The Spiritual and the Unknown

The power of sight does not come from the eye, the power to hear does not come from the ear, nor the power to feel from the nerves; but it is the spirit of man that sees through the eye, and hears with the ear, and feels by means of the nerves. Wisdom and reason and thought are not contained in the brain, but they belong to the invisible and universal spirit which feels through the heart and thinks by means of the brain. All these powers are contained in the invisible universe, and become manifest through material organs, and the material organs are their representatives, and modify their mode of manifestation according to their material construction, because a perfect manifestation of power can only take place in a perfectly constructed organ, and if the organ is faulty, the manifestation will be imperfect, but not the original power defective. Paracelsus -- De Viribus Membrorum

The above text encountered at James DeKorne's wild website of encyclopedic interpretation of I Ching hexagrams, for the morning's message. 

The image of a mountain on a mountain. 

As I read the passage from Paracelsus, I was struck by what total bullshit it is, from the standpoint of neuroscience. Because of course from the materialistic and reductivist body of knowledge that we now have, indeed consciousness "resides in" the brain and ends with the brain and that is simply that. 

This is what irritates me about "spiritual thinking" or writing or whatever-- it is an endless round of the postulation of "invisible" forces that are somehow a priori or ontologically grounded and that provide the basis for consciousness or reality. "There is absolutely no material evidence whatsoever for God." "Well, God is that invisible power moving behind things, or underlying everything, or integrating everything, and there is no material evidence for God but you just have to have faith in order to start to have the experience." Annoying. 

I want the human race basically to shut the fuck up about God. I realize this is a desire that is unlikely to be fulfilled. It's important probably for me to take a closer look at why I am so irritated by all this God talk. I know that my irritation arises in large measure from the weekly ways in which I hear 12 step people talk about God, "about" being the key word. Like talking about music, like talking about the wilderness. No fucking value whatsoever, except in various ways of self-reassurance, pride, vanity, public performance, grasping at straws, etc. Whistling in the dark. 

All this language is but a benighted map of metaphor, at best merely the most laughable simulacrum of experience. I know that we small humans, in the face of our blink of a lifespan and our woefully limited knowledge and mental abilities, have to whsitle in the dark or past the graveyard in order not to go mad, or kill ourselves, or disappear into the desert swathed in a stunned vow of silence forever. 

But it gets annoying after a while. 

Because the absolute best that language can ever do is point to whatever is not certainly known and say "THAT is where God is." This is exactly the definition of superstition. Whatever is unilluminated, in that dark lacuna is our laughably limited concept of magic, mystery and the divine. It's ironic that one of the metaphors for God is that "He" (oh my fucking god that's annoying too, this grating insistence on the male gender), anyway, that "He" is light. Because it seems the best we can do with any of our ordinary awareness is to repeatedly find this boogieman God of ours in the dark, wherever we are most stupid and unaware. 

And whenever we open the carton of the unknown, and advance the hilarious horizon of our puny intelligence a little farther, well, lo and behold, God isn't really in there after all. Everywhere we turn our mind and subject whatever object to scrutiny, God disappears. Funny motherfucker who seems so shy or perversely unavailable as to want to never be apprehended. 

So I am in a space currently where I lament this kind of God who is so small as to be Him (as if gender mattered to the infinite?), as to be the receiver of petitions (as if God were some kind of cosmic bureaucrat), as to be the dwarfed concept of sentimental "love" (as if an omnipresent Barry Manilow), as to be ooooooh cue spooky music and show slide of a starry sky Mystery (as if a late night cable television psychic burning incense and wearing shawls).

Now-- the real unknown-- that's terrifying to us. The basic idea that there is the divine and that it is in fact everything that is and that we have no way to apprehend it, express it or even get close to comprehend it-- that's humbling. Humility is endless because the sacred is infinite. 

And yet we persist in making containers and claiming confidently that our own containers are where this infinite resides. Usually, I find this forgivable, humorous or even an enjoyable activity. Lately, it's been annoying the fuck out of me.