This is the normal human condition and nothing to be surprised by. We don’t understand anything at all when we have never seen it before and barely even heard about it. How could it be otherwise?

My many-named reader has a question to my previous entry. He asks: “How do you tell the difference between seeing another dimension, divine inspiration and a hallucination?” The short answer is, as I warned at the start of the entry, that you need experience. But as I was about to gently rebuke my reader for forgetting the beginning of the entry before getting to the end (for this could in no way be the fault of my communications skills, of course), I realized that there is more than one dimension even to practice. There is length, of course, but also breadth.

For instance, because I have watched hundreds of hours of anime, I can tell Japanese apart from other languages or from simple babbling, even if I only understand a little and cannot use it. Simply the act of observing means that you will be able to tell things apart eventually. But not without practice, and not after five minutes or even an hour or two. Or at least the ability would not stay long after only an hour or two.

But how can I know that Japanese language does in fact exist and is not an elaborate hoax? Perhaps the Japanese actually speak Chinese, but push this delusion of a separate language on foreigners for political reasons or just to laugh at us behind our backs. (Not that they would need something so elaborate for that – I am sure they do that quite a bit anyway, and with good reason.)

If I had seen only one animated movie in Japanese, then this would certainly be a possible scenario, if not plausible. But as it happens, I have watched a broad range of anime from different publishers, and read about even more that others have watched. This is what we may call a broader experience, in contrast to just longer. For instance if I had only seen The Laws of Eternity, even if I saw it every week, it would not be a very broad experience in Japanese culture. It might have left me a better person than if I had seen all those others, most of which are not very edifying, but I would not have much basis for an opinion about Japanese language, much less the rest of their culture.

This is the case with people who restrain their interests to a very narrow range. In the example of spiritual practices, which I wrote about in my previous entry, there are sects who teach that your only spiritual practice needs to be chanting a particular short phrase over and over for the rest of your life, as often as possible. While this certainly has some effect, it is a narrow approach in the sense that we cannot easily know whether the effect comes from the object of their worship, the particular sounds of the chant, or simply the practice of repeating something an extraordinary number of times.

To further complicate things, sects tend to strongly discourage experimenting with variations of the practice, much less experimenting with the practices of other sects. Sure, members of other sects claim to be happy too, but what do they know about true happiness? And besides, the demons may just be deluding them into thinking that they are happy. After all, if you were a professional demon, wouldn’t you be willing to make people happy for a few years if you could get them to Hell afterwards? (This does not apply to our sect, of course, since we know true happiness when we see it. Besides, it is written in our holy Scripture that we are right, and we know our holy Scripture is true because the Scripture says so.)

The behavior of the sect members is actually quite reasonable. Why risk a good thing for something uncertain? Better the god you know than the devil you don’t. Still, it makes for a narrow experience, not too unlike the fan who only watches the same movie over and over again.

On the other hand, the “butterfly”, “supermarket” or “salad bar” approach to spirituality has its own drawbacks. The most obvious is that people tend to pick only the parts they personally like. But if a child starts to eat only the food he likes best, do only the homework he likes and only show up for P.E. classes if they are fun, he is unlikely to be heading for a long and happy life. If he has parents, they will hopefully tell him to change his ways. Likewise if you use this approach in your spiritual life. If you have a spiritual “father”, he is sure to tell you in no uncertain terms to Eat Your Greens.

Each tradition has its own internal structure or consistency. This is certainly not to say that they are all equal, much less identical. What I mean is that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and if you only keep picking parts, you will not get that “more”, that wholeness or totality. Just saying. I am not really the right person to go all out against this, since I have a double helping of curiosity at the very least.

On the bright side, the great religions have each quite a broad range of spiritual tools. For instance if you are a Christian, there is no need to Hare off to Krishna or canter over to El Cantare just to add the spice of variety to your life. (If you go for other reasons, it is not like I could stop you anyway.) You may never have run into all of these in Sunday School in the Church of Our Saints in Middle Littlewick, but actually there is both prayer, meditation, contemplation, Lectio Divina and even chanting (although mostly in liturgy). And of course if you are part of a congregation, there are probably various rituals also trying to drag Eternity into time (or time into Eternity).

On the other extreme, Buddhism has a heap of different meditation schools, many of which are not quite religious in the western sense of the word, although some are. The contrast between some of the techniques taught is staggering, certainly on the same scale as the difference between some branches of different religions.

This was very long, but the short of it is: There are a number of different spiritual practices, a few of which I am familiar with from experience, and many more from the experience of others. While the effects of them differ to some extent, there are also many striking similarities.

Then there is the whole thing about religious versus secular meditation / observation, but I am working on a different entry about that.

So how can we tell things apart? We cannot without practice. The practice can be long or broad or both. It can also differ in depth, so I guess we have 3 dimensions there as well. If you have mainly one of these dimensions, I suppose it may be hard to perceive the others clearly. If you have none of them, I don’t see why you would even try. Humans need years to even learn to dress themselves. There is no way we can become proficient with the mind without watching it firsthand for some time. But I believe it is worth it, for a mind is a terrible thing to waste.