Eyre Lines

I am regularly frustrated by people saying that scripture is inspired (which I have no real problem in accepting, with some modest reservations) and then going on to say that it must therefore be literally true, or “inerrant” or something of that kind, or that we can consider the written results to be something approaching divine dictation.

I have a certain amount of experience of inspiration, both of the variety experienced by mystics and in some other fields. I have, for instance, felt musical inspiration (rarely), artistic inspiration (more often, but little of late), and once or twice comedic or performance inspiration. All of these seem to me to have a certain amount of similarity, but the greatest, to me at least, is the mystical.

It can, indeed, at times feel as if an intelligence entirely distinct from you is just using you to channel things which you could not remotely have said or done by yourself. In the case of the mystical experience, it very definitely feels as though an intelligence distinct from yourself is to a great extent in control of the situation. I do, however, question whether that feeling is actually correct. For instance, I am well used to engaging my subconscious, often by leaving some question for my subconscious to deal with without actually consciously thinking about it for a few minutes, an hour or two, overnight or, sometimes, for a few days, and then to have a well-developed answer pop into my consciousness without the slightest indication that anything has been happening in relation to that question in the meantime. I’m pretty confident that my subconscious is a lot cleverer than my conscious!

I cannot, therefore, guarantee to myself that any of these occurrences have been more than just engaging the subconscious entirely in parallel with the conscious for a change, with the two working together towards the same end (a fairly unusual occurrence, and one which just did not happen at all for most of the period 1996-2013 for me, probably closely connected with my clinical depression over that period).

The one which is problematic here, though, is the mystical experience, the experience which feels as if it were direct unmeditated contact with God (and that’s my best answer as to what it actually is!). In this, it is somewhere between horribly difficult and totally impossible to give anything remotely like a coherent, logical, detailed account of what has happened, or of the information which has been conveyed (and there is definitely an information content). This applies whether or not the trick of calling for the subconscious to work it’s magic behind closed doors in the backroom of my mind, too. Oh, it is perfectly coherent and understandable at the time – but less so afterwards, when I stop and try to piece together an account. I’ve sat down and written about these experiences lots of times, and every time I’m left thinking “well, that’s partly right, but it doesn’t remotely do justice to it, and actually gives something of the wrong impression”. I’ve read a lot of writings by various mystics (and some poets, philosophers, theologians or scientists) which have a lot of the right feeling about them, which seem to be saying the right thing – but in part only, and then giving an at least somewhat misleading impression. At best, some writing may catch exactly one aspect of the experience, while missing other aspects completely.

Here, I think, is my difficulty with those who put forward scripture as being not only inspired, but also as being readily understood. My experience of actual communication from God, assuming this is what the mystical experience is, is that it is just not susceptible to being written of in a way which is both readily understood and entirely correct. I rather suspect that the human brain is incapable of grasping the fullness of the experience except while it is going on (and is therefore augmented, as it seems to me), and (which may well be the major reason for that first suspicion) that human language and concept structures are inadequate to express it in more than a “through a glass, darkly” manner.

But then, why would I expect the human brain to be able to grasp this, or that human language and concepts would be adequate to contain it?

Perhaps the most successful attempt to do this use paradox; Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Sufism and the Eastern Orthodox tradition of mystical theology are notable for this, for example. At least these traditions tend to avoid the simple making of a direct statement which is at least in part wrong, as they immediately offer an opposite or radically different parallel statement as also being correct.

I fancy I am seeing something of the same attempt made in the chain of philosophers from Kant (Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger e al) who tend to invent new language and concepts in order to attempt to do justice to that which is; I am on the whole unconvinced that they are successful. This continues in (for instance) Derrida and Caputo, who play with language and twist it into new ways of expressing things. Perhaps they are successful, if only I could see well enough through the word-games, but I fancy they are battling against something which will forever escape any full and accurate expression.

If that something is God, it seems to me entirely appropriate that it should forever escape full and accurate expression. How, after all, can the partial encompass the whole?