Welcome to the Twilight Zone

I heard recently about an Inuit tribe of 200 odd people that American explorer Robert Peary came across during the last decade of the 19^th century on one of his many expeditions. Before they met him, they thought they were the only people on Earth. Understandably, meeting him was something of a shock. He further shocked them by kidnapping five of them. And then really sent them over the edge by stealing their only source of iron, a few meteorites, which he subsequently sold for $50,000.00. All in all, a nice guy.

Can you imagine realising that you don’t know everyone on the planet on a first name basis? No? Me neither. But think about it; no such thing as ‘stranger danger’. ‘Ice-breakers’ are not group activities for getting to know one another. Variety evenings never include the line, “So who’s from out of town?”.

But this brings me to the topic of this blog: paradigms.

Paradigms. Fun to say and fun to spell.

A paradigm is loosely speaking simply a model of thought or a concept. That’s a broad and rough definition because the meaning behind ‘paradigm’ differs according to the context. In a strictly academic setting, it refers to how a concept may be explored, or how a law or theory may be verified. However, among the general ‘lay’ population, it has come to refer to the framework within which we arrange our thoughts and views for them to make sense. It’s our view of how the world is or how it works, or even how it should be or work. Or, perhaps not just the world, but the whole universe. Or even all of reality; material, conceptual, even spiritual.

Now, let’s face it; for every person to come up with a coherent and systematic understanding of the WHOLE UNIVERSE … well, there are bound to be a few blind spots. For instance, the once widespread view that the Moon was made of cheese… need I say more? It’s like something out of a Monty Python skit: “Well, it looks like cheese … I mean … it is round!”. Or the western medieval view that the world is flat. Can you imagine Magellan trying to convince his sailors that, if they came with him, they wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world? “No, guys, we’ll be fine … promise … who’s up for a bit of fun, then, hey?”

So, history has shown us that once hard-and-fast ideas of ‘How Things Are’ do, in fact, change and when they do, they can take the whole world with them. Some examples in modern history: that annoying little German monk in a backwater in Saxony, Martin Luther, who turned global politics on its head and simultaneously introduced an earth-shattering idea that God had cut out the middle-man when re-uniting the human race with Himself.

There was Karl Marx and his idea that eventually an anarchical society would arise to replace all other forms of government and control, and then … well, no-one really seemed to listen to the rest; they were too busy sharpening their pitch forks and practising their Molotov Cocktail hurling skills. But things were never the same.

How about Charles Darwin, now ironically entombed in Westminster Abbey, who suggested that maybe ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ should have been called ‘All Things Vicious and Mutable’ and gave the Human Race just the argument it was looking for to excuse God from the room?

Albert Eistein, that famous academic and hair-style terrorist. Seriously, this guy would have changed the world sooner if people had just understood what the heck he was on about.

In contrast, Mother Theresa, who didn’t really argue her case but quietly demonstrated that every person has worth, even if they are one of a crowd of identical millions … and the whole world was held to account by her life.

All of these people had a global impact; they caused the world to begin to see itself in a different light. They caused a global Paradigm Shift.

But in each case, it started with a personal paradigm shift. They had to make the jump themselves before they could take anyone with them. This is no small feat. To question the very fabric of reality as you perceive it is … well, uncomfortable, to say the least.

But I would like to ask you to take a leap with me. For some reading this, no doubt this would be entering the realm of the HIGHLY hypothetical. For others, less so, depending on the paradigm you have.

Consider with me the known (and assumed) physical universe, all 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion tonnes of it as estimated from the ‘Big Bang’ afterglow. Now, in all of that, where did reason and logic come from? They surely exist objectively and must be absolute or the entire state of human consciousness is an illusion. “Ah, yes,” some will argue, “since we cannot be sure that it is NOT an illusion, we can’t be certain that logic is absolute”. But since this argument RELIES on logic to be meaningful … it kind of flops over on it’s side and twitches like a dying fish. Sorry, nice try.

My point is that there must be some form of reality that exists that is not physical. Mathematics is not a physical entity, but it is real. Logic, likewise. I can accept that my euphoric response to a beautiful sunset may be the product of a combination of social conditioning and photons simulating a bio-electrical response in my optical nerves which send signals to my central nervous system to release more of some and less of other chemicals into my bloodstream to relax me and make me feel good, and that none of this would occur if my nervous system was not working, i.e. if I were dead. Therefore, my appreciation for the beauty of a sunset is a subjective thing. But whether I am alive or the light of my mortal flame was smothered in … well, you get the picture … the laws of, for instance, Mathematics continue to hold. These things are not subject to my humanity. They exist on their own.

If they exist, and yet they cannot be physically measured or contained (or even tangibly experienced), is it any less possible that there exists a spiritual reality? Is it intellectually honest for scientists who rely on the foundation of logic and reasoning (though reason and logic cannot be empirically proven to even exist) to debunk the existence of a spiritual reality on the basis that it is empirically unverifiable? (Whoa! I gotta take a break. Brain-strain.)

(Are you ready? Okay. Let’s go.) Furthermore, if there are non-physical laws of logic, could there be non-physical spiritual laws? You will notice that I assume the existence of a spiritual reality without proving it. I do this simply on the basis that the weight of the collective human experience (human history) leans towards assuming it to be axiomatic; that is, that it is self-evident and needs no proof. All through history, ALL human cultures have consistently assumed that a spiritual world exists and have attempted to relate to it one way or another.

There is a Great Divide in the world today in terms of a spiritual paradigm. You have ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’. Western thinking battles to grasp the possibility of a spiritual world; that is, battles to grasp it without getting all weird and ‘Shirley MacLaine’ on the rest of us. But we are the minority. ‘The Rest’ of the world really has no such difficulty. Sure, there are atheistic societies outside of the West, but in the main they are the exception to the rule.

But speaking of rules, I’d like to go back to my point about the possibility of there being non-physical spiritual laws. Consider gravity; it’s a law whether you want to keep it or not. And it’s generally a good idea to work with it rather than try to oppose it. Many a hernia has come about this way.

I’d like to suggest that the spiritual universe has laws that can be complied with or broken. It is unreasonable to wander wishfully around in any kind of spiritual experience and expect to be able to get away with making the rules up as you go. At the very least, that would risk a spiritual hernia.

However, for me, slow on the uptake as I am, actually relating to a spiritual world or universe or reality is still a very unnatural exercise. I am so steeped in analytical, 3-dimensional thinking that I honestly experience a wilful resistance within myself whenever I encounter a spiritual ‘moment’. But I am learning to let go of the edge and swim a little by myself, knowing that I am so utterly vulnerable in myself and utterly reliant on the one person who bridged both the physical universe and the spiritual universe on his own terms. I have for a number of years claimed to experience a spiritual reality of Jesus Christ, but I have now come to realise that those claims were empty. Not that I was lying, rather I was inaccurate. I had no (or very little) actual experience of him as a reality. Instead of him being a reality to me, I was a reality to him. Instead of experiencing him, he was experiencing me. He had connected himself to me but my experience of him was severely limited by my paradigm.

Of late, this has started to change. It has required a total overhaul of the framework I have built up for viewing the world and the universe. Notably, I am now having to accommodate a large empty space in my understanding; it’s there to make room for what is not yet there. And I am eternally grateful.

Sleep Deprivation and My Loose Grip on Reality

Over the past six months, I have come to appreciate as never before the Joy of Sleep, mainly because I haven’t had any. Actually, that’s not entirely true. If I’d not had ANY sleep, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. Apparently, you need a minimum of three hours sleep per day or your body starts to die. Some say four. Okay, don’t quote me on this information. Obviously, those statements require some sort of qualification but, frankly, I’m too tired to care.

Here are some other interesting ‘facts’ about sleep (all with their own varying degrees of accuracy):

• The average person swallows 2,33 spiders a week during their sleep (probably little ones...).
• If you laid all the sleep shorts worn on the earth at any one time in a straight line, you would have a lot of semi-naked people sleeping.
• Fish sleep with their eyes open.
• People who sleep with their eyes open are ten times more likely to freak their spouses out.

More seriously, though:

• The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.
• Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.
• British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers' body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hours. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo. (Unfortunately, they were supposed to be bombing elsewhere...)

And, strangely:

• Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock. (Scientists have also not been able to establish who thinks up these obscure tests...)

Well, you needn’t be the victim of the twisted curiosity of a white-coated, bespectacled, laboratory-lurker to realise that sleep deprivation can lead to a warped sense of reality. Just have a 10 month old baby with a sinus infection. And as any new parent will confess (as long as anonymity is guaranteed), a warped sense of reality eventually leads to ... Unacceptable Behaviour.

Now, Unacceptable Behaviour really is a subjective term. So let me define it, for the sake of this discussion, as that which YOU would not do had you not been deprived of sleep. That should translate well into any context. Sure, you wouldn’t expect to see someone down a pint of their own urine if you were at, say, the V&A Waterfront. Maybe if you were in the Himalayas ... among a throng of orange-robed devotees ... but not at the V&A. However, if you were a Clifton Beach parent who had not slept longer than 30 minutes in a single stretch for the last two weeks, a tall, frothy, body-temperature draft of urea may seem perfectly sensible, if not appealing.

Now, my aforementioned example does imply that this Unacceptable Behaviour is what one may categorise as ‘socially unacceptable’, and this is certainly true although it is too narrow a category. Much more importantly, sufferers of sleep deprivation approach a class of behaviour which, under normal circumstances, would be unacceptable to their own internal code of conduct. Blow what everyone else thinks; I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink shirt, Bru! And yet ... here comes, Frikkie, our young first time dad in a lovely cerise golf shirt, carefully laced with baby puke, with matching bags under his eyes. What a stunning combination!

Yes. It’s our own inner person which comes under pressure.

Consider another scenario: You walk into a crowded elevator on the third floor, and one second after the doors close and you start to descend, the guy next to you screams, ”Aargh!! We’re plummeting to our doom!! We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!” while clawing at the side of the lift. At the ground floor, the elevator doors open and the occupants make a hasty exit leaving the pitiful, sobbing mass moaning in the corner. Sure, it’s unsettling for everyone else but more importantly, the bearer of the distorted view of reality has just gone through four storeys of terror. Clearly, this is not a healthy individual.

Let’s analyse this for a second. If the lift was falling uncontrollably, the initial sensation of descent would probably have felt not dissimilar to the initial sensation of controlled descent. It’s a matter of interpretation, then, that makes the difference between a total freak-out and the zen-like calm that occupants of a crowded lift normally assume when their personal space has been seriously invaded. So it would seem that, under normal circumstances, people have a kind of internal gyroscope which keeps them orientated on a reasoned view of reality when their senses would want to suggest otherwise. It’s a sort of self-correction when our view of reality gets distorted, and it helps us to continue to relate to reality when what we experience wants to drag us off to a padded cell somewhere and introduce us to an invisible man called Murray.

Now, sleep deprivation is not the only catalyst for the freak-out ... or shall we call it ‘Meeting Murray’. Many things can cause us to lose touch with reality; isolation, prolonged stress, noise, queues, traffic jams, Steven Seagal movies... And worst of all, losing touch with reality doesn’t always culminate in a single freak-out/break-down/’Oh my gosh! Did he just email all his contacts a scanned picture of his butt?!’ incident. No sir. For many, the breakdown is incremental, almost indiscernible, but reality-altering for the individual experiencing it. Sure, he notices the stress, he’s conscious of the traffic jam he is in every day, but less obvious is the departure he is making towards Unacceptable Behaviour.

Somehow, we all need the ability to hold on to a view of reality in the face of things we experience that tell us that things are not so. Somehow, we need to be able to fix ourselves onto reality when we lose the ability to relate to what we know is real. Some would call this Faith.

Faith is an entirely reasonable view of reality, though our experience in any given moment may not suggest consistency with that view. That is to say, at any given time, what you feel is not necessarily real. (Remember the screaming lift occupant?) Or vice versa: at any given time, reality doesn’t feel ... well, real.

The trick is to distinguish in the course of normal living between reality and your own translation of what your senses and emotions are telling you.

This presupposes that you start out with a pretty concrete grasp of reality. And let’s face it, that’s asking a lot. But maybe that’s easier to find then one might think. Faith in a God you can’t see or feel is no less reasonable than getting into a lift whose winch and cabling you haven’t inspected and can’t see. ‘Okay, but presumably someone else has inspected it.’ Granted, and presumably a God whom you haven’t seen and can’t feel has made Himself real to someone else, too. And their reality has become grounded so that yours and mine can be also. At least, until our experience becomes consistent with that reality.

Anyway, that’s how Murray explained it to me.