Tag: mystery

Many meditation traditions involve developing our awareness of what is going on around us. Part of that work involves opening up to more fully experiencing the richness of sensation. But, even as our practice matures, and our awareness of the world deepens, even in that moment we are still surrounded by an invisible world, beyond our senses.

As I noted in an earlier post, our perceptions of the world seem direct, and unquestionable. In fact, though, our brains must do a lot of work to make an accurate guess about what the physical world is like. The gap between our perception and the physical world is something that we can easily demonstrate with visual illusions, where we find our perception is out of alignment with the physical world.

While the idea that our perception may skewed is easy to demonstrate, we may not appreciate that from the very first steps, our experience of the world is also very limited. At a fundamental level, our brains must do a considerable amount of work in order to gather information about the world, using our senses.

And, since gathering information is costly (in terms of developing and maintaining each sensory system), our senses are focused on finding the information that is most useful to us, not on representing the entirety of reality. So, while it may seem as if we have access to the entire world, what we can experience is really only a sliver of the reality that surrounds us in each moment.

What information is it that our brains focus on? Each of is probably familiar with our senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. To these, we should also add our vestibular sense (our sense of balance, and the ability to detect when our body starts moving or rotating), and proprioception (our sense of where our body is in space).

We often miss our vestibular and proprioceptive systems when we talk about sensation, probably because they often operate outside of our awareness. We may not even notice them until they are disrupted (think of getting dizzy after a carnival ride, or if you have ever experienced bouts of vertigo). Together, these senses represent the range of information that is available to us, through our direct experience, in each moment.

The challenge for each of our senses is to take some stimulus in the world (the chemicals that make up an odor, the waves of pressure that make up sound), and convert those stimuli into the language of the brain. Changes in the electrical potential across the membranes of the sensory receptors, which drive the release of chemical signals (neurotransmitters) that hand the signal off to the next step along the path to the brain. Research on the neuroscience of sensation has made great advances in our understanding of the intricacies and activity of our major sensory systems. Today we can describe in very fine detail the major steps that go into each of our sensory experiences.

For example, this fall, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine recognized the work of Dr. Ardem Patapoutian and Dr. David Julius on the neuroscience of sensation. Specifically, the prize was awarded for Dr. Patapoutian’s work on proteins that are critical for our sense of touch, and Dr. Julius’ work on the proteins that allow us to detect heat, cold, and pain (and, which are targeted by the chemicals in chili peppers, making them spicy).

The work by Drs. Julius and Patapoutian represent important advances in our understanding of the very first steps of sensation: taking some information from the world (light, vibrations, sound, flavor) and converting that information into the language of the brain. Research in this area has greatly advanced our understanding of how our brains are able to “touch” the world around us, by recoding physical stimuli in neural signals. The proteins that Drs. Julius and Patapoutian have characterized are a key step in this process. Having a protein that can start the process of turning heat into a change in the electrical potential of a neuron is the first step in building a window into the world around us. And without these proteins, we would be deeply anesthetized, unable to feel physical contact with much of the world.

And, research across our sensory systems has also demonstrated the limits of our sensation. We can only directly experience stimuli for which we have receptors. And even then, only for stimuli that fall in their working range.

So, as we look closely at our sensory systems, we find that our direct experience of the world is limited in two major ways: 1) in the range of information we can detect, and 2) in the kinds of information that we can detect.

For the first point, consider vision. Most humans with normal vision can see a rich range of colors. (And, even humans with color vision deficiencies (often referred to as color-blindness) can distinguish a wide range of colors).

Color is our direct, personal experience of the wavelengths of light around us. What we typically refer to as light is technically visible light. For most humans, visible light is made up of electromagnetic radiation (photons) which have wavelengths that fall in a range from about 400 nm (violet) to just over 700 nm (red), stretching from violet to red. Any color that we can perceive is a representation of the wavelengths (or mixtures of wavelengths) of light that are entering our eyes at the moment.

But, what lies outside of this range, and outside of our vision?  Photons with shorter wavelengths we call ultraviolet (UV) light and gamma rays, while photons with longer wavelengths make up infrared light, microwaves and radio waves. Think about that for a moment. Radio waves, gamma rays, and the calmest color of green we have ever experienced. All are in reality photons, and the only important difference between them is their wavelength.

At this moment, some of those other photons, for instance UV and infrared photos, are all around you. Some are passing into your own eyes. And yet, most likely, you can’t see those photons in the UV spectrum, or infrared light. But, why not? Is it impossible to do so? 

Of course not: we can easily “see” UV and infrared light by using special tools (think of infrared (IR) cameras, which allow us to image heat, or see in the dark, when there is little visible light).

Outside of vision, this point holds as a general truth: that what we can perceive is only a fraction of what exists around us at any moment. Consider sounds that are very low, or very high in pitch (beyond our hearing), textures too fine for our fingers to catch, and odors too faint for us to detect. All of these exist in the world, right here and now, just beyond what we are experiencing.

On the second point I raised above, we are not only limited in the range of our experience, but also in the very kinds of sensations we can experience. There are qualities of the physical world that we can demonstrate exist, but which we cannot feel directly. Other animals can, though. For instance, numerous species have developed receptors that allow them to detect types of stimuli that humans do not experience directly, such as magnetic fields, the polarization of light, or electric fields (usually by animals such as fish, living in the water).

In each case, these species of animals have developed proteins that can detect stimuli in the world, and sensory systems that represent that information in a useful way. This allows these animals to directly experience physical stimuli in the environment to which we ourselves are blind. Birds use magnetic fields for navigation, similar to our use of a compass. Some fish have a passive electrical sense, that allows them to feel electrical fields in the water, while others actively generate electrical fields that allow them to feel objects in the water. While we sometimes think of these electric fields as weapons (in the case of electric eels), more often the electric sense is used to feel what is in the water in conditions where vision is ineffective.

So when we look closely at what we can bring into our awareness of the world, we find that humility is always warranted. Right now, in this moment, there is more to the world than what we can experience directly. That invisible world lies beyond our senses, beyond what we can ever experience directly. To reflect deeply on this is important, lest we become overconfident. We cannot hold the entirety of this moment of the world in our perception.

But along with humility, gratitude is also warranted. While our experience is only a sliver of reality, life is so bountiful that even a drop has depths that we cannot exhaust.

Has science removed all of the mystery from our world? In our lives today, science has dramatically advanced how we make sense of reality, allowing us to better understand the causes of events. We know much more today about the factors that lead to every event that happens in the world, leading to the expansion of our technology, the refinement of medicine, among other things.

Note: a version of this essay was published in the first issue of Midwest Zen

Today, it could feel like science will eventually explain every part of our life, and that in today’s world, there is no room for mystery.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, science is built on a set of assumptions about the world (that there is an objective world that exists outside of our perceptions, that phenomena in that world are orderly, and that they can be described by general laws and theories). This work, the scientific approach to the world, has allowed us to peer deeply into the fabric of the world, and to look out into the vastness of the universe.

But, even if science eventually “succeeds” – even if we believed that our scientific understanding could be complete, and that such a goal were reasonable – I would hold that even then, there will remain a mystery at the heart of reality: the mystery of existence itself.

Fundamentally, every explanation about the universe, about this life that we keep finding ourselves in, has to take existence itself for granted. Whether we explain the world based on scientific theories, or we look to religious traditions to make sense of the origin of the universe, we can never find a firm vantage point to clearly see if our explanation is really true.

The very existence of existence, the fact that there is a world that our life plays out in, is mysterious. In science, we can trace the life of the universe back to its earliest moments with reasonably high confidence, and there are many strong theories about how the universe came into existence. Some are speculative, and our understanding of this early period is still developing, but we have at the moment a healthy range of plausible options. But, why was the universe able to come into existence in the first place? Why was it possible for something, anything to be? On this question, we have no good answers. Or, none that would not just push the fundamental question of existence back a bit further, unanswered.

We should have similar concerns about religious traditions that explain the existence of the universe through divine intervention – in the end we are left wondering, why is there a God (or gods) in the first place?

In an essay, William James captured this question very well, as he weighed the various approaches people have used to grapple with the question of being:

Not only that anything should be, but that this very thing should be, is mysterious! Philosophy stares, but brings no reasoned solution, for from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.

William James, “The Problem of Being“

Since I first read this essay, this line has stuck with me: “From nothing to being there is no logical bridge.”

While I try to acknowledge this mystery in my life, and in my meditation practice, it is not out of an effort to answer the question: I’m not looking for the “truth” about reality, in a way that would banish this mystery. The mystery of existence is perhaps something we can feel, or approach, and it may be that mystical states (a perception that we experience oneness with existence, or a relaxation of our individual ego) can help us appreciate that mystery. But, I don’t believe there is any possible way for us to perceive the source of existence. I could be wrong, but understanding why there is anything at all seems to be a fundamental limit to our existence.

And, while the fundamental question of existence is mysterious, that has not led me to reject the scientific approach. I personally still feel that the world around us is orderly and predictable. I have not felt a need to reach for magic, or miracles (in the sense of causes that operate outside of natural laws) to explain what happens in the world.

For me, this is the same way I feel about the possibility that life, and intelligent life, exists beyond our own planet. In the entirety of the universe, the number of stars around us is likely countable (that is, finite), but vast, deeply vast. The rich variety of life on Earth is supported by a single star, our sun. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars, and that is just one galaxy. In the observable universe (what we can actually observe is limited by how far light can travel and the expansion of the universe), there may be around one hundred billion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of potential suns for their own gardens of life.

The sheer number of stars around us, at this moment alone, is staggering, and really beyond comprehension. In all of that creation, could our planet be the only one to support life? The only one with life that has turned its gaze back to itself, and taken delight in the miracle of existence?

Maybe, but I would not bet against those odds!

However, while I have a great deal of confidence (faith) in the existence of life out in the universe beyond our own planet, I have very little faith in reports about UFO encounters, which claim that our planet is regularly visited by beings from other planets. Recently, there were a set of reports about UFOs, some of them related to releases of information from the United States military. While a UFO, or an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) includes any unexplained aerial encounter, most people who are excited about them see evidence of aliens visiting Earth.

While the possibility of life on other planets is very high, from what we know now, the challenges to actually travel between stars is formidable. Unless we find some solutions that can get around limits like the speed of light, any actual travel to another star will take huge investments of time and energy. Other civilizations on other planets may have solved these problems, but the idea that they would have already found us seems pretty unlikely. Not impossible, but one of the principles of a scientific attitude is when you propose a very unlikely theory (that aliens are visiting our planet), you need exceptional evidence, and we certainly don’t have that yet. I would expect that most UFO reports are going to turn out to have rather mundane explanations (such as problems with specific cameras on military planes).

In the same sense, the heart of our existence is a mystery, but not one that necessarily opens the door for magic (unfortunately!) or other approaches to explain existence. This mystery is the foundation of our reality: a firm bedrock that patiently tolerates our efforts to turn it over, and examine it. A mystery that effortlessly dodges both scientific and mystical attempts to tame it. Each effort to break through this mystery, whether through scientific investigation or through mystical experience, leaves the foundation unmarred, unmoved.

Personally, I have found that appreciating the mystery of existence to be an important part of my own meditation practice, and I think that this quote from Carl Sagan captures my own attitude today:

For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable.

A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull …

A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being.

Carl Sagan, “Can We Know the Universe? Reflections on a Grain of Salt”

When Sagan writes about what is unknown, he was not really referring to that which we can never know, but more to the work that is left to do for science (that part of experience that can be explained using scientific theories). But, I would also say that it applies here: there is something important about understanding that some parts of experience are fundamentally unknowable. To experience directly, to touch the mysterious, is equal parts humbling and wonderful.