William James on Consciousness and the Four Features of Transcendent Experiences
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
William James on Consciousness and the Four Features of Transcendent Experiences
On the one hand, language is a wonderful tool. It allows us to describe these other worlds in metaphors that help us think and imagine them. But there are many places where our language leaves us in the lurch. Like with vision, we don’t have a word for detecting light but not having a conscious experience of it.
ed yong • What Counts as Seeing
Once you begin to get it, intuitively and spiritually, you won’t be able to explain it to others, and you certainly won’t be able to show it to anybody.
Stuart Wilde • Infinite Self: 33 Steps to Reclaiming Your Inner Power
And—thus is my thought, oh exalted one,—nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment!
Hermann Hesse • Siddhartha
The deeper into this you go, the weirder and more inexplicable it gets. Many experiences literally transcend or obviate language in their nature. After a certain point of undeniably real inexplicable absurdity, you give up trying to come up with "rational explanations" for things, and go with the flow. Part of the beauty of all of the woo-sploratio... See more