Madness is not the only danger in books. There is also the danger that something may be understood that can never be forgotten.
Having finished The Torah for Dummies, I’ve started on How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (who wrote the original) and Charles van Doren.
One of the very first concepts introduced – before I even got one Kindle dot into the book – is the difference between reading for information and reading for understanding. This is something I have written about before, as I have been introduced to the subject by the Catholic scholar A. G. Sertillanges, and before that more briefly by Ryuho Okawa, founder of Happy Science. Apart from them, and a reference to Sertillanges statement on the blog One Cosmos, I don’t think I have seen or heard this anywhere. Or if I did, it was well before I was ready for it, for no trace remains.
When I wrote about this myself a while ago, I compared the first to someone filling a container with a liquid, for instance pouring juice into a glass. The second sort however expands the container, for instance making the glass taller so it can hold more juice. The first is ordinary, the second is miraculous. But then, we are humans so miracles are not uncommon. At least not for those who wake up to the divine heritage, so to speak.
What Mortimer Adler writes about here seems actually to be an intermediate level of mind change, perhaps. The first change is just in the content of the mind, and the third change in its size. But to introduce another metaphor, you could say that reading for understanding puts more tools in your toolbox. I would say that expanding the capacity of the toolbox itself is yet another level, but let that rest for now. I think his brief introduction simply combines these advanced forms of reading (or listening, on some occasions).
His point is that if you understand perfectly what the author says, your mind and the author’s mind are of the same mold. You don’t understand more afterwards, you just know more. This is not the same thing! You need some knowledge to understand, but you don’t understand better infinitely as you pour on more knowledge. Past a certain point there is no noticeable gain in understanding by adding more and more examples.
When you don’t understand a book (but it presumably is understandable, which can not be taken for given in these days with self-publishing), you need to put more work into it. You can ask someone else to explain it, or read a book that explains it, but if they do so too well you still have not understood the original. When you by your own effort understands a book you did not, you have acquired new understanding. Your mind has leveled up, so to speak: You have a new way of thinking or seeing things that you did not have before. This is a pretty awesome thing to have happen to you.
(Also, this is mostly why I write these days. You have Google right there, you can know anything on Earth. What I want is to give you a glimpse of a different and hopefully higher perspective, another angle, a new dimension. The wonder and the glory and the stars in the sky. Still very much a work in progress, obviously.)
Mortimer Adler stresses that the author needs to have superior understanding compared to you. That is certainly true in a limited sense, namely within the context of the book. However, for the “mid-level” (one more tool in the toolbox) reading, you may well be the superior in a broader sense. Let me show this by an example:
If I were to write a book about the Norwegian language, I would be superior to most of my readers. I am, at the very least, a master of my mother tongue New Norwegian, the western and rural version of Norwegian, to the point that I feel confident mainly poets and highly trained academics can wield it better than I. However, the reader of my hypothetical book may be a world renowned linguist, fluent in more than a dozen languages from different language families and written in different scripts. By any sensible third party this reader would be my superior and have a vastly deeper understanding than I. Just not in the topic at hand.
This is just an example. What I really mean is that a person does not need to be a higher spirit, so to speak – a greater genius – simply in order to have an understanding you don’t. This is what I mean by saying that such learning adds to your toolbox.
In contrast to this, there is a third level. This is the one Sertillanges and Okawa writes about, the High Spirit, the Genius. What they do is open up our very capacity for new understanding. They add new dimensions to the container. You may have been fascinated by teachings that you found could make your glass taller, but you had no idea that it could also increase in radius. Then suddenly you see this, and everything changes. Nothing can quite become the same again.
So what M. Adler writes about is indeed reading for understanding, as opposed to just reading for information. But what I speak of in the last few lines is to read for revelation. And usually this does not even happen, but rather one just reads and the revelation presents itself. When the student is ready, and not before. Still, some places you are more likely to meet it than others.
Check this out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13416431
Llama, the line is fuzzy between large gas planets and the smallest stars (brown dwarf). It has been proposed that Jupiter might support nuclear fusion on its own if kick-started with a strong enough nuclear bomb. I am not sure if this is supported by the newer science, but I read about it some years ago.
I did not know that.
Do you believe in psychics?
Not very much. I mean, sure I believe psychic powers are real. But they seem to come and go. You can’t rely on them, the way you can on science. So I am not a big fan of such things. And there are “psychics” luring money from gullible people too. So mostly, no.
How do you tell the difference between your thoughts and the “inner voice”?
I don’t know how to teach that. It just seems to happen. But I think it may help to get used to holding thoughts of God or high spirits in the heart by reading scripture or words of wisdom without picking them apart. That way you should get used to feeling the difference.
I meant “thoughts FROM God or high spirits”, not our thoughts about them.
(Intruding: I have read similar things about Jupiter as recently as 10 or 15 years ago. I always used that fact to really push home how huge Jupiter is. If all the matter in the solar system were clumped together, some ridiculously high percentage of it, like 98.9 or something, would be the sun. EVERYTHING ELSE would fit into the tiny remainder of the “not sun” matter. And of the “not sun” matter, a similar percentage would be Jupiter, and EVERYTHING ELSE would fit into the tiny tiny remainder of the “not sun AND not Jupiter” matter! Takes a while to really let that sink in in such a way that the kids can even BEGIN to conceive such a notion. )
Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVWuxghIFUw&feature=player_detailpage
Ryuho Okawa does this regularly and teaches its use and conditions.
Does your “inner voice” have a personality?
http://reallifespirituality.com/spirit-guides/
In the past, I have for myself compared the Presence to an awesome older brother. Actually I have an awesome older brother, a good and wise and saintly man, but I don’t mean him. This is on a much grander scale. But that is one comparison I made.
When I was young, I assumed the Presence was God or Jesus or the Holy Ghost, or all of the above. That may well be the case actually, but obviously the Divine Energy would need to be severely restricted simply to not fry me on the spot, much less be able to communicate with me on a casual level. I don’t really know whether I am connected to a “thread” of the primordial Divine spirit, or whether it was channeled through some kind of guardian angel or guardian spirit, or whether it even makes a difference. For me it would not make any sense to ask a guardian angel what it personally thinks, nor do I think it would bring him happiness to do so. Even I would much rather bring something from higher up, from the Heavenly realm, when possible. Certainly a higher being would much prefer to be as transparent as possible.
So I can’t say in that sense that the “voice in my heart”, the Presence, has a personality in the sense that it is “some guy” and it would be of interest to know its name.
In contrast to all of this, the (plural)”voices in my head” (which are also actually thoughts, not aural hallucinations) which help me writing fiction etc, have distinct personalities that may or may not be identical to characters in the fiction, usually not. These are indeed more like hired help.
When I most feel the presence of God, I feel both my insignificance in the grand scheme of things AND the fact that I am fully a part of everything, and the insignificance doesn’t matter. It is acceptance and nourishment (for lack of a better term), and being aware of how endless the source of “the light” (again, for lack of a better term) is, and its limitless availability.
I still feel my “self”, more or less, but I can feel it in relation to the river of everyone and everything else going on (or that has gone on, possibly that will go on), and the source is God. The part of God that recognizes me and welcomes me is separate from the river, but it is still the source of the river. I’m not able to become part of the river yet, but some day I will be able to. If I manage to do this while living, I think the joy might kill me.
I didn’t describe it well, but . . . those are the best words I can come to at this point.
I think that is a great description. It reminds me of a line I loved in a movie: “Time is God’s great river of love.” ^_^
We are a not-for-profit educational organization, founded by Mortimer Adler and we have recently made an exciting discovery–three years after writing the wonderfully expanded third edition of How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren made a series of thirteen 14-minute videos–lively discussing the art of reading. The videos were produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica. For reasons unknown, sometime after their original publication, these videos were lost.
Three hours with Mortimer Adler on one DVD. A must for libraries and classroom teaching the art of reading.
I cannot exaggerate how instructive these programs are–we are so sure that you will agree, if you are not completely satisfied, we will refund your donation.
Please go here to see a clip and learn more:
http://www.thegreatideas.org/HowToReadABook.htm
ISBN: 978-1-61535-311-8
Thank you,
Max Weismann