Just a thought …

The fundamental premise of science (and philosophy) is that by means of observation and ratiocination we can arrive at a true understanding of the nature of things. That you can arrive at all sorts of facts by such means is indisputable. But an accumulation of facts, however comprehensive and well-ordered, remains just that, and does not necessarily lead to any understanding beyond that. I am increasingly inclined to suspect that we cannot, in fact, think our way to an essential understanding of anything. I think the premise is a category error. Being simply isn't a problem of thought.

There are, really, only two possibilities: a something underlying things or a someone behind them. The two are not as sharply differentiated as they are usually portrayed. If the first is true, each of us is the end point of a chain of impersonal and purposeless causation. We just happen to be and there really isn't anything we can do about it.

If the second is true we can assent to and embrace our role as creatures or else futilely resist same.

Thinking about this recently caused me to have a minor crisis of faith, since there really is no way of deciding which of the myriad explanations of things may be correct. Then I realized that I was still presuming that the nature of things is something we can figure out. So, given that I experience myself and others as who, not what, my natural inclination is to assume there is a someone behind things. In fact, my default mode of apprehending being is personification. I am naturally inclined to regard birds, trees, even stones and streams, as selves, not things.

My godson John, who is 15 and of a philosophical bent, recently said to me that what I call "soul" is what he would call "experience," which struck me as a deft intuitive attempt to reconcile empiricism and idealism. There can be little doubt that I know my self in terms of my experiences. But I am not identical with my experiences. I do not experience my self as experiences experiencing. My self is a someone experiencing, and my self exerts an influence on what I experience, tailoring it to itself. My self, I would say, is the product of my soul — the spark lit by the someone behind things — and the world encountering each other.

Which leaves us with Meister Eckhart's suggestion: "Let God work in you, give the work to God, and have peace. Don't worry if He works through your nature or above your nature, because both are His, nature and grace."