That numinous feeling...

Been listening to a fascinating series on NPR's All Things Considered about how spirituality is processed in the brain. Reminds me of the quest of the Impressionist painters in the 19th century to show the 'true' colors produced by light: but how can you truly see what is really there if your 'brain' is processing the experience of what you see? what is green if not our brain's reaction to a certain stimuli that we translate as green?

In the series so far there are just as interesting koans involving the brain and spirituality: how do we process numinous experiences? Is it all in our heads? can we ever really know? While I don't agree with him on everything, I'm certainly in the Christopher Hitchens camp about recognizing the numinous doesn't have to belong to the world of the religious, when he says, "It's innate in us to be overawed by certain moments, say, at evening on a mountaintop or sunset on the boundaries of the ocean. Or, in my case, looking through the Hubble telescope at those extraordinary pictures. We have a sense of awe and wonder at something beyond ourselves, and so we should, because our own lives are very transient and insignificant. That's the numinous, and there's enough wonder in the natural world without any resort to the supernatural being required."

All things which are great fun to contemplate...

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 4:46 PM