territory. That’s not the same as abandoning the map. And this can’t be accomplished by simply thinking harder about it. That just produces new, more clever maps.

If I relax all these fears and persist, something astonishing happens. At some point, my experience undergoes a phase transition, from mundane to miraculous. Or more precisely, I recognize that it has always been this way, timelessly.

I don’t mean “I can’t explain it, therefore miracle.” I don’t even mean that all explanations for it are wrong. I mean I directly perceive the sense in which all explanations are “not even wrong.” That whole endeavor is profoundly confused in a way that cannot be articulated—only seen.

I almost never look directly at what is right before my eyes, because I’m separated from it by a layer of assumptions I almost never see through. And when those assumptions become fully transparent—experientially, not just intellectually—I finally see what I’ve been avoiding looking at.

I drop to my knees in wonder and gratitude, as if nothing I’ve done could have possibly earned me the right to experience this—and yet at the same time, there’s no other way it could possibly be. Some call this experience “God,” because it has the unmistakable flavor of being “that than which nothing greater can be conceived3.” Reality is being magically created out of nothing in each moment; now, now, now. It never began. And it never stops.

That urge to ask myself “how do I know this is not just a trick of the brain?” increasingly dissolves as I see it for what it is: a defense mechanism, designed to keep the shock and awe of THIS at bay. It never had the authority I was giving it. It was only a scared child—all bluff and bluster.

I finally understand why other people cannot help but use the “G” word for it. But you could also just call it reality: the one thing that does not “go away” when we stop believing in it.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. —Philip K Dick

This shift of the meaning of the word “real” is not a small one. It is in this experience that I realize I’ve been using the word “real” to refer to my model of reality—something I’ve long known is unjustified, but hadn’t viscerally felt before. It now refers to the one irrefutable thing; that which always deserved this exalted word.

Again, the moment I try to define or pin down what “this thing” is, I fall into a trap: maybe I call it “consciousness,” turning it back into something that can be debated and refuted. I have averted my gaze from the actual thing and replaced it with an inert stand-in. That’s just how the mind works.

It means I have dozed off without realizing it. I stop looking and start assuming—never realizing I’ve made this conflation.

The only way back is to immerse myself in the experience of radical honesty. Trying to be clever is worse than useless here.

Here’s why I think we don’t let ourselves go this deep.

What happens when you take something utterly for granted? When it’s so obvious, so normal, that even bothering to question it feels absurd?

You stop looking at it.

And what happens when you stop looking at something? When you no longer really see it?

You feel fine treating it any which way you want.

And what does humanity as a whole seem to be doing to each other? To other beings? To nature?

We literally couldn’t do it if we fully saw what we were doing. What we were looking at.

Don’t take my word for it. Repeat this exercise while looking at another person, or animal, or plant. Doesn’t it become much harder to use them for your own benefit when really seeing them? You cease to see them as an object to be used, and recognize them as life itself.

Modeling this radical honesty: it would begin to reveal aspects of ourselves that we may not be ready to confront. And that would stop us from engaging in behavior we’re not ready to give up.

Here’s the amazing part: none of what I’ve just told you is controversial. Here’s “poetic naturalist”4 (and respected physicist) Sean Carroll on the problem of skepticism:

There is no way to distinguish between the scenarios by collecting new data. […] We have every right to give high credence to views of the world that are productive and fruitful, in preference to those that would leave us paralyzed with ennui.

In other words: yes, there is no principled way to privilege any (internally consistent) model of reality over another. He then proceeds as though his preferred model were the ground floor—graciously permitting us to describe it in other language (“poetic naturalism”) as long as we accept the real truth.

Life and consciousness are just accidental byproducts of mindless forces bashing lifeless matter against itself:

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. —Richard Dawkins

Boy, good thing we didn’t adopt a perspective that would leave us “paralyzed with ennui,” or pillaging “fundamentally lifeless” nature for our own benefit. Oops, okay maybe we did—but our hand was forced! It’s just the way things are! You can tell because look: they seem that way!

It is no coincidence that the philosophy assuming reality is fundamentally lifeless shares its name with the social phenomenon rapidly turning our world lifeless: “materialism.” When there’s only one thing that “really exists,” why wouldn’t we spend our lives chasing after it? Sacrificing inert chunks of matter like “forests” and “ecosystems” in endless pursuit of it?

This, ultimately, is the choice on offer: to take on pure faith that we live in a world of “pitiless indifference,” or to discover the precise sense in which it is radically, magically alive.

But no matter how hard I want to believe (or how clearly I see) that reality is far greater than any boxes we’ve tried stuffing it in, the cultural milieu makes it difficult.

In this environment, the part of me that wants to open up feels ridiculous doing so. Isn’t it much more “sophisticated” to believe that all this is nonsense? To get on with the noble work of turning nature into goods and services, like our selfish genes demand?

Any suspicion to the contrary gets re-contextualized as wishful thinking; a naive fantasy born of rogue neurotransmitters, ruthlessly evolved to distract us from the “cold, hard truth.”

Which means that even when I catch glimpses of what’s actually true, they’re slower to transform me. I don’t dare share them in places that aren’t “safe,” making them harder to integrate.

But all this appears to be turning around in recent years. (Yes, I said “years.” Conventional time still appears to operate, without contradicting what was seen.) People are suspecting something is “off” about the way we’re living; about the very ways we conceive of the world.

Which suggests that the time is finally right to rehabilitate “God” or “the miracle”—or if you prefer, the unspeakable magic of life itself.

It couldn’t remain hidden forever.

Reverend Richard Elvee: Dr. Wheeler, who was there to observe the universe when it started? Were we there? Or does it only start with our observation? Is the big bang here?

Dr. Wheeler: A lovely way to put it—“is the big bang here?” I can imagine that we will someday have to answer your question with a “yes.” […] Have we had the mechanism of creation before our eyes all this time without recognizing the truth? That is the larger question implicit in your comment. Of all the deep questions of our time, I do not know one that is deeper, more exciting, more clearly pregnant with a great advance in our understanding.

Appendix: Quotes

I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who; after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat.

— Thích Nhất Hạnh, Zen master

So close you can’t see it So deep you can’t fathom it So simple you can’t believe it So good you can’t accept it

— Tibetan Buddhist saying

When I’ve asked shamans about the sickness of the west, they say: “it’s quite simple: you have severed your connection with spirit… unless you reconnect with spirit and do so soon, you’re going to bring the whole house of cards down around your heads and ours.”

— Graham Hancock

Even if I want to put this realization down I can’t. Sometimes it’s excruciating. You know those morons that rammed those planes into the World Trade Center? That was me. The people that died in the collapse. Me again. Every single person who ever paid money for a Pet Rock? Me. I don’t mean I identify with them or sympathize with them. I mean I am them. It’s impossible to explain any more clearly than that, but this isn’t a figure of speech or bad poetry. I mean it absolutely literally.

— Brad Warner, Zen priest (and punk rocker)

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. This is why we see highly intelligent and educated people giving nearly opposite conclusions to such questions [TODO: give links] ↩

  2. Such doubt has become a popular trend in academia. Some modern philosophers and scientists indeed try to deny consciousness.

    Illusionism is the view that phenomenal consciousness (in the philosophers’ sense) is an introspective illusion. —Keith Frankish

    Let me be as clear as possible: Consciousness doesn’t happen. —Michael Graziano, professor of neuroscience at Princeton

    ↩

  3. From Anselm’s ontological argument, eleventh century. He used it to argue for God’s existence; I’m using it to name the experience. https://iep.utm.edu/anselm-ontological-argument/ ↩

  4. Carroll subscribes to materialism, prefers the name “physicalism,” but brands it as “poetic naturalism,” even going so far as to list it as his religion: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/poetic-naturalism/. In brief, everything is ultimately physical, but it’s okay if you want to use other words to describe it. ↩