Experience Transcends Opinion

We all occupy the same universe but we all perceive it in such different ways that we are effectively living in different worlds. I previously wrote about how people who were unable to see colour would have no conception of how the universe would appear to colour seeing people. This difference in perception is why men and women frequently fail to understand each other. When women get together and watch a ‘chick flick’ they are moved by the emotions that the film generates. The way a film induces these emotions is similar to way a violin string vibrates and induces a similar vibration in adjacent strings, even on a different instrument. Many men are unable to feel emotion in the same way – they don’t have a string that responds to the vibration - and consequently the film doesn’t induce the same responses. Men wonder what all the fuss is about and wonder why anyone should burst out in tears over it. On the other hand, women sometimes wonder how a crowd of men can get worked up over a football game.

If you imagine eating sour plums you will get a physiological reaction – you may even make a face. If you have never eaten sour plums you cannot get the same response. The same applies to such things as seeing in colour and feeling emotions.

Intellectuals who are cut off from their feelings can work out all manner of theories as to how the world works, and wonder how it is that people could have religious experiences. They are like colour-blind people who come across people who can perceive colour, or people who know what it is like to eat sour plums. It is very difficult to show people who lack an experience or perception, what it is that they are missing out on.

As an example, I wrote previously (The Mystical Journey) about how different areas in the world have different energy currents. Most people are completely cut off from this. I have visited the tomb of the great Sufi Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi in Konya, Turkey and found the feeling from the tomb is overwhelming. This feeling isn't, as many people imagine, simply a conditioned response to being in a religious environment - it is a physiological sensation that takes place on an energy level. So called 'chi' energy and chakras are related to this same energy. Some people, however, are completely dead to it.

Here are some other examples of where this lack of sensitivity can arise:

Watching an emotional film and not feeling the emotion
Being colour blind and looking at something with colours
Being in a situation where people have a religious experience and feeling nothing
Being in areas of high, positively or negatively charged energy and being insensitive to it
Rude, boorish people who are insensitive to the effect they have on others
Listening to music and being unmoved by it
Attempting to dance and wondering what people see in it

I find so-called ‘intellectuals’ to be particularly insensitive in these areas. Intellectuals work in the brain whereas these feelings take place in other areas of the body. This, incidentally, also illustrates the folly of people who look for consciousness in the brain. Richard Dawkins claims (even with pride) to never had had a religious experience in his life, so it is hardly surprising that that he cannot comprehend what a religious experience is. He is like the colour-blind person questioning someone who can see in colour. He also claims, apparently to back up his way of viewing the world, that certain types of brain disorder (temporal-lobe epilepsy for example) can induce feelings which are similar to religious feelings. What he doesn’t mention is that brain disorders can induce a huge range of perceptions from un-localised pain to quite distinct visions. If we stimulate someone’s brain and they see, for example, an elephant are we to deduce that all visions of elephants are imaginary?

There are some techniques whereby people who lack an experience can be shown their deficiency. One is to use analogy. Analogies are very important in understanding as they enable you to see a situation from a different viewpoint. It is often said that we live in the information age, but the problem is not information, it is seeing the information we have in the right way. Not surprisingly, some so-called scientists are derisory about analogies. Many times I’ve been told that I can’t win an argument by analogy – to which my reply is that I’m not trying to win an argument, I’m trying to get people to see the information they have from a different point of view.

The other way someone can break out of their narrow viewpoint is through new experiences. For example, I have found many times that people who condemn clairvoyants as fraudulent, change their view when they experience a good one. Of course if you tell this to someone they would simply say that they wouldn’t be convinced so easily (not that they would know). It has to be personal experience. To use a cliché “Experience transcends opinion”.