By Chris M, writer and Emeritus Board Member of Black Rose, Washington DC

Crashdadscar@yahoo.com

http://subbondage.net/chris_m/

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"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie which we ascribe to heaven."

~ William Shakespeare, from the play All's Well That Ends Well

Throughout these pages I have deliberately avoided questions regarding the paranormal, but I want to address them now. Many who are interested in spirituality also believe in the physical existence of supernatural forces in the world: levitation, ESP, telekinesis, past lives, etc. Carl Jung himself was an enthusiastic believer in UFOs, ESP and action at a distance. But at the risk of sticking my neck out, I feel I need to commit my own skepticism about the supernatural to print. I feel that the pursuit of the paranormal is counterproductive in the pursuit of spiritual growth, and I wanted to take a few pages to explain why.

It's not that I find it impossible. Scientists will be the first to admit that science is evolutionary and there will never be a time when it can explain everything. I just don't believe supernatural phenomenon is anywhere nearly as commonplace as our tabloid media would have you and I believe. More to the point, I don't think that violating the laws of physics is the goal of a spiritual life. Most spiritual faiths actually warn against the glitz and flash of the paranormal. In one Zen Koan, a meditating student sees a vision of the Buddha. "That's very nice," his master tells him, "if you concentrate on your breathing, it will go away." In the gospels, Christ is constantly hectored to perform miracles: by Satan during the 40-day fast, by a mob wanting to be healed. By Herod, by Pilate, even by his Roman guards during his crucifixion. He never did; though he performed miracles routinely to heal the sick and feed the hungry, he refused to do it to persuade skeptics.

So, without further ado, here are my reasons for not messing with the supernatural:

1. While witnessing or participating in what appears to be a supernatural event would seem to prove the existence of worldly power, by definition, it reduces the need for individual faith. People who hold to their beliefs in the absence of proof surely hold a firmer conviction than those who believe because they think they've seen proof. Certainty of that sort can lead to arrogance in believers, and has set the stage for the countless religious Jihads that have scarred human history. I see faith as the knowing willingness to believe in the absence of proof, a willingness to believe without guarantees. Believing, by virtue of faith alone produces humility: the opposite of what some might get from a celestial stamp of approval. Faith encourages us to find strength within, and not to rely on external proof that what you believe is right.

2. I feel that belief in the literal reality of UFOs, haunted houses, heaven, hell and other unlikely phenomena is really a bit of a cop out. Belief in Titanic-sized ideas can actually deaden the senses, causing us to overlook the less dramatic, but equally miraculous people and events that surround us in everyday life. On the backpack trip I mentioned earlier, I basically hiked and painted landscapes for eight days, and by the end of the trip, my eye was so tuned to color, I could see shades of pink and green in the sky. When we can only get excited about jaw dropping stuff like alien abductions, I think we are looking at life through a fairly jaded lens.

3. Even the most die-hard occultists or religious mystics must contend with the fact that supernatural phenomenon is not terribly reliable. Prayer no more guarantees tangible results than buying indulgences, chanting for a corvette, love potions, or sacrificing goats. Here's a test no one has ever passed: Can you pick up a coffee cup and twirl it in the air using only celestial powers? I am always struck at how consistently miraculous claims can never be demonstrated on the spot, or under controlled experimental conditions. Which leads to the next point, being…

4. Fraud: the history of the occult, astrology, UFO-ology, etc., is rife with it. The main proponents of supernatural phenomenon are neither scientific journals, nor spiritual disciplines, but parties with a financial stake (supermarket tabloids, Psychic Friends, palm readers, televangelists, etc). Again, I am not claiming there is nothing to the supernatural, merely that I am aware how skilled some professional magicians are. And they don't all present themselves as mere entertainers.

5. Even if you can levitate, read minds, or ride a magic carpet like a Jeep Cherokee, so what? The absence of levitating coffee cups is simply not one of the great problems of our age. To me, spirituality is about changing lives for the better, not snazzy magic tricks. Mother Theresa, Rev. King, and the Dalai Lama made it through life without ever having claimed to have ridden in UFOs, witnessed 900' apparitions of Jesus, or enjoyed casual chats with the living God. That distinction belongs to Shirley McClain, Louis Farrakhan, David Koresh, Oral Roberts, and the inhabitants of your local lunatic asylum. There's a big difference between the feats of professional magicians and the deeds of genuinely spiritual people.

6. Mathematically speaking, probability theory tells us that given enough time, even the most unlikely events will occur. "Million-to-one odds" does not mean impossible (though that is typically what's meant) but that every million trials, on the average, something will happen. To put it simply, this means that seemingly miraculous events are a mathematical certainty. It means that over time, and across a sufficiently large population, there will be individuals who seem to have extraordinary luck and others who appear unaccountably cursed. It means that our infinitely fallible senses, imaginations, and dream states, might all experience a simultaneous flicker, leaving us in the presence of what feels like a supernatural event. It means that across a lifetime, you can expect two or three of those million-to-one breaks to line up in a way that seems only a higher power could arrange. When extraordinary events happen, it is a powerful emotional experience. But it's not necessarily supernatural. The law of large numbers proves that extraordinary phenomenon must occur; the real miracle would be for miracles never to happen.

7. I've saved what I feel is the most important reason for last. Defenders of the paranormal frequently present themselves as champions of the mysterious unknown, opposed by soulless, unimaginative skeptics, who can't imagine a world full of unexplained mystery. But as often as not, I get the opposite impression. Believers in telekinesis, ESP, and UFOs often give me the feeling that they only find life exciting if it is filled with ghosts, angels, Martians and lots of Steven Spielberg special effects. I get the feeling they have a lack of interest in the universe as it is 99% of the time, a fixation on the spectacular, on the impossible, on the ultimate; whether its Christian/fundamentalists guaranteeing the reality of the endless golf greens in the next world, or new age/occultists describing channeling, past lives and worm holes through space. Accounts of time travel, past lives and angelic visitations often come across as someone boasting about how the infinite can be made to perform tricks, and trivializes the mysteries of the universe by defining it in tabloid-ready imagery. I have to bite my lip when I hear people describing their visits to different strata of the spirit world in terms so blasé you would think they do their shopping there. I believe in miracles, but I reject the idea that earthlings like us can operate the gears of the spirit world with the ease of turning the key in a car ignition. It's not even that I consider those experiences impossible, it just seems gauche to me. In my opinion, the infinite is the infinite, and cannot be comprehended or controlled. It can only be experienced in tiny, blinding, ecstatic tastes. The goal of spirituality, at least for me, is not to explain the mystery away, but to live alongside it, savor it, accept that it is mystery. Having shared what I don't believe, let me assert what I do. While I don't believe in a literal god as old-bearded-God-depicted-on-the-Sisteen-Chapel ceiling, I do feel a holiness permeating everything, especially in the soul of living things. I am conscious of the presence of a Godspark in other people, in dreams, in music, in nature, even in a cat stretching.

The great question I never hear atheists ask is this: why do so many people believe there are actively involved supernatural powers in this world if none, in fact, exist? And now it gets fascinating! If the experience of God and supernatural has no basis in phenomenon outside the known laws of physics, then the world of mystery and spirituality, far from closing down, opens up instead. The Gods and Goddesses exist after all, in people's minds and hearts, as a light of life, as inspiration for the greatest art, architecture and writings in our planet's history. The question of whether God exists as a material creature simply can't be answered with the data at hand; if God does exist, he often does a remarkable job of appearing not to, if not, something within us hungers to believe he does.

Perhaps the presence of the unconscious in our psychic make-up can explain how early man came to believe in higher powers. The subconscious certainly behaves like an independent, all-knowing, all-seeing, vastly superior being. It knows what you think, what you do, where you go; it guides you through intuition, rewards your good deeds with peace and contentment and punishes your transgressions through guilt, shame and remorse. Since the subconscious resides in every human mind, early man may have come to regard this as a single, autonomous higher power in the universe that is deeply connected to everything. Adding this to the mysterious universe of dreams, and the spiritual experiences that arise from physical ordeal would have surely lead a rational person to trust in the belief that we were all under the scrutiny of an all-seeing, all-knowing, profoundly moral, and utterly mysterious God.

Possibilities like these actually strengthen my belief in higher spiritual realities even as they undermine my belief in the supernatural. And since rituals of confession, prayer, community, liturgical music and writing can clearly work on a psychological level alone, why credit their effect to celestial intervention? This is a far more empowering idea than believing ourselves to be dependant puppets of higher level beings. It wows us that the whole rapturous history of spiritual experience, from Homer to Dante, to Milton, to Notre Dame, to Mecca, to the Taj Mahal, arise purely out of human longing and faith and wonder, without the need of paranormal light shows. It's a pretty amazing thought, isn't it?

God or subconscious? God or Goddess? Christ or Allah? Don't know, and I know that I can't know. I just know holiness when I feel it and I run across it everywhere. I've found it in the dungeon, and know that others have found as well: the Godspark, ecstatic, exhausting, mysterious, wondrous strange. And personally, I don't feel cheated by living in a world without ghosts, angels, flying saucers and time travel. When I'm with someone I care about in the primordial darkness of the dungeon, ringed by flickering candles and my beloved collection of leather art, and I feel the rush coming on and the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, I know yet again I am touching infinity, the ages, timelessness. It's all the heaven I need.

Here's a semi-embarrassing confession: Sometimes I imagine my scenes as a kind of sacrificial offering to the leathermen bikers who came before me. During play, I sometimes feel the dungeon walls melt away, leaving my partner and I on a wide, misty plain. As the scene progresses, I imagine the roar of approaching motorcycles and soon see in the corner of my mind's eye, the original old guard in their chaps, bomber jackets and boots, the founders of our American SM, rumbling forward on phantom Harleys, forming a wide ring to watch our scene. I see them in their black caps, leathers and silver hair, lounging on their bikes, guzzling beer, and watching our scene with reverence and excitement.

In closing, the important thing is not what I think, but what makes sense to you. You truths may differ radically from mine, and your voyage will ultimately be your own, yours and whoever you share it with. No one knows what lies beyond our world of temporal appearances. I certainly don't. So, if you agree with everything I've said, great. Strongly disagree? That's great, too. Fix it. Worship, live and honor the divine as you feel is right. Bring the eternal and immortal into your life and your SM play however you can. That really is the next step anyway. If divinity exists, it is already within you. It remains only for you to recognize it, honor it, and devote yourself to letting it lift you up. Whether you see these higher powers as abstractions of the mind, as independent life forms, whether you worship a living god or regard reason, nature, or the human spirit as your deities of choice, let it be so. Will others regard as holy what is holy to you? Probably not. Should you attempt to impose your idea of holiness on others? Hell, no. The best thing to do when you hold something sacred is to imbue it with all the holiness you can bestow and keep it a secret to yourself and your loved ones. Savor the mystery of it. Secret and sacred. Two similar words for very similar things.

 © 1998-2002 Chris M. All rights reserved.

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