The world invisible

Why is it that we assume that there is an invisible world? Why do we reject Empiricism, and say that there is more to life than what is given to us?

In Plato's Allegory of the Cave he argues that our sensory world is nothing but a shadow on a wall. His pupil Aristotle rejected this, saying that there is only one unified existence. Of the two viewpoints - Platonistic and Aristotelian cosmology - Plato's is much more clearly aligned with the majority of worldviews. Every cultural tradition supposes there to be an underlying reality to things ... a heaven, a hyperreality, an invisible world. I've even argued as much. But my argument was made from a modern standpoint: what of the Egyptian living in the 4th millennium B.C. ... why did he look beyond the visible, natural world?

One obvious culprit could be the birth/death cycle. [Joseph Campbell talks a bit about this in Primitive Mythology by the way, so this is not a new idea I'm toying with here. I'm just taking it in a different direction.] An ancient could well have wondered about the miracle of birth and how a human can be formed in another human, how some babies could be born alone and others in pairs, how some could be born breathing and others stillborn. Their awe might have lead to thoughts on an invisible world. And what of the flipside -- what of death? What a mystery death is: that a person could be standing and talking to me one minute and then lying on the ground, unresponsive and cold the next. What happened to my friend, I would wonder? Why is his body here but his anima gone?

These mysteries aren't enough to explain it, though. I mean, the cyclical nature of birth and death might make me believe in reincarnation, but why a separate world, a perfect world? A Christian, Muslim or Jew would say that we believe in such a world because of revelation; but that doesn't explain why primitive cultures do. I just finished a book called Black Elk Speaks, narrated by a 19th Century Lakota Sioux. In it you find the following passage:

“Crazy Horse’s father was my father’s cousin, and there were no chiefs in our family before Crazy Horse; but there were holy men; and he became a chief because of the power he got in a vision when he was a boy. When I was a man, my father told me something about that vision. Of course he did not know all of it; but he said that Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world.”

The key word is vision. It is reminiscent of dreams and dream-states. What must primitive men have thought of dreams and dream-states brought on by herbs -- worlds where you seem to go and leave your body behind? It is no wonder that hallucinogenic herbs are integral to many religions. Even the famous Grecian oracle at Delphi is said to have spoken revelations while in a "frenzied trance" which would overtake her after breathing in odors from beneath the temple floor ... most likely ethylene or another petrochemical vapor.

The major Oriental religions -- Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism -- might offer us another clue about this problem. There is a famous sculpture or drawing which depicts three men drinking porridge out of a pot: the Buddhist and Confucian are both frowning but the Taoist is smiling. The porridge is the bitterness of life, which Buddhists and Confucians endure but Taoists embrace. Oriental religions feel that the world is bitter but wholesome -- and that is its true reality.

In regards to our topic it could be that people in every part of this world, disturbed by the violence and sorrow of life, rejected life and looked for a better, more perfect world. It's like Shasta told me before, and what I read again in Nine Drafts of a Suicide Note: there are only two options in this world, inscape or escape. Religions offer their adherents escape by allowing them to feel that -- no matter the difficulty and sorrow of this life -- there is a better life to come. Perhaps we created a second world out of psychological survival.

The amazing thing is that we have not changed much over time. Despite our scientific and technological advancements we are no closer to understanding the mysteries of life, birth, or death. We can tell you very exactly how it is that the sperm combines with the ovum and creates a germ, which becomes a zygote, then an embryo, fetus and baby. We can talk about DNA replication and meiosis and the stages of prenatal development but really what do we know of that spark of creation that occurs inside of the woman? And no matter how scientific and analytical we are, aren't we each religiously grateful to our parents for giving us life?

And death -- though the topic is as taboo as sex -- isn't it also amazing? Anyone who has doubts about an afterlife should read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's book On Death and Dying. I've only read excerpts but it almost makes me a believer. As long as life contains mysteries for us, we will always believe in God. And if science ever replaced those mysteries with facts, I'm afraid our souls would wither away.

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Post-script:

While doing research for this entry, I ran across a really interesting Taoist passage from the Tao-te Ching about the dualistic universe. I didn't include it because it was too confusing and tangential, but it is still quite interesting. Many Chinese philosophies use yin and yang to explain the cosmological nature of reality. Yin and yang are the opposing forces which balance out everything we know: male/female, evil/good, light/dark, sun/moon, etc. They are catalysts of change and balance, which helps explain our paradoxical world. But you can only understand paradoxes by meditating on paradoxes. One of the most famous paradoxes deals with essence and nothingness:

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The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space (for the axle), that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space (within), that its use depends. Therefore, what has an existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what has not ... for usefulness.