It turns out that our dealings with mystery form a complete circle:
The real world is invisible to us, except for the hints we get through our senses, which we categorize through analogy, and thus perceive—not perceive as it really is, but perceive as we imagine it to be in our inner world. But who does this perceiving? We do. And we are part of the real world.
So, we not only are surrounded by mystery, every moment of our lives; we are, ourselves, one with that mystery at our core. And this oneness with mystery turns out not to be something that is only achieved after years of meditation, but rather something we simply cannot avoid. It's simply what is.
You might ask what we are to do with this fact. What stance should we take toward mystery?
It certainly does no good to deny it. We can ignore it most of the time, and we do. If you want to make yourself into a complete bore, just try pointedly not ignoring it for, say, a week. By then you will certainly have decided to knock it off and keep whatever friends you still have left.
On the other hand, to ignore it completely is to live in a fantasy world, and to miss a great source of wonder and adventure. This is part of what many people are talking about when they use the word "spirituality".
It's knowing that a bird-song is not just the sound we hear, but also a disclosure—however partial and limited—of the mystery that is the real bird. It's sensing the unknowable depth and complexity that lies behind your lover's smile. It's knowing that the world is immeasurably more, and that we are part of that more.
But that is nowhere near enough for us. One disclosure urges us on to seek the next. I hear a bird-song, and look for the bird: for more information, a deeper perception, a greater disclosure of the mystery. I want to understand as much as I can about what goes on behind my lover's smile. I want to gain as complete a disclosure as I can of all that more—including the part that is me.
That is what education is about, that is what spirituality is about, that is what we humans do. We seek out greater understanding, clearer disclosure of the mystery.
We do this by honing our categories—our analogical structures—by testing them against experience, by seeing where they fit and where they don't, by modifying our worldview so it fits our experiences better. And we do it in every part of our lives, all the time.
If we want further guidance about how to deal with mystery, this may be the place to look. It might be helpful to know, first, how we already deal with mystery.
It turns out that these analogies that we draw can themselves be categorized. There are basically three types: categories, metaphors, and models.
In the next part I'll take a detailed look at categories.
