Beyond sight and touch E-Book

Philip Goggin

• Herausgeber: Grosvenor House Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 99

Beschreibung

Much of the language of our cultural lives assumes the existence of realities which we cannot see or touch. Mathematical rules, such as the principles of addition or subtraction, are examples of such unseen realities. But so are very many further concepts - such as nature or beauty. You can see and touch instances of nature or beauty, but you can't touch nature or beauty themselves. These concepts endure beyond the particular examples. This short book discusses, in a non-academic way, various aspects of human experience - music, ritual, place, love for instance - to identify such timeless aspects. The very nature of our minds suggests a timeless dimension. Supernatural or psychic phenomena are not the focus, though their existence is not ruled out. Thus it offers fruitful and accessible ways of considering enduring aspects of our human experiences. Here you will find a refreshing and heartening way of thinking about life: the places and things we value, our relationships, our losses and bereavements, and our futures. If you have ever wondered if events or places or experiences or people can have an existence beyond what you can see or touch, this book will be of interest to you. Even if you are a very down-to-earth person who is only concerned with what can be measured or proved, you will find here ideas to challenge.

Leseprobe

Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.

—OSCAR WILDE

Preface

If you have ever wondered if events or places or experiences or people can have an existence beyond what you can see or touch, this book will be of interest to you. Even if you are a very down-to-earth person who is only concerned with what can be measured or proved, you will find here ideas which will challenge you.

But this book is not about supposed supernatural or psychic phenomena, though some claimed psychic phenomena – such as telepathy or out-of-body experiences – may be consistent with the model of the world presented here, and both lend support to it, and derive some support from it. Nor is it religious, though again its conclusions are not inconsistent with some of the teachings of mainstream religious thinkers. Nor is it a motivational guide to build self-esteem or offer possible strategies and exercises — such as meditation or the use of self-affirmations — for achieving positive outcomes.

Instead it offers ideas which can help you think of life events in new life-enhancing ways. You will be encouraged to think ‘outside the box’ and to appreciate the lasting impact of what you see and hear and do. If you are grieving for a lost loved one you will find new hope and comfort. If you are anxious or depressed you may find new strategies for managing your life and moving forward with new purpose.

Over the years I have been close to many people who have experienced losses of various kinds – losses of loved ones, pets, lifestyles, or possessions. All of them can count as bereavements.

I have conducted many funerals, both in a religious and non-religious setting, and had close associations with family members both before and after the event. I have benefitted from attending bereavement counselling courses (though I do not present myself as a bereavement counsellor).

In my experience of speaking with people who have gone through a bereavement I have found it helpful to emphasise the continuities of life: the way each life or event can create an echo which continues in some form. However ordinary or mundane a life or event may seem it is not without lasting significance. The same is the case with places or objects.

Over time I have mapped out ideas for understanding these processes better, drawing upon a range of philosophical, psychological and in some cases scientific insights. However, the main approach is an appeal to ordinary everyday experience and thoughtful common sense. Inevitably, as with most things to do with human experience, much is open to debate.

Uncertainty and speculation don’t work for everybody. In an effort to demystify and simplify, some commentators will try to reduce our thinking and experience to something purely physical and mechanical. Typically they might say that what we call our mind is reducible to the biology of our brain. In other words, MIND=BRAIN.

That position, though held by many highly intelligent and well-read people, is not the stance taken here. Rather, the claim is that there is an invisible world of concepts, thoughts and ideas which is just as real – perhaps more real – than anything we can see or touch. That world seems to have staying power. It is not subject to the time-governed rules of the physical world. It is a world of indelible realities.

Contents

  Preface

  Introduction

 1 TIME, timeliness and timelessness

 2 MUSIC has timeless aspects

 3 RITUAL – a window on transcendence

 4 Each PLACE holds a story

 5 Our sense of RIGHT and WRONG

 6 The call of NATURE

 7 SCIENCE – a friend

 8 Everlasting LOVE

 9  Living creatively with DEATH

10 Some insights from RELIGION

11 Last word echo

  Copyright

Introduction

Abstractions: what are they?

There are entities like numbers or ideas which don’t have a physical existence. You could find millions of actual figures ‘7’ written on pieces of paper, but where would you find the idea or concept of 7 or sevenness? You could find plenty of examples of anger in the world, but where would you find anger itself? These are examples of abstractions and there are many of them. Potentially an infinite number.

We use these abstractions so freely that their existence is taken for granted. We might say they are matters of common sense. For example, if you are a petrol head you will talk about abstractions like speed, acceleration, safety, reliability, cost and so. Of course you will be interested in particular speeds or acceleration times for any given vehicle, but you will draw upon shared concepts or abstractions in your discussion. If you are an economist you will draw upon public abstractions like inflation or interest rate as you focus on particular figures for inflation or interest rates for certain months.

Let’s consider some further illustrations to show how pervasive abstractions are. Schools are to an extent judged in the UK by OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) on their ethos. But where is the ethos? Can you touch it? Can you see it? An OFSTED inspector may point to aspects of pupil behaviour or the attractiveness of wall displays, or extent of parental involvement, and so on, but these are only indicators of ethos. The ethos itself is an abstraction. But that doesn’t stop it being a reality and taken seriously by schools and inspectors.

We hear mention endlessly about the weather. But where is the weather? We can see rain or sun on a particular day, but where is ‘the weather’?

Abstractions such as these are in contrast to hard physical realities like chairs or tables. These can be touched and measured in various ways. A chair occupies a certain physical space. You can smash a chair or a table. But try smashing an abstraction! Other familiar features of life may seem to be both abstract and concrete. For example, a school is not just a building. It is also a place where young people go with the supposed intention of learning. If a school building becomes a second-hand furniture warehouse is it still a school? Probably not. Why? Because it no longer fits the normal concept/abstraction of a school.

Leaving aside such curiosities, you may wonder where or how abstractions can exist if you can’t touch them or locate them. You would be in good company in your questioning! People have puzzled over these questions down the centuries. But the bottom line as we have seen is that we speak every day in ways which presume their existence.

There is a timelessness to all of these. Some abstractions seem to have been around forever, even before there were any people to think about them, and they would seem to have an infinite future life. The concept of 7 would be an example. It’s impossible to imagine how there could be a world or universe without ‘sevenness’.

Other things seem to depend on human thought processes – such as ‘the weather’, ‘anger’, ‘democracy’, ‘the monarchy’ or ‘humility’. It’s harder to say they have always been around, because humans haven’t always been around to think about them. But does that matter? They could have been waiting as it were for humans to conceptualise them, and they might continue to exist in the same way when/if there were no humans left.

Overlapping with the abstractions we have considered so far will be those unseen principles which constrain, or enable, our living as persons in the world. Here we will call these principles “powers”. If you think about it, invisible powers are all around us. Obvious examples which have scientific credibility are the forces of gravity and magnetism. Further examples would be the way an organism’s DNA shapes its growth and behaviours, or the way a principle like “survival of the fittest” is believed to have determined evolution.

Some abstractions encourage certain actions as when, say, team spirit motivates team players to try their best. The basic rules of mathematics provide another kind of abstraction with another kind of power. You cannot logically break the rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and live in the real world. You can deliberately be dishonest of course, but can you really make 2+2=5?

The maths of addition and subtraction (plus countless other mathematical rules) seem to have a relationship with what we see in the physical world. If you have 4 bricks and remove 2 of them, there will be 2 left. The causal connection between removing the 2 bricks and the outcome is clear enough. Similarly, there seem to be psychological and social forces operating in the world of people, though there is more scope for ambiguity and confusion.

For example, we say a child has a built in curiosity which could be described as a drive. It incentivises the learning process. However, ‘curiosity’ and ‘drive’ and ‘learning’ are all abstractions, so when we make statements of this kind interpretation and definitions come into play – even if observations and surveys assume we all understand what is involved.

The bottom line here is that we recognise the reality of very many abstractions and we live our lives for the most part according to them. If you belong to a school you will believe there is an abstract reality which you will probably want to respect and for which, if you are a sportsperson, you will try hard to win games. If you are a soldier you will be willing to fight for your country which you will call something like your Motherland or Fatherland or ‘Land of your Birth’. You will probably even be willing to die defending it!

If you had been an Allied soldier of WW1 unfortunate enough to be killed and buried abroad your family and friends could have drawn comfort from the sentiments of the poem “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke, where the abstraction called ‘England’ is beyond any physical piece of geography.

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England.

After Sir Bobby Charlton, a famous and much loved footballer, died in October 2023, a newspaper headline read: “With his passing, a little piece of England has died.” The thought was that he had been “our bridge to loyalty and duty, to modesty and diligence...(he) came to represent much of what we thought was the best of us.” So again ‘England’ is notan actual place, nor simply a collection of people who speak a common language and think in similar ways. It is an abstraction which captures certain values and assumptions. This abstraction is presented as having a life of its own.

A very clear-cut expression of the reality of abstractions comes from an atheist! In Comte-Sponville’s interestingly entitled The Book of Atheist Spirituality (2009) he writes of past moments of mystery, self-evidence, plenitude, simplicity, unity, silence, eternity, serenity, acceptance and independence. That awareness was of the very reality...of which I was a part (pp188-189). He rejects the idea that this awareness is merely an internal personal experience. How could I contain the absolute? The absolute contains me – I can reach it only by leaving myself behind (p198).

Enduring realities are captured in places, music, etc

Our minds are constantly interpreting the world around us. We use the categories of language and the principles we have been taught or have acquired to make sense of what we see or hear. We filter out what seems irrelevant.