My Grand Apologetics Project Part 2 (Cont)

b. The Expansive Self

The next experience I want to touch on in this section is the discovery of "the true self". Just as reflective people tend to search for what it means to "truly live", we also almost inevitably struggle to answer the question, at the most fundamental level, "who am I, really?" We know intuitively that our normal way of thinking about who we are is fundamentally flawed. Day-in, day-out, when we think about our wants and our needs, we objectify our experience of self-hood. And when we talk that way we speak as if we are atomized, separated individuals. But even the most superficial reflection can illuminate the falsehood of this 'treatmemt' . For we all know that our very selves are shaped by a series of relationships, spreading out in concentric circles beginning with an intimate circle, out to a wider community, and out to national and worldwide human connections. It should not take long, and we all realize this even if we don't verbalize it this way, that the self is a relational object. We are, in large part, constituted by our various relationships.

Now most of us, most of the time, live put a series of trade-offs between the various circles, giving so much to our close family and friends, our community, our nation, etc and expecting a certain amount of well-being back. However, if one lives this kind of structured existence long enough, one is likely to experience some kind of dissatisfaction with it. This is not universally true, and so unlike the first experience, I don't think my appeal here will have as wide an appeal. But I think most people will find themselves in some kind of crisis of self-identity. 

If this doesn't take place through some kind of unease with life's balancing acts, it may come as a result of a loss of a major self-constituting relationship: wife, parent or even the loss of ones nation. Eventually, many people turn not to any particular relationship, but to ones relationship with reality itself. Having lost all that makes us who we are, either in fact or in terms of satisfaction, we can still find a fundamental relationship above and yet inclusive of all others. At one point many people experience a shift in self-awareness, from a set of concentric circles to life as a whole. One experiences oneself as one part of 'something bigger', which has no clear and definite boundaries. I want to focus on the phenomenology or the content of the experience: participation. For what does it mean to be a part of a universal self if there is no self to be a part of? And indeed, that is what it is like to have this kind of "expansive" self-experience. 

Now, like the experience of risk and venture, this experience need not be tied to any particular religious tradition or theological formulation. Many people religious or irreligious, theist or atheist, can understand what I am talking about here. If you can't grasp even the concept, if you know nothing about the experience, then we part ways here and that's that. But if you can identify with the experience I'm describing, then we can continue. That is true even if you take this experience to be illusory or explicable in purely material terms. 

c. Conclusions and Reflections

In the end, I think both of these experiences are part of one fundamental truth expressing itself in two different but similar experiences. That insight is this: we stand radically vulnerable to the world, but this vulnerability is not to be feared, but embraced. Like it's experiential expressions, this insight is not inherently religious. I am not at this point ready to defend or even talk about "God" in any sense. 

It should also be clear that these experiences are far different from what most atheists address when they talk about 'religious experience'. But I would contend that these are two of the most common experiences religious people refer to when they use that term. These "fundamental" experiences shape the religious persons view of everything...including epistemology. It is at this level debate must begin. To jump to less ground-floor details is to risk talking past each other. I have tried to avoid this error by giving my imagined interlocutor ways out up to this point. If you take these outs, then arguments about future issues are beside the point.

One consequence of these experience and the attending insight is epistemological. For the experiences is in the position of being unable to prove the veridical nature of the experiences or the truth of the insight about vulnerability. For to seek absolute proof is to remove the vulnerability one has come to see as good. Some beliefs become about choice, and must be about choice if life is about risk and venture. And so no one can take these experiences seriously unless one in some sense chooses to, lest they lose the very thing they have grabbed a hold of.

Thus we face the final question: will we take these two experiences in earnest? Will we choose to take life really lived as life risky and venturesome? Will we live as if who we are is inclusive of all reality? Will we stand vulnerable to the world, smiling?

If you stand in need of convincing one way or another, you've already made your choice. But do not pretend you disagree with me about God or mystic visions or anything else. We do disagree on those points, but those disagreements emanate from this one. But if you like me have had these experiences, these experiences, and you answer yes to those epistemic questions, for that is what they are, then we can move on.