Technically, the dark night of the soul of St. John of the Cross is an experience of the practical mystic where God purportedly withdraws his presence from the perception of the mystic. This has been popularized to include all crises of faith wherein the presence and existence of God are in doubt. Mother Theresa experienced her own dark night that spanned almost the last sixty years of her life. She apparently died in the midst of her crisis of faith.
Many people base their faith in God on past experiences of feeling connected to something bigger than themselves, feelings of peace and love. If you’ll forgive my digression into pseudo propositional logic, the basis for their belief can be stated as:
Spiritual feelings ⇒ God is Present ⇒ God exists
Without commenting on the strength of that chain of implication, what happens when such a believer can no longer experience those feelings which she held to be a sign of God’s presence. If she hasn’t given God a reason to withdraw from her, what does the lack of those feelings mean?
Using the same reasoning that was the initial basis of her belief, she would conclude that God does not exist, a frightening idea. Things get more complicated when she remembers the times that she once felt what she believed to be God’s presence. How is she to reconcile these conflicting experiences, the one telling her that God exists and the other telling her that he doesn’t? This is a perfect illustration of cognitive dissonance: two competing ideas that a person feels compelled to reconcile.
The idea of the dark night of the soul provides one possible explanation to the doubter: God is teaching the person something by withdrawing his presence.
Lack of spiritual feelings ⇒ God is absent ⇒ God is teaching you ⇒ God exists
This idea has ample support in Mormon and Christian scripture and theology, it provides relief from cognitive dissonance, and it suffers from a big problem. Condensing the two chains of implication makes the contradiction obvious:
Spiritual feelings ⇒ God exists
Lack of spiritual feelings ⇒ God exists
From a purely logical standpoint, accepting the dark night of the soul as an explanation for the absence of those specific feelings makes them useless as evidence of God’s existence in the first place. If I had a test for lead in drinking water that would only ever give a positive result, then the test is useless. I don’t need a test that always tells me that lead is in my water; I need a test that could also tell me that there was no lead (hopefully based on the presence or absence of lead). There is no part of this theological equation that permits us to test God’s existence. This logic only allows for one conclusion: God exists.
This logic could be extended to justify anything. I could argue that those spiritual feelings are evidence that the stars are aligned for a person. When those feelings go away, I could assert that the stars are now misaligned; or perhaps I could say that a body thetan is interfering with the person, or that someone has cast an evil eye on them. The idea of the dark night of the soul as an explanation for God’s absence tastes like superstition and religious hucksterism calculated to sell me snake oil.
Instead of accepting the dark night of the soul experience as evidence that God is teaching a person, I question the believer’s interpretation of the feelings which lead to belief in the first place. I recently read On Being Certain which makes a case based on neuroscience that feelings of certainty are largely unrelated to the truth of a belief. Certainty is instead a subjective emotional experience rooted in human neurology having little to do with reason, logic, or truth. Though the book’s subject was the feeling of certainty, I think the basic idea can be applied to spiritual feelings.
If it is true that spiritual feelings aren’t caused by a supreme being but rather by the biology of the brain, then these dark nights of the soul make perfect sense. There doesn’t have to be rhyme or reason for them because they are just the vagaries of human consciousness. We are all subject to moods. Some days we wake up happy and convinced that life is wonderful. Other days we trudge through life feeling dark and uncertain. These moods don’t seem to mean something transcendent. They’re just the ups and downs of our psychology. Likewise could the feelings which some interpret as evidence of God’s presence be the ebb and flow of natural processes in the brain.
Understanding spiritual feelings as phenomena of the brain could also explain why I never had these spiritual experiences despite having prayed long and hard for them, despite wearing myself out trying to be worthy of them. If I thought that God sends these experiences, then I would have to explain why he didn’t send them to me when he sends them to others who seem no more worthy than I. (Perhaps Calvin was right and I was predestined to damnation as an infidel.)
If these feelings are instead caused by brain chemistry, it is reasonable to think that perhaps I just got a meager helping of the genes that facilitate spiritual experiences. Perhaps I only have weak religiosity because of my brain chemistry. This makes perfect sense to me, and I don’t have to rationalize why a loving God would keep his lowly creature in the dark.
From my viewpoint, the dark night of the soul concept arrests personal growth. It is an illogical ploy to preserve our prejudices and cherished beliefs. It conveniently helps us ignore that part of ourselves that suspects that our beliefs are incorrect. But it provides comfort for those who want it. I believe it owes its popularity to the desire to believe of those who find themselves alone. The idea holds out the hope that the darkness will be followed by a dawn and a return to comfortable beliefs.
I don’t buy it, but we can all choose for ourselves how to interpret our experiences.
]]>(via kottke.org)
]]>The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)
]]>I’m reaching up and reaching out,
I’m reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one’s been.
We’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been. (Lateralus, Tool)
She reached up, caressed a branch of our small pomegranate tree with its solitary blossom, and said “Everything’s perfect. It’s right where it’s supposed to be.” I smiled to hear such poetry come out of a little girl’s mouth, and for a moment I believed her.
We went back to spotting gape-mouthed crocodiles with castles for party hats as they floated by above us.
]]>It was like I traveled into myself and broke through to the other side, and I was in the presence of God. I was in communion with all that ever could be, and experienced love beyond measure. I experienced a person loving me. Being love. Being all. Total peace. The end of all fear. Eternal joy. I was in union with an infinite person who had nothing but perfect love for me and in whom I was in union and it was ALL, capital A, double L…
The man who had that experience later became a Catholic priest in part because of that experience. He wrote that letter describing his experience to Huston Smith, author of Cleansing the Doors of Perception. This man had taken a dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).
Trust the Canadians to produce an even-keeled documentary about this demonized drug. The documentary includes interviews of many of the early players in LSD’s history.
The History Channel has also done a documentary on LSD:
I’ve never dropped acid, but I’m left with the impression that it has tremendous potential that isn’t tapped by its current casual use.
]]>Things got more interesting (and more verbose all around) when Blake entered the fray (I believe this is Blake Ostler). The discussion has veered to the topic of the validity of “spiritual” experiences as a foundation for knowledge and a philosophical attack on naturalism.
Interesting, wide-ranging discussion.
]]>Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood…
Matthew 26:26–28
Did Jesus not command us to kill him? To break his body and drink his blood? He commanded us to take and bind him, scourge him, and ultimately crucify him. He went to the cross willingly so that we could find nourishment in pieces of his rent flesh and spilt blood. His corpse was the bread of life and the fountain of living waters. We locked his body in the tomb of our churches, thinking to reverence it. His truth defied the sepulcher of our reverence. He rose on the third day, free from the prison of our pallid devotion. If we look for Jesus in the tomb of our faith, we should expect to hear the answer which mocks our pride “He is not here, for he is risen.”
It is only in his death that we find salvation from error and deceit. The truth is not in our books, doctrines, myths, sacraments, beliefs, ordinances, rites, dogmas, idols, commandments, or beliefs. The truth is too large for them to contain it. It is the sweet aroma which escapes from their dead bodies. Our Jesus-shaped idols will not answer our prayers. Jesus demands that we kill him that we may gain life. He that loves Jesus’ life shall lose it. He that hates Jesus’ life shall gain eternal life.
Only one Apostle had ears to hear His words. Only one Apostle had the courage to follow the commandments of his Lord. Only his most beloved Apostle loved Jesus enough to set him free.
Kill God. Lay him on the altar. Stay not the blade that ends the innocent life. Let the burnt offering send a sweet savor up to the empty heavens. Consume the offering of Jonah’s flesh and blood. Digest him in the depths of your belly bringing health to your navel and marrow to your bones. Make his carcass live again in the temple of your own body and blood. Bid all saints to come forth from the grave and walk among the living, rejoicing in the deliverance of the tyrant Jesus crucified. Proclaim to the world “God is dead! I am become God!”
]]>Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,…
(The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats)
I envision my consciousness like a wave of the sea which eventually crashes on the beach and ceases to exist. My mind is just a process which will come to an end someday.
I feel like I should be immortal only because the only world I’ve ever known has included me in it. As a child, I imagined every event that happened before my birth in black and white as if the world wasn’t fully real until I entered it.
Is this observer truly me? If the observer in my head defines me, what happens when I drift into dreamless sleep? Where am I then? Does death feel different than drifting off to sleep?
Or does the process which defines me also include all of my body which supports that observer? Without my body, my mind wouldn’t exist. Is my body part of my self? Does my self even further include the world which gives nourishment to my body and gives shape to my thoughts? What uniquely defines me as me? Where is the line where I end and everything else begins? Can an honest line be drawn between me and not me?
Is my self essentially my intelligence? My personality? My memories? What if I am in a car accident on my way home tonight suffering a traumatic head injury and all of those are taken away from me? Am I still me? Or have I become someone else? Have I ever ceased changing from one person to another?
Is there any truth in the idea that there is a clearly defined self which persists throughout my life? My body changes. My mind grows and changes. The material that makes up my body is continually cycled in and out. The flesh and blood which currently make up me isn’t the same stuff which made up my body as a child. I am constantly in flux, continually remade.
I eat death. Death gives me life. I die in turn each day giving birth to new life.
The only self I can point to is a whirlwind, a wave, a flame which has an apparent beginning and an end. It comes together from other processes, gives birth to still others, and eventually becomes unrecognizable.
Why should I become attached to this process of experience that is my self? What the Lord gives, he also takes away. It is not equitable to mourn the end which is the natural consequence of the fact of my wonderful existence.
As I see myself outside of ego, death begins to lose its fearful power over my mind.
I try to live life to the fullest not because it will ultimately make a lasting difference in the universe. All life will probably come to an end in the distant future. I live now because that sterile future comes only after many people live and die. I live so that I can make my personal experience better and to improve the lives of future generations in any way that I can. The universe doesn’t care, but I do. I live in curiosity, compassion, thought, and passion because I am human. That’s what humans do.
[Adapted from my comment to a post at Letters from a broad.]
]]>Myth comes to us from people who have experienced reality from another perspective. These poets, shamans, and mystics have left the mundane world and its concerns to experience transcendence of the self. They have sacrificed themselves on the altar. They have died and been reborn to bring us the bread of a new life beyond the illusion of duality and separation. Their stories point the way along the path that they have followed and beckon us to join in the journey.
We have missed the point entirely. We take our myths literally while ignoring the larger reality behind their words. We believe in the literal existence of a sky-father who sits on a cloud listening to the cries of his children and intervening in the world of humankind. We believe that our selves will continue in a world of joy after we die. We have polluted our myths with simpleminded, comforting stories to ward of the fear of death and to assuage our shame.
Our myths are not about facts. They are a call to transform ourselves, to see ourselves in our true relationship with the world.
It’s as if we believed in a literal Pinocchio, a puppet with a growing nose, but failed to learn about honesty. Our religious failure is not that we don’t trust enough in our religious stories, but that we have mistakenly taken metaphor for literal truth. If we truly understood, it would make no difference to us whether or not there was a literal first father and mother named Adam and Eve. We wouldn’t care whether Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth was literally crucified. The question of the existence of a personal God is entirely the wrong question to ask.
Is there a God? Mu.
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