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The "mysterious experience" of religion
In 1901, James was invited by the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom to give twenty consecutive keynote speeches, titled "Varies of Religious Experience". The speeches were later compiled into a book and became A major classic in the field of religious studies, it still seems not out of date even today. James divided religion into two categories:
The first category is institutionalized religion, which is brought to him by a person's growing environment;
The second category is individual religion Experiential religion comes from the direct connection between people and gods and Buddhas.
"Variety of Religious Experience" focuses on the second category. James collected a large amount of material, especially the biographies and letters of various religious figures, to show us the most determined kind of experience. , Where does the unreasonable belief come from.
For example, someone talked about a mysterious experience in a letter, saying that one day he was discussing things about elves with his friends, and suddenly he felt that the whole world was boiling in front of him, as if there was a blur. Destiny looms from the depths of space. Never before had he felt so clearly that God was within him and all around him, filling the room. There seems to be some mysterious force moving in the air. He opened his mouth to speak and found his voice was as calm as a prophet's.
Another example is the memory of a priest, who said that standing on the top of the mountain at night, he had some kind of experience of unity between man and nature. The personal soul merged with the boundless universe, and the feeling of the surrounding things completely disappeared. I just felt that I was standing with God and all the beauty, love, sorrow and temptation in this world, and I felt an indescribable joy in an instant. He believed that at that moment he came face to face with God and was reborn in God. From then on, no discussion about the existence of God could shake his faith. He believed that all those who had seen God must have had the same experience as himself.
Indeed, many people have told the same experience. What is particularly intriguing is that believers of any religion have had the same experience. The only difference is that Christians and God are one, Brahman and Brahma are one, and Buddhists and Buddha are one.
James did not study Confucianism in China. In fact, there are many similar examples in the Confucian world, and there are many examples in Wang Yangming's "Chuan Xi Lu". Religious people often say that "all religions in the world are interlinked, and all dharma is unified." Although this statement cannot be established in a rational sense, it seems to be true from the perspective of the ultimate nature of mystical experience.
In the various materials listed by William James, "cosmic consciousness" and "sense of immortality" are almost everywhere.
Let me quote a typical account of someone in the book: "I discussed poetry and philosophy with two friends, and we didn't say goodbye until midnight. It took me a long time to get back to my apartment in a carriage. My mind is still deeply involved in the topics we discussed, but I am not thinking consciously, but in a quiet and passive enjoyment, allowing various ideas, images and emotions to flow naturally through my heart . Suddenly, without any warning, I found myself surrounded by a fiery red cloud. For a moment, I really thought it was a fire somewhere nearby, but soon I knew the flames were burning. Within me, I felt a joy, a great joy, and with it an indescribable enlightenment. I had an epiphany that the universe was not made of inanimate matter. It is a living existence. I feel eternal life. No, it is not that I believe in eternal life, but I feel that I am eternal life at that time. All the people I see are immortal, and the universe I see is for everyone in it. Although this epiphany only lasted a few seconds, my memory and belief in it have not faded to this day, twenty-five years later.”
This experience is not any religious experience, but it coincides with various religious experiences.
When the mind is in a state of immersion, there is a high probability of entering this "moment of enlightenment."
What are the ways to obtain these mysterious experiences?
In the ancient Indian Vedas, the eight steps of yoga are mentioned. One of them is called Jhana, or Zen for short. It is also called Zen or meditation, and its content is meditation. The Buddha borrowed this skill and gave meditation new content. ?
?Zen, which existed long before the Buddha, is a practice method of ancient Indians and is a type of yoga. ?
?Yoga has become almost the same as aerobics today, but it was originally a religious practice. In form, it is not much different from the various yogas taught in gyms today, but it emphasizes more. Breathe, become still and meditate, and finally reach the state of unity of Brahman and self.
?The so-called unity of Brahman and self simply means feeling that oneself is integrated with the universe. This allows one to transcend the world of appearances and realize the truth behind the appearances.
Zhuangzi talked a lot about breathing and meditation, which is a bit like yoga and qigong.
Today’s neuroscience tells us that as long as a person enters a meditative state, regardless of whether he or she has religious beliefs or what the specific beliefs are, the brain waves will form a particularly neat rhythm, and the person will have natural emotions. The mysterious experience of people becoming one and forgetting both things and myself.
If this person is a Buddhist, he will feel that he has seen the paradise world. If he is a Christian, he will experience the so-called "divine joy". Religious explanations always follow the rules.
How should we understand the seemingly absurd famous proposition of "There is nothing outside the mind" in Yangming's Theory of Mind in "Zhuanxilu"?
(1) Cosmic consciousness and the feeling of immortality
Wang Yangming has many bizarre views. To understand these views, you need to first understand a major premise of Yangming’s theory of mind, which is: The universe is a huge living entity. Since the universe is a huge life form, everything from mountains and rivers to the earth, plants, trees, fish and insects, as far away as the sun, moon and stars, and as close as ourselves are all organs or cells in the universe, and they are all interconnected with each other. of.
This mysterious truth can be confirmed from simple observation: grains and animals can become human food and nourish human life, while medicinal stones can treat human diseases. If they are not interconnected, nourishing and How is treatment possible?
As members of the universe, ghosts and gods are of course one and the same with us.
Some disciples did not understand. Wang Yangming enlightened him and said: "Look at this world, what is the heart of heaven and earth?"
The disciple replied: "I have heard that people are The heart of heaven and earth." These words come from Zhang Zai's "Establish a heart for heaven and earth."
Wang Yangming asked again: "What is the human heart?"
The disciple replied: "The human heart is just a spirit."
Wang Yangming began to explain: "It can be seen that there is only this spirit that fills the space between heaven and earth, but people mistakenly distinguish you, me, him and all things through the body. My spirit is the master of the ghosts and gods in heaven and earth. If there is no my spirit in the sky, who will look up to it? How high is it? If the earth doesn’t have my spirit, who can look down on its depths? If the ghosts and gods don’t have my spirit, who can tell their good or bad fortune? As long as my spirit is gone, there will be no ghosts, gods or creatures in the world. If my spirit is separated from the heaven, earth, ghosts, gods, and all things, there will be no spirit. That’s it. All things in heaven and earth are one, flowing together, and there is no gap between them.”
This is also the case. Teach people to get rid of their discriminating minds.
Although the principle is lofty and has great moral appeal, it is still difficult to understand anyway, so the disciple asked again: "The heaven, earth, ghosts, gods, and all things have obviously existed since ancient times. Why did they all disappear when my spirit disappeared?" "Is it gone?"
Wang Yangming's answer was: "Look at the spirits of those who died, didn't their world and all things also disappear with them?" As an objective reality, the existence of heaven, earth, ghosts, gods and all things does not depend on the survival of a certain person, but in everyone's subjective world, once a person dies, the heaven, earth, ghosts, gods and all things he perceives naturally cease to exist.
If we insist on interpreting it rationally, we can only understand it at most, but this is obviously not what Wang Yangming wants to express. What on earth did he want to say? Why is his logic so weird? When we look at it from William James's perspective, the fog suddenly clears up.
Wang Yangming’s understanding of the unity of all things and the unity of self and the universe obviously comes from mystical experience, but it is simply impossible to transform the feelings from mystical experience into logically clear philosophical propositions. Wang Yangming has been working on this impossible task. If he were a monk or a Taoist priest, things would be easier. All he had to do was teach others to meditate.
Anyone who enters meditation will have this mysterious experience. At that time, everyone can communicate with each other, "Zen monks can meet each other with just a snap of the fingers, how many people can know this mind."
If you ask some religious people who have had mystical experiences to answer the last question of Wang Yangming’s disciples, they are likely to say: “Your spirit will not disappear because people do not really die. . The so-called death is just a part of eternal life."
Wang Yangming may have felt this way, but he was limited by his Confucian stance and was unwilling to admit such things.
Different from ordinary people, religious people will deliberately pursue this state - monks through silent prayer, Brahmins through yoga, Buddhists through meditation, Taoists through meditation, even Confucianism, from Ercheng , Zhu Xi to Wang Yangming also emphasized the realization of heavenly principles during meditation.
There is also such content in "Zhuangzi". For example, Luo Hongxian, a private disciple of Wang Yangming, described his experience of meditation: "When it is extremely quiet, I feel that the body of my mind is like clouds in the sky, fish and dragons in the sea, Heaven and earth, past and present, are one." With this understanding, we naturally understand what Wang Shouren means by "the heaven, earth, ghosts, gods, and all things are one with me."
The story of the famous "Flower Tree in the Rock": When Wang Yangming was visiting Nanzhen, a friend pointed to the flower tree in the rock and asked a question based entirely on common sense: "If it is true There is nothing outside my heart, so what does this flower tree that blooms and falls by itself in the deep mountains have to do with my heart? "Yes, the flower tree in the rock blooms and falls by itself, regardless of anyone's subjective will. Could it be that it doesn’t grow in the rock, but in my heart?
Wang Yangming’s reply was a little cunning: “When you don’t see it, it goes silent with your heart; when you see it, the color of the flower suddenly becomes clear, so This flower is not outside your heart.”
This explanation can easily remind us of Berkeley’s proposition that “to exist is to be perceived.” However, the two are only similar in appearance, because Wang Yangming is only concerned with moral issues. He has absolutely no philosophical interest in the purely intellectual sense of the West.
What Wang Yangming calls "things" means that "the place of thought is the thing", that is to say, the object of thinking is the thing. "There is no reason outside the heart, there is nothing outside the heart" are all based on this premise. It can be seen that the friend who asked about the flower tree in the rock obviously got it wrong. Later generations even isolated the text of the flower tree in the rock to read it. , making various mysterious and paradoxical interpretations, creating a mysterious and unpredictable feeling, making Yangming's theory of mind show the beautiful Zen meaning.
Having said that, when the moral heart has a relationship with all things, what happens is of course a moral relationship. And when any kind of moral relationship occurs, of course its moral significance is still in the heart.
Therefore, when the friend pointed to the flower tree in the rock and asked, he was asking a simple epistemological question, but Wang Shouren did not answer it from an epistemological perspective. If we must ask him to give an epistemological answer, he should say: "Of course the flower tree in the rock exists objectively. Whether we see it or not, it is there. Do I think it is The illusion in my mind is not true! Of course not, only Buddhism can say that.”
However, if we understand Wang Yangming from the perspective of mystical experience, the easiest thing to think of is that he has experienced the unity of all things. But it was unclear, and secondly, he always wanted to use the framework of Confucian philosophy to explain this experience, for fear of falling into the "misguided path" of Buddhism and Taoism.
This kind of mystical experience understands his strange philosophy: All mystical experiences, no matter what kind of cloak they are dressed in, are ultimately a special state of the brain's nervous system. It's just that people from different cultural backgrounds give it different meanings.
Can drugs give people the same mysterious experience, allowing them to take whatever they want and no longer have to meditate hard?
The most common, but not very effective "drug" is alcohol.
James believes: "For those poor and poorly educated people, wine has replaced symphony and literature."
If you are deeply interested in music and literature , you can easily understand the meaning of this sentence.
Outstanding music and literature can not only be "moving", but can also bring people into a state of ecstasy, giving people a religious and mysterious experience.
The effect of music is better, especially symphony. Firstly, its form of expression is more abstract. Secondly, among all abstract forms of expression, it has the richest changes, the most powerful aura and power. The most powerful.
There is a theory in aesthetics that music is the most advanced art form, and if other art forms want to achieve perfection, they should consciously move closer to music.
Misty poetry is actually a language art that is closer to music. You don’t want to understand it. On the contrary, not being able to understand it is the correct way to appreciate it.
You need to relax, let the words and tones in the poem stimulate your audio-visual experience, and be mesmerized like a piece of beautiful music. Once you try to use reason to understand the meaning of a poem and straighten out the logic of the meaning, you will only ask for trouble.
People who don’t understand this often criticize Mengwu’s poems for being unclear. They should think about the end of Jin Yong’s novel “Xia Ke Xing”. The protagonist understands the martial arts in the poem precisely because he is illiterate. So many literate people never understand the essence of it.
We live in a concrete world, and everything around us has "meaning" to us.
The so-called meaning, in other words, is function and utility.
When we see a pen, we know it is a writing instrument without even thinking about it; when we see a car, we know it is a means of transportation without even thinking about it. These are all concrete and functional understandings. When you look at a pen, it is not a pen, and when you look at a car, it is not a car. In other words, when you look at a pen, you no longer assume it is a writing instrument without even thinking about it. When you look at a car, you no longer assume it is a writing instrument. Without even thinking about it, you decide that it is a means of transportation. At this time, you can easily enter the "aha moment" mentioned above and have your own mysterious experience.
Symphony is an art that can easily take you away from concrete thinking and help you escape from various "meaningful" things in real life. Why songs don't work well? It's very simple, because the lyrics bring specific content, or allow you to identify the voice of a specific singer. This is the power to bring you back to the real world.
The reason why wine can replace symphony and literature is that, in the words of William James: the drunken consciousness touches the tip of the iceberg of mysterious consciousness.
If we regard wine as an anesthetic, then the logical logic is: this is a very ineffective anesthetic, but if even wine has the opportunity to give people a little mystical experience, those professionals Would a higher-grade anesthetic make you more competent and happy? Like, nitrous oxide?
Nitrous oxide is an anesthetic that was invented in the 18th century. Its invention and production process were extremely bumpy and complicated. It was not doctors who used the gas at first, but burlesque troupes. They found that as long as this gas is released during a performance, the emotions of the actors and the audience will rise, the atmosphere will become particularly active, and a very mediocre joke will cause laughter. Therefore, nitrous oxide is commonly known as "laughing gas".
William James carefully studied the anesthetic effect of laughing gas and found that when the laughing gas and air are mixed to a certain extent, it can easily trigger mysterious consciousness, and the person concerned will feel infinitely profound. The truth is revealed before oneself. Although the highest truth disappears without a trace after the anesthetic effect ends, the imprint left by that feeling in the heart will last for a long, long time.
Through the study of anesthetics, James came to a very important conclusion, that is, there are various subconscious entities surrounding our rational consciousness. We may not be aware of the existence of the subconscious mind in our lifetime, but as long as we encounter the right stimulus, they will all appear at once.
The word subconscious is today often associated with Freud's name, but William James was the real founder of the concept. Of course, since it is a foundation stone, it is inevitably very imperfect. Whether the mystical experience is the manifestation of the subconscious mind, cutting-edge psychology will give a negative answer. You can change your perspective and rethink the relationship between monotheism and polytheism from the perspective of the ultimate nature of mystical experience.
Well-trained people can proactively enter a special state of neural activity through meditation, and feel that the "ego" dissolves into the "universal self". This is a wonderful "aha moment". Once a religious person has had this experience, nothing can shake his faith.
Let's take a look at a graduation poem by Zen Master Lingyun Zhiqin: "In the past thirty years, I have been looking for a swordsman, and the leaves have fallen and branches have sprouted several times. Ever since I saw the peach blossom, I have no doubts about it until now." The poem It means that I have worked hard to pursue Buddhism for thirty years, but my progress has been improving and regressing. Until one day when I saw a peach blossom, I suddenly had an epiphany. From then on, my faith was firm and I never regressed.
The instructor read this poem and knew that Lingyun Zhiqin was really enlightened, so he successfully graduated. Now you can definitely understand that when Lingyun Zhiqin "saw the peach blossom", it was his "moment of enlightenment", which caused him to suddenly have a mysterious experience. You can also know that his mentor must also have had this experience, so you can understand His poetry.
But does it really take thirty years to have an epiphany? It is obvious that so many people who practice meditation can easily enter the state. Could it be that Lingyun Zhiqin used the wrong method? In addition, why does Zen Buddhism still have such a thing as “graduation works”?
In the modern scientific research on meditation, in the eyes of scientists, the mystical experience is not the appearance of gods and Buddhas, but the misinterpretation of certain special neural activities by religious people based on their own religious background.
After fully understanding these various "mysterious experiences" in your past and present lives, and mastering the skills to obtain "mysterious experiences", do you use them to strengthen your chosen "belief"? Or is it used to regulate nervous brain nerves and gain inner peace?
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