CONVERSION

Now that we have finally become convinced that there is no God, science tells us we must accept the idea that there is no “reality” or if there is, it’s a code or a barrage of codes, that must be deciphered into electrochemistry from every cell that will accept the impact of them.  Waves of air hit the tympanum of the ear and becomes what we call “sound”, which is an electrochemical parallel in neurons.  Molecules of something smelly get sucked into the nose and cells give an electrochemical lab report.

There are two kinds of these messages: the peripheral that come from the outside world like waves of light or chemical reactions on the tongue or in the nose, and those that come from inside the body, autonomic, dedicated to maintaining the homeostasis of our organs and systems.  To repeat, there are two kinds of neural systems: the peripheral system which connects the sensory organs (including skin) to the brain and then carries impulses back to the muscles to prompt movement; and the autonomic nervous system which is concerned with unconscious maintenance of smooth muscles and organs.  We are sometimes conscious of these systems -- breathing, heartbeat, temperature, gut squeeze -- and feel them as emotions.

The two systems are kept in relationship by the “associational” system: brain, brainstem, spinal cord, cerebellum.  Most of the action is here -- this is the dashboard or at least its location.  In its nexuses, little nodes of neurons, the code is sorted, edited, reframed, and then sent on.  It is filtered information.

The theory of deep experience or epiphany that I’m pursuing is in this associational system.  It can be accessed through the motor systems and sensory systems, and affects the autonomic system.  The autonomic system can be directly accessed through the use of drugs, since the system IS a drug synergy as well as transmitted by electrochemical nerves.

The business of the associational brain systems is often called thought, but is mostly unconscious.  What we think of as consciousness is foam on the surf of the great sea of thought.  Words -- language -- is a derivation of consciousness because it is a code of hearing/speaking.  On top of that is the code of marks on a surface that coordinates with the sounds of speech.   We call it “writing.”  Rationality  in the sense of careful reasoning -- which is what theology claims to be -- is a function of speech, often worked out in writing, like doing math.

Thus we see how far away “religion” is from human visceral interaction with whatever is outside the human skin.  Clearly it is the construct of a thick information deck, dependent on simplification suggested by culture.  But it FEELS like direct contact with something more real, more powerful, more sacred.  But there is nothing aside from the internal feeling -- so how do we get that feeling and what do we do with it?

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11061/  is one of my sources.)

First, there is something generating waves and chemical/electrical reactions that can be felt by humans, perhaps augmented with high tech machinery.  With fMRI we can even see interactions within the body that are not in the outside world at all.  The information that comes into the brain -- as soon as there is a brain -- makes access for the first time in the womb.  We know nothing about the sense of the holy as felt in a embryo or an infant or a toddler . . . maybe it begins during “latency” (primary school and early elementary).  At least that’s what Sunday School presumes.  What they deal in is oral language, pictures -- not writing.  Stories.  Images.  NOT reasoning.

In Catholic terms, which are essentially European terms, until children can feel their sin and be sorry for it, so as to accept penance, they cannot go to communion.  These are technically rational theological ideas imposed on children.  No one knows much, if anything, about a child’s blissful holiness.  Maybe a nursing child held by its mother?  A FEELING.  No words. Sounds.

In a Blackfeet ceremony the children are welcome and clamber back and forth over the people seated on the ground throughout the doin’s.  Now and then one or two will become interested and absorbed in the music and dance.  Sitting in laps, they pay attention, or maybe even begin to dance along with the performers.  Or maybe fall asleep.  No one will shout at them.  If there is something big happening --maybe a powwow -- where older kids could get distracted and unruly, there is a person with a small stick or whip who will make them stay respectful. 

Blackfeet girls about 1900

I doubt that a person could get a description of spiritual experience out of little kids.  You’d have to sense it through empathy.  It just IS because it is something that belongs to the whole body, not some code.  The vibe I got off the kids was that they were safe, loved, in a familiar setting.  No kids were crying or angry.  They were relaxed, engaged.

If what people are describing when they talk about a sacred experience is the safe, warm, fed, embraced state of a baby in its mother’s arms -- which is a strong trope in the Christian context and in just about every human context, then how do we design a deliberate experience that will take people over the limen to the state of, well, the “liminal”?  

One way to think about it is through the opposite, so what is that?  I suggest it is “dissociation,” which is when the brain can’t compute the input.  It might be a contradiction, it might be incompleteness, it could be too much, too intense to sort, it might be a blank.  If it’s just a little weird, there’s a name for it:  “the uncanny valley” -- reality with parts that don’t “work,” don’t “compute.”

We live in times that are always slipping over the edge from uncanny to entirely alien, whether it is war, environmental disaster, or a whole new understanding of what a planet is, what a human is.  How do we figure it out?  An uncanny plague requires us to change our instinctive reactions, comes by airplane to America, kills in an unpredictable way from so deep in our systems that the rational scientific reaction to it can only be powered past horror by even deeper compassion for the victims.  And what do we eventually come to?  A little child eating a bat on a stick.

Dr. Patrick Sawyer and Ava.  He treated the first Nigerian ebola patient.

Aad de Gids -- the Netherlands poet, philosopher and psychiatric nurse -- has been tracking ebola with me.  This is what he suggests:

“The irony is also that perhaps ebola also functions as a sociological equalizer postwar, in those war-ridden or tribal conflictuous countries of the west-african coast pseudo-local. (the war and tribal conflicts in itself in general.....) bc it is also such a corrumpating all-out phenomenon, that it ironically swept along a lot of grief, memories ("overwritten", sort of), dissociationalistically hybridized what happened for decades before.   We're not looking at OUR past but at our FUTURE.  If "brazilianization of the inner cities" is an operatic notion in demographics and urbanity in the WEST, then we know we're heading in that HUMANE direction.  The strange thing about war and ravenous diseases is that they are also opportunities for evolvement, not to the higher, with lights from all directions or a mysterious inner glow (although that is not something I automatically discard), goal, an "uniformous goal" that is, but a kind of field of different intensity-laden particles, a "multiplicity", after the resorption of which the socius is changed.” 

That is, ebola puts the whole world in a liminal space contemplating our shared universal susceptibility, and we emerge after a kind of religious conversion.  Not Paul’s defensive rules and regulations for endangered small communities, but Jesus’ original idea of equal compassion on a shared planet, though he didn’t even know it WAS a planet.  

Overpopulation (Philippines)

A more cynical view might be expressed by a devil’s advocate -- that disease is a natural result of environmental violations, that the reduction of overpopulation via any means is a necessary fever that will not be easily broken, and that it will have a curative effect.