Observations placeholder
Alyce Green – Knowing thyself
Identifier
027382
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Beyond Biofeedback – Drs Elmer and Alyce Green
A quest for self-identity, an answer to the question, Who am I?, under-lies the meaning of life for many people. Transcendental experiences often provide clues. A new self-image may emerge, and a change in the image of the universe, seeing it as benign and seeing oneself as one with it…………
What are we then?
The most sophisticated answer that we get from the mystics is also the only answer that has metaphysical justification, because of the nature of logic. That answer is "We are what remains after we have identified what we are not," and "what remains" must be experienced to be known.
Logic collapses when it reaches the boundary of its domain and experiential knowing starts us on a new line of exploration and discovery. Can we say that, to know our identity, we must stop clinging only to the rules of left-hemisphere functioning and must allow ourselves also to experience right-hemisphere existential synthesis?
Knowing is not the same as believing. When C. G. Jung was asked toward the end of his life if he believed in a spiritual being that transcended the limits of time and space, he answered that believing was useless; it was necessary to know.
And he said, "I do not believe, I know."