Too much pain

I said I would let the other post simmer while I finished the book. In my mind, all along, I figured I would post some sort of summary of the book when I finished, summing up, reviewing what I already said, or at least something along those lines.

But now, having finished the 141 pages, I can't do it.

This book overwhelmed me, page by page, sentence by sentence. It was like the most intense flavor you can ever imagine, multiplied over a whole meal, a twelve course meal, plate after plate of something so incredible that you need a whole day just to figure out and come to terms with just one bite. I do believe it will take me months to properly digest everything I read in here, to fully integrate it in to how I see the universe.

I started copying my favorite quotes from the book into my computer journal. But then I stopped at page 28 and realized I had already written 1500 words. It was getting harder to decide what not to copy over. I suppose I should just buy the book. The temptation to underline and write all over the library's copy is just overwhelming.

So there is no summary, no overview. To put the book's meaning into three hundred words or less would be to amputate so much meaning that what's left is meaningless.

But, having gotten to page 28 with copying of favorite quotes, I do want to include in this post a brilliantly existential perspective (I LOVE existentialism, by the way) that was on page 27...

"If your thoughts and passions were directly present to me, like my own, without any mark of externality or otherness, how should I distinguish them from mine? And what thoughts or passions could we begin to have without objects to think and feel about? Nay, could I even begin to have the conception of "external" and "other" unless I had experience of an "external world"? God and Satan affect my consciousness in this direct way without signs of externality, and the result is that most people remain ignorant of the existence of both. We may therefore suppose that if human souls affected one another directly and immaterially, it would be a rare triumph of faith and insight for any one of them to believe in the existence of others. What we need for human society is exactly what we have; a neutral something, neither you nor I, which we can both manipulate so as to make signs to each other. Matter, which keeps souls apart, also brings them together. It enables each of us to have an 'outside' as well as an 'inside'."

Now, this quote by itself is most fascinating to me because of another book I am simultaneously reading. Why God Won't Go Away is a book about about God and the human brain, where scientists, just discovering the powers of SPEC and functional MRIs, are theorizing how ideas of God work in our minds and why spirituality and religion remain prevalent despite the emotional and intellectual developments of our society. They scanned the brains of individuals who claim to have achieved transcendence during their actual period of intense communion. During these spiritual experiences, sensory input is blocked from the object orientation area of the brain, the part of the brain that differentiates you and your body from everything else, the part of the brain that allows you to have an "inside" and an "outside," that gives you a sense of self by separating you from everything else. People with injury to their object orientation area have difficulty working in a three dimensional space, they can't grasp objects, they can't figure out how to sit or lie down on something, because they can't figure out exactly where they stop and the object starts. Prayer and meditation involve the attention orientation area (your willpower or ability to focus) and use that to dampen your object orientation area. You use your will power to love God more than yourself. You lose yourself. You become part of something bigger. And the most important part is that you use your free will to do so. You give up your sense of being separated from God on purpose. It is your choice and you must use an extreme amount of willpower to make it happen.

The brain is like space, it is uncharted waters, undiscovered country in comparison with the rest of the body. This is like the first explorers to the Americas making assumptions about the natives and the natural resources. Only time will tell and prove, disprove, or revise these theories on brain workings and religion. But this book had pieces of truth for me (and misconceptions I discerned to be untrue as well...I just take what is good and disregard what is not).

I know most people who read my blog will not comment on this post. Does it make your brain hurt to even picture what it is I am trying to describe? It hurts my brain, too. I remarked a few posts back about how the brain book made my own brain feel like pudding. And the book by CS Lewis did the same thing. Some people love the vague achy feeling of sore muscles after a workout. I love the feeling of a sore brain after stretching it.