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Words Fail
One of the things I often hear people talk about when it comes to mystical and esoteric subjects is that certain things are simply ineffable, that you can’t talk about them. Whether or not you should is a whole other issue, but I’m pretty sure that whole thing about you not being able to at all is kind of a load of crap.
We could conjecture that people not talking about mystical experiences has more to do with cultural impropriety than with any inherent lack of communicability when it comes to these experiences. In my own life, I have found such experiences to be an absolutely rich vein of creative potential. The problem most of us seem to have is that we don’t want to talk about them because we don’t want people to think we are totally nuts, not because we don’t or can’t talk about them.
Sure, these experiences can’t be fully communicated through the power of words with any completeness, but then how is that different from the rest of life? Everything in life is ineffable. Words always fail to do the job we would have them do when we open our mouths to speak. We always distort and color things somehow. But that doesn’t stop us from talking about anything else that happens to us - so why shoud that be the case with spiritual and other unusual experiences? It shouldn’t. (See also my website Traces from Beyond for more on that subject)
The problem with words (and concepts) ultimately is that they are models for experiences. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using them, but models are always incomplete. When you build a model you have to decide what to include and what to discard. Same goes for communicating experiences: you have to decide what parts of the story to say in what order. What do you highlight? What do you minimize for the sake of the person you are communicating with so that they will understand?
The reason true spiritual experiences seem to break the bounds of words is that they are more than models. They are real things. They are the ground from which models and words and concepts and descriptions spring. But for that exact reason, they have an inestimable creative power because you can apply a hundred, a thousand different models to describe them. You can reformulate your experience again and again, clothing it in different words each time and never quite “get it” nailed down 100%. You can see this creative energy of mystical experience pulsing behind the work of Philip K. Dick in a really serious way. He didn’t just throw up his hands and say, “Oh, I can’t talk about this. It’s simply beyond words!” Instead he spent virtually his whole life trying to explain and understand what happened to him. And in so doing, he managed to tap into the energy these experiences represent in an even more profound way and he figured out how to transmit it to other people.
I do think there’s something to be said for not getting too hung up on the words themselves. Just because you can or can’t explain something that strange happened to you really well, so what? Was your experience intended strictly for you or was it something other people could benefit from as well? Was there some kind of spiritual trust which was granted to you through your experience? Is there such a thing as “profaning the mysteries”? All of these, I think, are good questions that can and should be explored - and talked about. There’s no such thing as something you can’t describe. All the mysteries of life are equally ineffable, but that’s no reason to shut ourselves down from sharing it with one another.
- Without Fail
- Gatto on Conspiracy
- V for Vendetta, Part 5
- Daniel 11:14
- Novel Solutions For Economic Crisis
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- Next: Fascism In One Person
August 17th, 2006 at 10:51 am
I tend to agree for the most part. However, I would say that there are certain mystical experiences for which it’s not a matter of not “being able” by choice, but a matter of not “being able” simply because the words don’t exist. Overall, though, yeah, if people weren’t really able to discuss these experiences, we wouldn’t have the volumes of scripture and exegesis that try to do just that.
I think that within the Gnostic tradition it’s not a matter of tossing up one’s hands and saying “oh, you wouldn’t understand, and I can’t talk about it, so why try”? It’s more a matter of simply recognizing the inability of any human semiotic set to describe the ineffable. In order to effectively do so, one would have to *be* everything and every one. But, with this in mind, we of course try to describe the experiences, and do so in the context of myth.
The book I just finished writing has an entire section devoted to peoples’ descriptions of their personal experiences of gnosis. One of the interesting things about it is how similar most of them really are. The idea isn’t to try to describe these experiences with any kind of effectiveness, but to assist other individuals who may have had similar experiences find a potential framework in which to place them.
August 17th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Also, i’ve found that a lot of people don’t have a frame of reference for such things, and therefore don’t even really think to bring them up. At a dinner party with some people who i know socially, recently, - none of whom are outspokenly interested in the occult or the mystical- i brought up my own experiences with dream coincidences and synchronicities. what followed was an outpouring of frenzied speech about each individual’s experiences. there was a lot of “i never thought of that as strange until now…”
August 17th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
In my high school Humanities program we learned about “word magic”, which explores the relationships between words and their meanings… not to be confused with the concept of “magic words”…
This link below delineates the idea of word magic using examples from current news, particularly the Hezzbollah-Israeli conflict.
http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2006/07/word-magic.html
August 17th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
“To Know, To Dare, To Will, and TO BE SILENT.”
August 17th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
The thing about the spiritual experiences that I’ve had is that. . .while the words certainly do exist to describe them, I feel that they somehow do my actual experience of the Divine a grave injustice. Also, the glimpses of “gnosis” I’ve had have been, obviously, very personal experiences. . . and I somehow don’t feel there are words to accurately portray it simply because perhaps I’m not supposed to share such a personal interpretation of Source with anyone else. Not that I’m trying to be selfish, or claim that MY mystical experiences were more important or had more inherit meaning than anyone elses. . .I just feel that these experiences were meant for me solely, and that no one else would really gain anything from what was intended for me.
August 17th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
To believe that though is to believe that you’re going through a life situation which is 100% unique. There’s a good quote by I think Iggy Pop who says something about the best way to write a song that is universally popular and well loved is to make it deeply personal.
The personal IS universal.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
the personal is universal? that’s the greatest thing i’ve ever heard. the implications. . .geez, they’d totally change my perspective if I actually accepted it. But knowing me, something that profound will only come to me later in life, and by then I’ll think that EYE thought about it without any prior catalyst. But I suppose that’s the way for most people. They don’t accept truth until they bring it out of themselves, and claim it as their own.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Exactly, well you understand that, then you’re off on the right foot. That’s I think the trick of truth - people think they can just capitalize on someone else’s hard work. Just doesn’t happen.
James:
James, that article was totally awesome. Thanks!
August 18th, 2006 at 7:08 am
I think its fair to say that words can never full capture the truth of these experiences…but words can convey an approximation.
Matt
eclectic itchings
August 20th, 2006 at 2:34 am
I agree with you Tim. Language is here for us to invent and use, to extend the range of what can be spoken about.
Oh yes, and this is how art works.
How to use words in conveying the mystical? We can only allude. We cannot explain, as if dissecting a mechanism or finding a formula. When we do that we destroy the delicate experience with rationality.
Let’s confound the pundits and eff the ineffable.
As in Life . . .
August 20th, 2006 at 6:26 am
i think that whether or not a mystical experience is ineffable hinges on your understanding of what a mystical experience is in the first place.
I wonder if you have ever heard of the term “Pure Consciousness Event?”
the quote at the top of this link by Robert Forman sums this up…
http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/library/topics/pce.htm
if undifferentiation is mystical experience how can words relate any of this experience? Words as symbols do nothing but differentiate. At best words can only get you to the doorway. What lies beyond that doorway is beyond words a priori. I agree that most people say such things are ineffable only as a way of saying “I don’t know anything about that” or “I don’t want to talk about that”, so what? Suggesting that the only experiences human kind is capable of communicating are experiences that words can describe seems to me to be extremely limiting to the capabilities of the mind. I understand that there are understandings of mystical experience that do not include a PCE as fundamental, I am only voicing my views of the subject in hope for greater understanding.
“What is now proven was once only imagined” - William Blake
August 20th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Well yes, that’s what I’m saying. And that in this ability to only achieve approximations, we are forced to strive to create better and better ones with which to communicate and understand.