Looking out ...

is better than looking in.

I haven't had a mystical experience in a while. That may sound like an odd thing for an atheist to say, but it is true. Mystical experiences are a pretty regular occurrence for me, but I haven't had one in a while. Some of my most profound experiences have happened while during night watches on a small sailboat far out in the ocean. Others while sitting in the cockpit coasting through the upper flight levels, again at night, everything quiet and going as planned. I have been stopped deep in the AZ desert, called to the side of the road to sit quietly and simply be part of a landscape that showed no evidence of humanity other than the road, myself, and the bike, as far as the horizon in every direction.

Usually these moments come without herald, settle my heart and mind in a way that lingers for days, and pass without comment. Such moments never come when I look in, musing about myself or examining my "inner life." Rather I have to be looking out as far as my eyes can see and then add to that the knowledge that I am seeing only a fraction of what is. Only a sliver - a few narrow bands - of the electromagnetic spectrum that flows from cosmic background radiation to Gama radiation and beyond, pass through my eyes. I also see only a fraction of the "stuff", dark matter and energy making up most of what is. Then there is the reality of an infinite expanse of all this unseen stuff beyond the range of sight.

In those moments everything I can experience in sight and thought is still just an infinitesimally small bit of all that there is, and I am an infinitesimally small bit of that bit. Yet the thought doesn't make the experience. In fact the knowledge of being so minute a bit is something I try to keep close by, a foundational understanding if you will, to all of my musings. It is important not to think too much of ourselves, and keeping the knowledge of our physical place in the cosmos close at hand is a good way to keep our egos in check.

Though an integral part, it isn't the knowledge that makes the experience. When it happens it is a fleeting understanding that all that I know and can't know is a part of me, and I a part of it. "Understanding" isn't really the right word. Usually "understanding" is something we think we can hold. But this "understanding" isn't like that. It has an emotional component that comes as it will and departs in its own time. Though it is undoubtedly part of my brain's function, it is nothing I have any control over and it has no "I" of its own. It brushes by completely unaware of me and, so far as I can tell, with no thought of itself. In fact, since this occasionally happens when someone is sitting right next to me and they are completely untouched, it is clearly some interaction within the confines of my own self.

It is a mystery, which is no surprise. Most of what is is mystery to us.

It is easy to dismiss such moments as random combinations of energies flowing through the circuits of my brain, maybe sparked by my physical location and some unknown emotional state. The philosophies of materialism and reductionism certainly claim so. But I am neither a materialist or a reductionist, and I admit that part of the reason I dismiss such claims are these experienced moments of mystery.

Yet I am an atheist. I have never found a "god" in those moments either.  I know mysticism is part of nearly every religion, but my perception is that such experiences flow from our humanity and consciousness, not a god or religion. 

But, like I said, I have not had such a moment in a while. And I think its because I am spending too much time looking in again. How do I deal with living in a society as twisted as ours? Where do I fit in a species that is tribal, backward, violent, clings to myths and fairy tales, abandons reason and rejects learning?

Four hundred and forty eight years after Galileo was born, 153 years after Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", 126 years after the first doctorate was awarded in psychology, 87 years after Hubble discovered that the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies ... sitting on my Son in Law's book table is a tome on Catholic Rituals for Exorcism. And because I know most people at least give credence to the idea of evil spirits, somehow that just takes all the wind out of the idea that humanity has a future.

A sham election unfolds in the United States. Candidates already vetted by power are offered as alternatives, yet each varies by only a fraction from the American party line. Thrown in the mix are a few truly bat-shit crazy religious fanatics; some who will win, others who will lose. But all will offer a distraction that keeps us from taking a clear-eyed look at our sorry State of affairs. Living in a failing society makes it easy to look in, look close, look at how to best ride out the storm.

But all of these things do narrow one's vision. Ridiculous religious fantasies abound, but are they really gaining? Or are we seeing the tantrums of a failing, false view of the cosmos? Worshiping the war god of Abraham the Jews and Muslims continue to spasm their way into backwardness and irrelevancy. Worshiping supply side economics and the same war god of Abraham, the USA continues to shuffle out of the way of China. European / American colonialism has run up against a full earth. There is no one left to colonize, no land left to appropriate. This same full, and fully connected, earth, has stripped Christianity of the mantel of the "one true religion." Oh, some of the Christians still claim it, but no one else believes it, or is listening much to them anymore. With a few scattered exceptions much of the first world is moving toward rejecting America's social engineering, crony capitalism, and war mongering. Those who are not are following us into the void.

It may well be that barley enough Americans believe their own propaganda enough to put the T-Party / Republicans in power. But that will only hasten the change. And it might be kind of fun to watch. The history of human kind and always been full of stumbling and the rise and fall of bad ideas. Experiments in social structures continuously evolve just as does everything in the cosmos.

There is no telling when, or if, the mystery will brush by again.  I hope it does ... hope and joy experienced as emotion will make any day brighter.  But they can also be conclusions born of observation.

Looking out is better than looking in.