Rapture of Understanding

[coberst]

Rapture of Understanding

I have been reading about mythology written by Joseph Campbell. In his attempt to make it possibly for the reader to comprehend how myth works he speaks about the human ability to ‘make-believe’.

He speaks of the universality of childhood make-believe and of how this same characteristic is exhibited in human rituals. For example he uses the Catholic Church practice of mass when the priest changes the wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ. In other words it seems to be inherent in humans to make-believe and in the process to truly believe and in truly believing experiences a form of ecstasy.

Such is probably our experience of understanding. In the process of trying to understand I create a model and then somewhere in this process of creating and modifying my model I pass to the point of believing the truth of my model thus the feeling of ecstasy.

In an attempt to explain to the novice the meaning of myth Campbell says that the “grave and constant” in human suffering may, and sometimes does, lead to an experience that is the apogee of our life. This apogee experience is ineffable (not capable of expression). Campbell considers this to be true because it is verified by individuals who have had such an experience.

“And this experience, or at least an approach to it, is the ultimate aim of religion, the ultimate reference of all myth and rite.”

“The paramount theme of mythology is not the agony of quest but the rapture of a revelation.”

 

[SezMe]

May I suggest you initiate this discussion by providing your own commentary on Campbell's ideas. What do you agree with? Disagree? What did you hope to trigger by opening this thread?

 

[coberst]

Myth, the “mother of arts”, cannot be understood by reason but by emotional “impact”. Joe tells me, here in the beginning, that myth is an art form that can be understood by its impact upon me. Just as myth impacted the primitive (and everyone I guess) so I can understand it only if I use an entirely different way of understanding than I used to understand the “conceptual metaphor”.

Evidently an understanding can be created by more than one method. Can I will an impact? Can I find a means to become impacted? How does one set a stage for self-impact not through reason but through, not through feeling, but through ‘what’?

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Evidently an understanding can be created by more than one method. Can I will an impact? Can I find a means to become impacted? How does one set a stage for self-impact not through reason but through, not through feeling, but through ‘what’?

Can you?

 

[coberst]

Can you?

I have for some time been interested in trying to understand what ‘understand’ means. I have reached the conclusion that ‘curiosity then caring’ is the first steps toward understanding. Without curiosity we care for nothing. Once curiosity is in place then caring becomes necessary for understanding.

Often I discover that the person involved in organizing some action is a person who has had a personal experience leading her to this action. Some person who has a family member afflicted by a disease becomes very active in helping support research in that disease, for example.

I suspect our first experience with ‘understanding’ may be our first friendship. I think that this first friendship may be an example of what Carl Sagan meant by “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy”.

I also suspect that the boy who falls in love with automobiles and learns everything he can about repairing the junk car he bought has discovered ‘understanding’.

I suspect many people go their complete life and never have an intellectual experience that culminates in the “ecstasy of understanding”. How can this be true? I think that our educational system is designed primarily for filling heads with knowledge and hasn’t time to waste on ‘understanding’.

Understanding an intellectual matter must come in the adult years if it is to ever come to many of us. I think that it is very important for an adult to find something intellectual that will excite his or her curiosity and concern sufficiently so as to motivate the effort necessary to understand.

Understanding does not come easily but it can be “a kind of ecstasy”.

I think of understanding as being a creation of meaning by the thinker. As one attempts to understand something that person will construct through imagination a model--like a papier-mâché--of the meaning. Like an artist painting her understanding of something. As time goes by the model takes on what the person understands about that which is studied. The model is very subjective and you and I may study something for some time and we both have learned to understand it but if it were possible to project an image of our model they would be unidentifiable perhaps by the other. Knowledge has a universal quality but not understanding.

Understanding is a tipping point, when water becomes ice, it is like a gestalt perception it may never happen no matter how hard we try. The unconscious is a major worker for understanding.

 

[Apathia]

I go with much of what you say about understanding. Where I differ is just that my quest and its earliest epiphanies didn't come from the context of a friendship but of finding that I was different from what my parents expected and wanted.
My physical rate of development was slow, so I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I was very curious though. And when they couldn't answer my questions I was motivated to seek other sources, so learned to read before first grade. With my father's terminal illness and my mother's emotional withdrawal, I even more sought the answer of just what I was and looked all the more within for that answer.

But I get you drift. Understanding isn't knowing stuff about your reality, but your relationship to it.

 

[Apathia]

Double post. Why can't we delete our own posts?

 

[coberst]

I go with much of what you say about understanding. Where I differ is just that my quest and its earliest epiphanies didn't come from the context of a friendship but of finding that I was different from what my parents expected and wanted.
My physical rate of development was slow, so I wasn't where I was supposed to be. I was very curious though. And when they couldn't answer my questions I was motivated to seek other sources, so learned to read before first grade. With my father's terminal illness and my mother's emotional withdrawal, I even more sought the answer of just what I was and looked all the more within for that answer.

But I get you drift. Understanding isn't knowing stuff about your reality, but your relationship to it.

I think understanding happens when our intellect and our emotions seem to reach a situation where both are in synch. It does not happen often but I think of it as a tipping point, there is a resonance, like when water becomes ice. It is the perfect storm where everything happens just right.

 

[fuelair]

The Campbell stuff makes perfectly good sense. I like Campbell and his research.