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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
There must be something more to life. The modern world is a place of great distraction, and it can be difficult to make sense of our human existence. But at some point in our lives, we may experience particular moments that prompt us to search for something deeper. Sociologist Peter Berger described these hints and clues as "signals of transcendence" that awaken us to unseen realities. In Signals of Transendence Os Guinness - Tells stories of people who experienced signals of transcendence and followed them to find new meaning and purpose in life, - Explores the experiences of notable figures such as Leo Tolstoy and C. S. Lewis as well as lesser-known individuals who experienced a variety of promptings that signaled to them that life could not continue as they had thought, and - Shows how we can experience the same kinds of moments of transcendence if only we open our eyes to recognize the signals.Through unsatisfied longings or disillusionments that yet yielded glimpses of beauty or joy, these moments drew people toward epiphanies of transformation. And the same can be true for us, should we have the courage to follow the signals wherever they may lead. Listen for the signals. And discover what more awaits those with ears to hear.
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Seitenzahl: 183
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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SIGNALSofTRANSCENDENCE
Listening to the Promptings of Life
DOM
And in memory of Peter L. Berger,
whose own comic genius and profound insights
were the catalyst for this book.
Contents
Acknowledgments
This book owes its genesis to my friend and mentor Peter L. Berger, and in particular to his little book A Rumor of Angels. I also owe a great debt to Kevin and Bonnie McKernan for many happy hours of conversation as well as their close reading of the first draft of this book. Their criticisms were as sure as their suggestions were invaluable.
Introduction
I’m at a point in my life where I realize that there has to be more to life. Something must be missing.”
This remark, made to me by a business leader in Silicon Valley, expresses what countless people come to see in their own way and say in their own words. Previously, they were mostly contented in some season of life; some were wealthy, successful, and even highly celebrated in one field or another. But they reached a point where they knew in their heart of hearts that none of it quite satisfied as they hoped. Who am I? Why am I here? What is life all about?
Life raises such questions to all of us at some point, and certain experiences break into our lives that spur us to question whether our answers are deep enough, prompting a search for what we sense is missing—an unnamable something more. Life itself is extraordinary, and somehow we all want to know what it is to live a worthy life, one that fulfills the promise of life.
Peter Berger, the eminent social scientist, described the experiences that trigger such longings as “signals of transcendence”—arresting and intriguing experiences that both capture our attention and call for further explanation. The thrust of these signals points to some meaning beyond themselves, and they won’t let us off the hook until we stir ourselves to find what it is. Such experiences puncture one’s satisfaction with the status quo and push one to search for something beyond.
The signals stir in us a sense that there must be something more to life, but what is that often unnamable something? In stirring us, signals of transcendence are a prompting by life itself, as it were. They trigger both a contradiction and a desire, and call into question the past, the present, and the future. They challenge the present and the past by contradicting the temptation to settle down and be satisfied. They challenge the future by spurring a desire to search for the something that is missing, that toward which the experience is hinting.
In so doing, the signals lay bare some aspect of our human existence that we have forgotten or suppressed, at least partially—including things lost and left behind. Such aspects of a fuller and more complete reality must be rediscovered if life is to be lived to the full. Equally, an understanding of those aspects has to be grounded solidly if it is to be truly fulfilling. Hence the quest for faith and meaning triggered by the signals—the quest for meaning that is adequate and faith that is true. Follow the signals and discover more of the reality of who we are and what the universe and life are about; then our lives will be better aligned and more able to be free and fulfilled. Freedom, after all, is simply the ability to be who we are, to think freely, to speak freely, and to act freely. But who in truth are we, why are we here, and what is life about? The signal is power packed with the thrust of such questions.
People have used a myriad of words to describe such signals of transcendence. They have been called “clues,” “hints,” “spurs,” “jolts,” “triggers,” “homing signals,” “points of bafflement,” “scene shifters,” “epiphanies,” “mini paradigm shifts,” “holes torn in the wall,” and “metaphysical hunger pangs.” But they all describe experiences that make people realize there must be something more in life than they had imagined, experiences that beckon them to the door of what poet William Wordsworth called “worlds not realized.”
The Irish have a term, thin places, which they use to describe places or experiences where the membrane between the seen and the unseen, the natural and the supernatural, is barely there and easily penetrated. Heaven and earth are only a few feet apart, the Celts say, but in thin places they are even closer. Experiencing a signal of transcendence is like having a knife thrust through the membrane in thin places.
Berger set out a fascinating series of examples of such signals of transcendence in one chapter of his little classic, A Rumor of Angels. Originally, he had put more weight on the signals, expecting them to be signals that also went on to deliver the substance of what they pointed to. But he came to see that the experiences were no more than signals, signposts in sound. People who hear the signals have to follow where they lead and look for the answers themselves. The signals only signal. They themselves do not deliver the satisfaction of the discoveries, and any “leap of faith” from the signals to the hoped-for satisfaction would be wrong. Faith requires a warranted step—not a leap in the dark. Yet by their very thrust, the signals rule out some answers and suggest others, and they launch a search. True searchers are those who then follow the signals and set out on the journey. Follow the truth where it leads, the signals say. There is more to you, and there is more to life for you to discover for your own good.
Peter Berger’s idea of the signals of transcendence has resonated deeply with many people. He was my mentor and friend, and we discussed writing a book together that expanded on his original thoughts. Sadly, his death made that partnership impossible, but this little book is my own offering of the same idea—in the form of stories.
SHADOWS OR SUNSHINE?
The core idea behind the stories in this book is simple. Such is the human condition that the promptings of life and the longing for something more are nearly universal, and are far more common than often admitted or usually understood. Such signals of transcendence can be heard, beeping insistently throughout life for those who listen. Curiously, the experiences of these signals have a decidedly subversive character in today’s world. The advanced modern world has a lopsided view of reality and of how truth may be found. It majors on what can be known through rational logic and sensory perception, so that scientific observation and experimentation form the main body of modern knowledge. The effect is to minimize intuition, even though intuition plays an undeniable part in all creativity and discovery, whether artistic or scientific. Archimedes’ “Eureka!” and Isaac Newton’s response to the falling apple were a matter of intuition and not observation; so too were the creative breakthroughs of Galileo, William Shakespeare, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and countless others.
Overall, this shrunken view of truth and modern knowledge acts to form a gigantic global conspiracy against transcendence. It has become a prominent but unfortunate feature of modern civilization, which helps us to be superachievers materially but underachievers spiritually. It patrols the boundaries of what modernity considers real and unreal. As modern people, we have grown unused to the sound of any voice beyond the immediate and the urgent. Signals of transcendence require a listening that is attention at its best. But while the signals are harder to hear today, they are more important than ever to hear. The how and the what of life rush at us every day with their urgency, but the why is even more important, and that is where we must begin if we desire to explore the whole of reality and discover true meaning and purpose.
Plato captured the importance of knowing what is real and unreal in his famous parable of the cave, as told by Socrates in The Republic. A group of prisoners has been given a life sentence and is chained in a cave. All they can see are flickering shadows cast on the blank wall in front of them, as people and objects move between them and a fire that is behind them at the back of the cave. The shadows on the wall are the only reality the prisoners can see, and they have developed their own full set of terms to understand and describe them.
The wise man, Socrates argues, is like a prisoner who has escaped from the cave. In the bright light of the sun, he realizes that the flickering shadows on the wall are not the complete reality at all. They are appallingly inadequate compared with reality. He returns to tell the good news to his fellow inmates, but they are incredulous. What he is saying is incomprehensible and disturbing to those still inside the cave. The shadows are the only reality they know, so to them the sunlight is unreal, and they are reluctant to leave the only world they know in case the search turns out to be a fool’s errand. Such as it is, shadows and all, life in the cave is reality enough for them. It’s nothing to sing about or celebrate, but it is the only life they know, and they have grown used to it. So, they choose to stay where they are rather than run the risk of disappointment in attempting to get outside and finding there is nothing there.
A WORLD WITHOUT WONDER
The cave dwellers, for Plato, were a picture of the human condition. And in many ways, they are even more apt as a picture of our condition in the advanced modern world—for several reasons. First, growing up in any generation is a process of asking fewer and fewer questions and experiencing less and less wonder. When we were children, questions, wonder, and curiosity were as natural as breathing, and our flow of questions often had to be cut off by our parents. They were too busy as adults to respond to the endless insistence of our “Why this? Why that?” But now that we are adults ourselves, the unrelenting speed, stuff, stress, and seriousness of life squeeze out all wonder and curiosity from our lives, especially if we live our days in ever-expanding cityscapes where everything is humanly designed, humanly constructed, and artificial from beginning to end. Hyperreality and the much-discussed “metaverse” will only compound this handicap.
Like our parents before us, we in our turn soon find ourselves pressed for time in the 24/7 world of supermodern fast-life. Pausing to question anything in a profound way is a luxury we can no longer afford. Atheists have sometimes mocked faith for being infantile, a child’s view of reality, but the truth boomerangs. Children are as instinctively questioning as they are naturally religious and full of wonder about life. The combination is telling, and it says as much about adults as about children.
As life goes on, the problem is compounded further. Scholarship goes about its explaining, journalism its reporting, management its controlling, punditry its predicting, and modern education its instructing, and there is less and less room to question anything or have any sense of wonder. In the form of multiple-choice tests, there is an assumption that the best assessment of wisdom is the right answer, and the right answer is always the answer that is known ahead. The same is true of the trial lawyer, trained only to ask questions of which he is sure of the answers. But the fallacy is obvious. The right answer may be an accurate assessment of knowledge in the form of information already mastered, but the true test of wisdom and the best way to lead a life of creative thinking is the ability to ask the right questions, to keep on asking questions, and always to be prepared to go beyond what we know now, in order to discover something new.
A WORLD WITHOUT WINDOWS
Second, as citizens of the advanced modern world, we live in what Berger calls “a world without windows,” the materialistic shadow world of Plato’s cave with official scorn for any mention of the sun or a world outside. Our official, paramount, and dominant “reality” is the seven-to-eleven daytime world, which is shaped and limited by the reach of our five senses—reality is what we can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste—and therefore measure and calculate. This is the world we hail today as the “real world,” and as Berger says, its reality is dense, heavy, and compelling. From time to time we slip the leash of this real world, above all when we sleep and dream. But we can also exit it in other ways, such as through a joke, a book, a film, or drink and drugs, and of course through quantum mechanics. But waking up, putting the book down, stepping out of the cinema, or simply sobering up, we know we are back in the cast-iron solidity of the real world, which is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be.
For our ancestors, and for most humans in history, the world was larger than the material world of the five senses. The daytime, waking world was only the seen world, and the seen world was not the only world. In fact, for most people in history the unseen world—however it was understood—was as real, if not more real, than the seen world. Things in the seen world that were as practical and down to earth as making business decisions or making love were understood in light of the unseen world.
For most people today, however, the seen world is all there is. The seen is real and the unseen is unreal. There is nothing else. Without realizing it, we live in a windowless world, and in Max Weber’s words, we are unmusical and tone-deaf to anything else. We are unable and unconcerned to listen to what Albert Einstein called the music of the spheres, or to entertain any thought that might come from outside our little lives and their well-insulated cocoons. Our view of reality, as G. K. Chesterton put it, is no better than that of a slightly drowsy middle-aged man right after a good lunch.
To change the picture to another famous parable from Greece, we modern people are like the guests of the Greek innkeeper Procrustes. We have been forced to fit onto a bed that is too small for us. As philosopher Abraham Heschel expressed, “The agony of the contemporary man is the agony of a spiritually stunted man. The image of man is larger than the frame into which he has been compressed.” As modern people, we are schooled to believe that science, technology, the democratic state, and the free-market economy will supply all our needs and answer all our questions. And to be sure, we live with the privilege of options most generations could only dream of. Yet the superabundant how and what of modern life will never drown out the why—though try engaging your friends and colleagues with an understanding that goes beyond the material, the measurable, and the rationally reckonable, and you are sure to be eyed askance.
WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION
Third, there are practical reasons why it makes good sense to avoid thinking more widely and deeply, at least in the short run. We humans have always resorted to what French mathematician Blaise Pascal called “diversions,” and our advanced modern world provides the grandest diversions ever designed. Those whose lives are spent in triple-screen gazing (the mobile phone, the computer, and the television) can barely see beyond the end of their noses—and are all the happier for it. In T. S. Eliot’s words, we humans cannot bear too much reality, and the ultimate reality is that we all may suffer and we all will die. Many of us have not included death, our own or others, into the equations that make up our sense of the meaning of life. So, it makes a certain shortsighted sense to surround ourselves with busy, entertaining distractions. If we succeed in diverting ourselves royally, we won’t have to think or care too deeply about anything unpleasant. But the outcome has been to stifle our questioning and our wonder even more. With our modern lack of time and our endless supply of modern technological devices and gadgets, such diversions become “weapons of mass distraction” so that we never have to think deeply at all.
The net effect of all these factors is that many modern people live all their lives as if in Plato’s cave, unaware and unconcerned. They have no idea and are probably skeptical that there is any other reality than the seven-to-eleven world in which we live every day. They have lost their sense of questioning, wonder, and curiosity, and they live under a powerful spell that the seen world is all there is. The insistent ordinariness of our daily existence drowns out the wonder of existence itself, and we don’t notice the huge gap between the two levels of reality.
THE ANIMAL THAT ASKS AND ASKS
Properly understood, wonder, curiosity, and questioning are invaluable keys to life. They trigger the search for the meaning of life. They fire and fuel grand enterprises, such as scientific discovery and journalistic investigation. They motivate desire for pursuing the good life, and they form a vital part of the secret of finishing well. After all, as the literary critic George Steiner claims, we humans are not so much Homo sapiens as Homo quaerens, “the animal that asks and asks.” Or as philosopher-rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it, “We are the one life form known to us that can ask the question, ‘Why?’”
Wonder and curiosity begin in the face of the cosmos itself. Philosophy too. “Why is there not nothing?” Or “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Gottfried Leibniz, the famous seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician, raised that question as he pondered the wonder of our highly improbable universe. Vast, mysterious, and wonderful in itself—and all the more so as we probe and discover it further today—the universe is nowhere more awesome than in the sheer fact that it exists at all. But why does it exist? Who or what brought existence into being? What sort of odds would there have to be for such beauty, wonder, harmony, and complexity to be purely the product of chance?
Life on earth is wonderful too. Thrusting, teeming, colorful, and diverse in all its forms, life is filled with many-splendored wonders that are impossible to miss when we think of all it took for them all to have happened in the way they have. A few differences here and a few differences there, and it would all be so different. In fact, only a very few fine-tuned differences more and our universe could simply never have been. Why then is it as it is?
Our own humanity is out of the ordinary as well, and the great classics of the world present a resounding chorus of witness to the marvel and the paradox of human beings. As I wrote in an earlier book, we humans are so small yet so great, so strong and so weak. We rise so high and we sink so low. We are body and we are spirit. We are mortal and we are immortal. We have grandeur and we have pathos. We create and we kill. We build Gothic cathedrals and we build death camps. Sometimes our little lives seem like a momentary fleck on the heaving swell of the ocean, yet we are the center of our own universe while we live, and together as humanity we are the most powerful and influential creatures on our tiny, blue ball of a planet. Are we God’s masterpiece? Accidental freak misfits and a cosmic error? Or what?
Why is it, as Mark Twain quipped, that we are the only animal that blushes, or needs to? Why is it that when we see things as they are, we somehow also know the way things ought to be—or at least we know what they ought not to be? How, if we sense that things are out of joint, can we protest so emphatically and vehemently, even when we cannot cite the standards that allow us to do so? What other beings in the universe are like us with moral and aesthetic notions in these ways?
Life is short, and the day is soon coming when we as individuals will not be here, and for all but very few of us there will be almost no evidence that we have ever been here. So, what does that say about us here and now, and what does it say of our destiny? What other beings are even conscious of such questions? What lies at the heart of this grand paradox of who we humans are?
