TRANSCENDING
MYSTERY A continuing philosophical question is not only what we know, but how do we know it, and more importantly, what does it mean “to know.” Often in helping persons through the final stage of this segment of existence, I occasionally hear the fear expressed about what comes after death: “What if there is nothing there? What if all reality is a product of the brain’s delusion? What if death is oblivion?” The temptation is to respond with, “Well, then you will have nothing to worry about.” Theories of knowing are called into question as the reality of a creating intelligence comes under attack by some neo-Darwinians who see no use for a deity to explain Creation. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and others offer their brand of weird science to postulate the non-existence of God. Dawkins has created his own fish bowl of science and stated that this is all there is. He cannot think outside the box of scientific imperialism. In the fifteenth century a stone marker stood at the Pillars of Hercules with the words, “Ne Plus Ultra” —“Nothing More Beyond.” After Columbus’ voyages, Spanish reales bore the inscription, “Plus Ultra.” As soon as we establish limits there will always be someone to push beyond it. While Dawkins mounts a vicious attack against religion, some of it justifiable, he also condemns the worship of mystery and the unscientific probing of the paranormal. Anecdotal evidence is not acceptable to him. Mediumship, near-death recollections, reincarnation, and other “pseudo-apprehensions” of alternate realities would be described, not as paranormal, but paranoia—mind beside itself, or outside the scientific box. He rejects the “God of the Gaps” strategy, which theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer also condemned. This strategy relegates to God all that we do not understand, and that as our knowledge increases, our need for God decreases. He falsely assumes that mystics “exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious,” and “that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” (Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. p. 125-126.) Mystics appreciate mystery, but do not worship it. They seek instead to transcend it, to search for the ultimate understanding of the meaning and purpose of existence. To frame the nature and reality of God as an unprovable hypothesis is not part of the mystic’s equation. To Dawkins mysticism may be “paranoia,” but to those who have had the experience it is more like “exo-noia,” being out of one’s mind in the sense that so much of existence cannot be processed by the brain-mind mechanism. Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Memes are to culture as genes are to biology. They are packages of thought, racial memories, etc. that are passed along with genetic material from generation to generation. We might speculate that this memetic material might exist outside of its carrier and that this is what is perceived by psychics, mediums, visionaries, and mystics and compare it to the Sanskrit Akashic records or Jung’s Collective Unconscious, or discarnate residual energy. But we can talk about that at another time. Dr. Harry L. Serio |
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