The common idea of a miraculous event, if it could be said to take place, is that this is a contravention of the laws of nature by a higher power. Which is to say that the laws remain intact; it's just that they have been momentarily superseded. This is an incorrect vision. Somewhere in the New Testament is the line, "If Satan's kingdom is divided, how then shall Satan's kingdom stand?" The corollary being that God's kingdom or Reality as it is, unimpaired by delusion, is not divided against itself. However, the miracle which contravenes nature's laws would be an example of this kingdom divided against itself; a God who breaks the laws of his own composition. Instead, the correct view should be that if a miracle occurs, then it is our notion of nature's laws that are in error: a notion of reality which is simply the mirror of a limited and self-limiting intellect which seeks to enclose life within a system of self-imagined boundaries and laws. Perhaps this setting of limits is the will to power in action of the intellect where it seeks to be master of reality rather than its servant.
Until very recent historical time the notion of the crystal ball or some such device in which one oculd see what is happening elsewhere on this globe would probably be either dismissed as fantasy or, if accepted, viewed as involving the contravention of nature's laws by an alliance with some external force. However, we now know there to be no such laws; the essence of television being where the hidden powers of reality are tapped into, thus enabling the sending of images, more or less instantaneously, through space.
Similarly, we could look at an instrument such as the telephone as an example of electronically enabled telepathy. Where people tend to make the error is to imagine that because technology is involved, this explains the phenomenon away, but this is lazy, superficial thinking. Technology is not in any sense sufficient unto itself; it is simply tuning into the intrinsic intelligent pathways and magic realism of life.
So to recap, in the possible event of what is considered miraculous we should not interpret this as the contravention of nature's laws from without, but as illustrating a more profound reality than that conceived of by a static intellect.
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Some 'phenomena' can't really be described, and don't stand still for empirical study. They can only be experienced, and there isn't even any sure way of experiencing them.
They may of course be just a product of faulty brain chemicals, but they sure don't feel that way. Some people can integrate these experiences into a stable & orderly life, and indeed these experiences help them cope with what would otherwise be an intolerable life. According to Bruno Bettleheim (The Informed Heart) religious extremists survived well in Dachau, they had internal resources.
Modernity in many ways is about replacing internal resources (will, belief, integrity) with external (technology).
Though what is meant by religious extremist? What is meant by it may be fine, but it seems a very negatively loaded phrase. Would one call a Michelangelo an artistic extremist?
They would now, yes - these days, any belief is forbidden. We've entered the age in which they say 'everything is permitted' but by that they mean 'everything banal and degrading is permitted'. So sex is fine now, as long as it's made public on reality TV or as long as it's done in mimicry of porn (and what isn't porn now?); but privacy is strictly forbidden.
Our world is strenuously engaged in trying to deny the sacred - the sacred being what is beyond our everyday prosaic experience, but which graces us from time to time. They call this 'extremism' but to a dedicated mediocrity, of course a full range of knowledge has to be 'extremism'.
You're probably right. They will soon start calling the Michelangelos and Bachs- & especially fruitfully Van Gogh- artistic extremists, while Quentin Tarantino & Coldplay will be artists.
What i think they're doing instead - or rather just allowing it to happen and occasionally intervening to facilitate the process - is relegating Bach and Michelangelo to the category of the boring & irrelevant.
If they said Milton or Dante or Shakepeare are dangerous, and came up with laws to prevent us reading them - well, people might start to read, a little. Better, for them, to encourage any genuine art to become passe, while crap like Tracy Emin and Hirst passes for 'art'.
You're also kind of fed the idea that the great artists are honoured by the establishment & so represent the ideals of this establishment, whereas the kind of reality depicted within the highest art is, I would argue, if truly encountered, of a very extraordinary nature; a kind of multi-layered hallucinatory vision, which since art mirrors reality(inner or outer), is a reflection of reality itself. Blake's "A fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees" comes to mind.
i believe Chekhov said it's as absurd for the State to finance artists as it is for the granary-owner to subsidize his rats.
Great line. There must be something in the Russian water.
"Technology is nature, and it's workers all slaves of nature." Mortimer Shy
CS Lewis's book MIRACLES has the same view, that a miracle is not the exception, but the glimpse of a different plane of reality.
Interesting quote, Lloyd.
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