The Enigma of Consciousness

Introduction to Part Three

Ancient sages of the Orient found paths beyond the Yang of thought and the Yin of feeling into the Way of Wonder. In Sub-Asia, Hindu and Buddhist seers found methods of concentration that opened enlightenment beyond blinding thought, joy beyond reactive feelings, and liberation beyond fated compulsions. In the West great minds focused on Great Thoughts that carried consciousness beyond the customs of foolishness into experiences of Great Feels and Great Resolves that together with Great Thoughts witnessed to a landscape of Wonder.

Wonder is another word for awe and the numinous. Wonder lights up thought with new vigor. Wonder cleans feelings of their exaggerated sentiment. Wonder interrupts compulsive behaviors and restores us to the paths of freedom, effectiveness, and persistence. Wonder is a hard experience to talk about, but that has not prevented every era of humans from trying.

Chapter 12

The Thought, Feel, and Choice of Wonder

In her book, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Openness of Awe, Mary Jane Rubenstein notes that the Greek god Thaumas (wonder) has two types of daughters: Iris (rainbow) and the harpies (ugly birdlike monsters with large claws). All these daughters link heaven and earth. Rainbow fascinates us: we run outdoors to see the spectrum of colors that may arch from north to south as the setting sunlight is split by water droplets into this striking spectacle. As we contemplate such beauty, we may not care about the scientific explanation; we simply stand before this connecting beauty between sky and ground and say pleasant things to each other.

But the harpies are also the offspring of wonder: connecting sky and ground, the Mystery and the ordinary, with connections that prompt us to close our eyes or duck our heads or, like the proverbial ostrich, put our heads into some sort of sand. Wonder is a strange beauty, but also a strange horror.

It was Rudolf Otto who first made clear to me that wonder begins its assault upon us as a trembling, as an upsetting, as a shaking of our foundations (Tillich), as a dread or anxiety that will not, and need not, ever go away. The full experience of fascination, though rainbows, is also accompanied by a sisterhood of upsetting dynamics. It takes courage to be in Awe. Most of the time we are cowards who duck from our potential experiences of wonder.

Rubenstein makes this colorful, but damning, commentary on Western philosophy:

As far as Western philosophy is concerned, however, every aspect of wonder becomes susceptible to erasure, because, whether it responds to that which is fascinating or repugnant, thaumazein (wonder-ness) keeps problems unresolved. It renders the thinker incapable of doing the kind of simple calculating, sure representing, or remainder-less opining that might secure himself and his knowledge against the storm of indeterminacy. For this reason, wonder becomes an increasingly problematic ancestor for the increasingly “scientific” Western philosophical heritage. As the tradition progresses, wonder is progressively relegated to something like a temporary irritant: a discomfort not to be endured, but rather cured––or at least tranquilized.

This then is our first block to seriously understanding or practicing a religion. We must open to wonder or awe, however horrible or beautiful or both the awe may be. We must intend a courageous openness in order to be in wonder.

The Direct Experience of Wonder

Though Wonder is unknowable to the human mind, Wonder can be directly experienced by human consciousness. In this sense we can “know” Wonder. If this sort of knowing were not possible, then the word “Wonder” would be meaningless. Some have concluded that the word “Wonder” is meaningless, so they no longer use the word or any word like it—Divine, Sacred, or Holy. But this attitude undercuts our appreciation of the role of religion in human life—namely, the role of binding or connecting humans to that Landscape of Mystery, that River of Enigmatic Consciousness, that Mountain of Compassion, and that Wild Sea or Ocean of Courageous Tranquility. I will explore all that later. It takes poetry and imagination to speak of Wonder. It also takes courage, for security-hungry humans resist Wonder’s irrationality, its disturbing subversiveness, and its revolutionary implications.

Nevertheless, every human is close to Wonder, for it is our true nature. Humans, in their essence, are already connected to Wonder. Good religion assists us toward happenings of awakened awareness of this connection to Wonder that has been buried, suppressed, fought, ignored, denied, and unwelcomed by our ordinary states of consciousness.

“Good religion” appears in human life because Wonder is an inescapable human experience. Even though most people spend their entire lives escaping from Wonder, there is no escape. Human consciousness is rooted in Wonder. So, like a persistent bloodhound, Wonder tracks us down and forces us to see its teeth. Wonder is Real, more real than we, in our attempts to escape, can even imagine.

At the same time, this inescapable Wonder is beyond conceptual expression. So how do we even begin to talk about it as an everyday experience in our lives? One very old answer is, “We don’t talk about it.” One of the ancient Taoist writers put it this way: “Those who say don’t know, and those who know don’t say.” The prophets of Israel on the other hand, felt free to say, “Thus says the Eternal One,” and then wax on for 45 verses, hoping that at some point in their discourse the Wonder behind their speaking would break through to some captivated listener. But even these wordy prophets knew that what they were saying was an interpretation of experiences that were un-sayable. There are many biblical verses that basically say, “The Ways of Yahweh are beyond finding out.” Jesus also insisted on being cryptic. He spoke in parables and explained that he did so in order that the know- it-all religious experts would not understand what he was saying. I take this to mean that he required of his hearers a deep shift in their lives in order to grasp what his parables were pointing to. We see a similar sensibility in Zen Buddhist teachers when they use what they call “koans.” A koan is a cryptic statement designed by a wise teacher who then uses the koan to challenge a student to a shift in consciousness in order for the koan to have meaning to the student. A famous example is “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” In seeking an answer, the student must reach beyond his standard thinking into deeper awareness.