Monday, May 11, 2009

The Numinous

This is a fabulous word that I think everyone should get to know a little better. If our thoughts are constrained by our vocabulary, let us all widen our minds with this one.

It was coined by Rudolf Otto in a book published in English as The Idea of the Holy in 1923. The word numinous is used to describe the experience or feeling of the holy or the ‘wholly other’, that which seems to be beyond material existence, an emotion that drives the religious imagination. The phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans is frequently used to define it: that is, it is a feeling of something mysterious and other, that may seem to be transcendent, which inspires, simultaneously, both fright, repulsion and dread (tremendum) and curiosity, awe and attraction (fascinans). The kinds of experiences that can be described as numinous are hundredfold. It describes any time when one feels that their view of things has been broadened or deepened, where one feels both love and dread, where it feels like a curtain has been pulled back to reveal something more glorious about the world. It feels blissful, you feel fulfilled, topped up with light and happiness; and simultaneously you feel terrified and insignificant, as if you and the human race are absolutely nothing in comparison to the true reality you’ve just experienced.

Needless to say, such experiences are frequently interpreted (careful word choice, interpreted) as affirming the existence of God, spirits, cosmic order, or however the recipient conceptualises the supernatural. Indeed, touching the numinous often occurs in religious contexts; especially the mystic streams of the major faiths, which speak of union with the divine, or brief enlightenment, or witnessing God, or any number of other descriptions which are fundamentally different interpretations of the numinous experience. There are words for this feeling in every world religion: bodhi, nirvana, satori, ‘fana, en sof, etc.

These experiences need not be seen as religious. Dorothy Rowe, in her enlightening book on how our beliefs affect our psychopathology, What Should I Believe? (2009), discusses how out-of-body, transcendent, revelatory or numinous experiences are interpreted in light of our previous experiences and what we had previously believed about the nature of the divine. They are intrinsically impossible to put into words and so “we fall back on the language of the religion we were brought up in to describe them” (page 249). Indeed, all religious teachings and dogmas could (if we put aside moral creeds) be seen as attempts to provide a language to explain the numinous. But we do not need to attach the supernatural to such experiences to appreciate them and to take value from them; they are wonderful simply as heightened states of consciousness regarding the natural. It can simply be a material experience of the material world whereby the glory and wonder that is inherent in the world around us suddenly becomes clear. An all-natural spiritual wonder.

It is in this way that the word has been picked up by even the most radical atheists. Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great) has, in The Four Horsemen, maintained a distinction between the superstitious and the numinous. He thus keeps the numinous sense that many get of the world’s glory and grace, but divorces this from the existence of the supernatural in any form. His atheist buddies agree. Daniel Dennett, atheist philosopher, reacts by proving that he has experienced the numinous through this accurate description:

It is the best moment in your life. And it's the moment when you forget yourself and become better than you ever thought you could be in some way. And see, in all humbleness, the wonderfulness of nature. That's it! And that's wonderful. But, it doesn't add anything to say, golly, that has to have been given to me by somebody even more wonderful.

 

Phillip Adams, Australian radio host and author of Adams vs God, speaking on Compass’ The Atheists, also refers to the numinous experience as enriching his atheism:

The sense of the numinous is when you stand outside at night at the farm and you look up at a clear sky unpolluted by the metropolis, and you’re looking at billions and billions and billions of stars. More suns out there than there are grains of sand in the Sahara. And if you’re not overcome by a sense of the numinous – which is a mixture of awe and wonderment and dread – there’s something wrong with you. It’s a great emotion. It’s the emotion I think that drives religion and philosophy and science.


Personally, I similarly experience the numinous when I am alone, in the dark, at night, looking at the moon. Sometimes, after a moment or two, I suddenly and briefly grasp or understand how big it is, how far away it is, how big the earth is, and how I fit into it all. I understand that I am minutely small and entirely insignificant to the functioning of the universe. This revelation makes my life’s little problems seem small and paltry, and less worrisome, but it also raises the question: what’s the point? Clearly I am experiencing the numinous, that ambivalence of anxiety and bliss. It does feel like I am touching the transcendent, as if I am feeling God’s light, but I do not interpret it this way; I see no need to.

What are numinous experiences? Clearly we could say that there is something called the numinous, some kind of cosmic oneness sitting beyond the phenomenal world, that we occasionally are lucky enough to witness. Or perhaps, when we have these experiences, we are simply noticing everything in the material world as it truly is for a moment, with our veils of cognitive inhibitions pulled back. Or perhaps our brains have, through some freak of nature, become so complex that they occasionally stuff up and we briefly feel a little funny. Whatever they are, we all have them, and they are things to be embraced, enjoyed, and shared.

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