An Infinite Number of Monkeys
11/9/08 Insights from Study Mysticism is often dismissed because the way it affects its subjects is too cumbersome to explain to someone who either has never experienced it or never recognized it as mysticism when it was experienced. In this age and in this culture we like to have everything proven to us, and we default to “If it can’t be proven, it can’t have happened.” It seems reasonable to be skeptical, but much beauty and joy is overlooked because of it.
This very lack of innate understanding is what makes the study of mysticism so rewarding. If you experience supernatural interaction in the first place and then read later that it’s happened to someone else just the same way as it happened to you, it’s like a proof to you even though your relationship with God is such that you have certitude without need of proof anyway.
Probably the most certain thing one could point to in the mystic process is the phenomena of distraction. Much has been said about it but, in short, the law of distraction is that not long after you set out to pray, your own irrelevant and persistent thoughts will interfere with your prayer. I believe this is God’s reminder that prayer is a special blessing that’s worth working to perfect, and that the world desperately tends to intrude against a good thing it didn’t create. Proficients can come close to conquering distraction – this is how they know they’re proficient – but it’s never perfectly avoided on this side of death.
Everyone has spirituality whether they pursue it or not – that’s the way God made us and no one can get away from that no matter how fashionable the anti-God movement gets. The special knowledge of his spirit that a mystic receives through the grace of God keeps him above the fray – he does not argue on behalf of something inarguable. But just once it would be nice to be able to say “Here’s a piece of proof”.
To explain the inexplicable concept of infinity, it was proposed that if an infinite number of monkeys were given infinite time to scribble, eventually they would accidentally write all the great books. So just this once I will put to you the challenge of being the first person to talk to God (atheists will have to pretend there is one) without experiencing distraction. It’s the closest I can come to for evidence, but even if you don’t accept that explanation, at least it’s a sneaky way to get you to pray.
