Sand and Pearls

In discussion, a(fellow)  atheist acquaintance,  asked me essentially, “yes, but what about all these spiritual experiences…does being an atheist mean I can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t have them?”

There are many avenues that afford a non-theistic experience of what we might call numinous.  The one I have direct experience of is kenshō in Japansese Rinzai zen practice.  Kenshō is an enlightenment experience, or an experience in which the perception of the self melts away, and the world revealed as seen WITHOUT the ‘lens of self’, is perceived as vast, whole, interconnected.

Like all numinous experiences, kenshō is almost impossible to describe. Nonetheless, we keep attempting, if not to describe it utterly, then to comprehend or understand it.

Personally, I tend to see all numinous experiences, (even if they are reached within a religious framework) as essentially non-theist — in which the experience is later explained to self and others; later comprehended and given meaning, AFTER THE FACT, through a doctrinal framework and understanding.

Through the science of neurobiology and related scientific frameworks, we can elucidate a science of mind which will allow us to understand how numinous experiences happen.  Once one has experienced an experience like kenshō, it becomes clear that the ‘self’ is a construction of the mind; and that in its turn, the mind is a construction of the brain.

What does it mean to ‘have a self’?  I have seen clearly that the notion of self is a construction, but that doesn’t make it useless or meaningless.  It simp

ly means that neither the personal perception of ‘self’ or the process by which we can see, even if only for a moment, without the ‘self’ — neither of these experiences are in any way magical.

To approach it through a paradigm of both neurobiology and evolutionary psychology, it seems clear that self-awareness, that is, perceiving the world through the lens of ‘self’ is a powerfully adaptive mechanism, and serves to ensure the survival of the human genome on many levels in many ways, the simplest of which is a feeling of continuity, compounded by a fear of death, in which we will do almost anything in most circumstances to ensure our continued perception of self.

All numinous experiences are essentially experiences of  selflessness — that is experiencing the world without and beyond the constrictions of selfhood.

All such experiences that I am aware of can be seen to be brought about by altering the action of the brain in some way; either by inducing a trance state through chanting, drumming, whirling or similar; or by reducing the activity of the brain catastrophically (through extended awareness practices like meditation), or by ‘torturing’ the brain into letting go of the notion of ‘self’ — koan practice, or the sensory deprivation of long meditation, or extended periods of prayer or contemplation.

That human beings are capable of of doing this — that we are capable of perceiving the selfless world, without “magic”  — is to me a source of wonder and amazement.