The Inner Light

In 1992, Star Trek: the Next Generation aired an episode entitled "The Inner Light." In that story, when the Enterprise encounters an alien probe, Captain Picard is struck by a beam and (seemingly) transported to an alien world where he lives for decades, marrying, having children, growing old, and seeing the planet begin to die. At the conclusion, he reawakens on the Enterprise bridge, with only minutes having passed in the real world while he lived an entire life on the alien world. The probe turns out to have been the alien world's way of ensuring that someone, somewhere will remember them after their planet dies. Picard is certainly impacted by the experience. A flute he'd learned to play during the mental journey is included in the probe and he keeps it for the rest of his days.

Reading a book of folklore and mythology the other day, I came across not one but two older stories of similar occurrences. In one, an Arabian chieftain is enticed by a sorcerer to look deeply into a pan of water. The image of a town begins to form and before he knows it, the chieftain has washed up on a beach in front of that settlement. A young woman greets him and before long they are married and having children, living prosperously in the town. Years pass, the man's wife dies, his children grow, and he wanders to the beach. The waters engulf him and in a flash he has returned to his chieftain throne, the sorcerer standing before him, with only seconds having elapsed.

Hebrew mythology contains a similar story of King Solomon.

We are told that one day Solomon was playing a game with Asmodeus, king of the demons. To make a point, Asmodeus weaves a spell around Solomon. transporting him to another land where he must live as a poor beggar. He meets a woman, gets married, and works his way back up in the world, but is eventually drawn back to his game with Asmodeus. Thinking he was gone for decades, he roars at the demon who demurs that the king had never gone anywhere and only a moment had passed.

In India, in the Yogavasishtha, there is the story of the sage who saw inside the mind of a hunter and got lost there, becoming the hunter, who then became a sage, while years and years seemed to pass, though little time had actually transpired at all.

Where do these stories from around the world come from? Is it from the experience of very vivid dreams that seem so real and so expansive, but are just passing moments in our slumbering minds, and we awake with a jolt to the world we know? Or, is the mind capable of creating a whole other world, as one man claimed happened when he suffered a concussion? In that story, and in the thread on the Fortean Times website about the supposed incident, a man claims to have been hit in the head and while unconscious accumulated years and years of memories of having married and started a family. It all evaporated when he was put into a squad car to go to the hospital to be treated for his injury.

Can such experiences really happen, or are these stories just mythic expressions of our attempts to deal with the fogginess of time, the gossamer-like quality of dreams, and our sometimes tenuous grasp of reality? Besides Star Trek's "The Inner Light," there are other well-known popular culture treatments of these ideas, like the movies Inception and The Matrix. Examples of humans considering these occurrences stretch back a long ways, but what does it all mean? The Star Trek episode's title, "The Inner Light," comes from a 1968 Beatles song written by George Harrison as a B-side to "Lady Madonna." Perhaps the song can lend a clue.

Though the instruments are meant to be evocative of Indian music, the lyrics are straight out of a chapter of the Chinese Daoist work Dao De Ching: "Without going out of my door / I can know all things of earth. / Without looking out of my window, / I could know the ways of heaven. / The farther one travels, / The less one knows."

These lines express the Daoist sensibility that all people, and all things for that matter, are perfect as they are and have no need of outside correction or development. The world within is all you need.

These stories across culture, time, and medium could be seen as reinforcing the Daoist idea that, despite the seeming smallness of our craniums, there are entire worlds and teeming dimensions to be found within us that stagger space and stretch mere minutes into lifetimes. Picard's interior experience of the passing of an entire life on another world opened him up to an existence (i.e., marriage, family) that he had not considered. One could argue that the greatest distance he ever traveled was without ever leaving the ship. All he really needed to do was look within himself. Perhaps that is a lesson for all of us. To quote from another Beatles song, "The movement you need is on your shoulder."

That's all for now. In upcoming blogs, you can expect a discussion on the Asian philosophical influences on Walt Whitman, the status of Harry Potter as an "epic" figure, and much, much more. 

Until then, take care.

Family Vacation 2018

Apologies, dear readers, for the gap in posting. I was away with my family on vacation. In this post, I'm going to share some stories and pictures from that experience, but also delve into the philosophical and cultural concept of the "vacation."

In short, this vacation was great fun. Not having fun is impossible with a group like this:

This year, as we have for the past two years, we traveled up to the coast of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's about an eight hour drive, which was fairly uneventful until we encountered this storm front in central Wisconsin.

While we were pulled off due to heavy rain and hail, we learned on the radio that the county was under a tornado warning. Given the cloud formations we saw, I think we came pretty close to seeing something.

At any rate, things settled down considerably once we arrived. We had a place in the town of Ontonagon near the beach, with a view of the Porcupine mountains in the distance.

During the day, we had some really fun times playing on the beach and swimming in the water, although the boys did much, much better with the chilly lake temps.

At night we had fires on the beach and truly spectacular sunsets over the lake.

 

The Porcupine Mountains have some fun hiking trails. One of our favorites is the Lake of the Clouds, where just a little walking takes you above the tree-line to see expanses of forest and the placid lake waters spanning out below. Pictures don't really do it justice.

We visited the Presque Isle water falls, and took other, similarly beautiful forays into the forest.

On this trip we tried kayaking for the first time and really enjoyed it.

Another experience of note was a close encounter with the meditating bear of the Porcupine Mountains (a.k.a., the "Porkies").

On a previous trip, I'd wanted to get a picture of this humorous mile-marker sign.

On a day trip, we traveled to the Chassell Strawberry Festival and stopped off at the Shrine of the Snowshoe priest, which commemorates the first Bishop of the area, who made his way from follower to follower on snowshoes. To me, it looks like he's suspended atop a giant iron spider, but I've been known to misinterpret these things.

On July 8th we spent the day in Ontonagon visiting the town's lighthouse for a tour. 

That night before bed, I was reading a book about supernatural events associated with Lake Superior. Imagine my surprise when several pages covered supposed haunting events at that very lighthouse! To take it even further, on one night a year ghost lights are supposed to appear near the Ontonagon Lighthouse. Which night? Why, July 8th, the very night I was reading the book. Creepy!

To match our experience going through Wisconsin, we watched a squall line blow in across the lake, which really puts your own tiny existence into perspective.

That night, during the storm the front above produced, we played Takenoko a new board-game acquired at a really unique toy store in Hancock, MI. As the waves crashed and thunder rumbled, we did what anyone who knows something about Lake Superior storms would do: we played "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" on Youtube.

Vacations teach you a lot about yourself. Growing up, I was always very fortunate to have parents who made visiting different parts of the country a priority. At the time, I had almost no appreciation for it - all I knew was that my lazy summertime routine was going to be disrupted and I would have to go hiking in the hot, insect-ridden wilderness. Though some of those hikes were pretty tough for a kid, now as an adult, my perception of those times has changed 180 degrees. They were invaluable experiences and, especially when I became a teenager, crucial times of self-reflection when I could be apart from my everyday circumstances to contemplate life and recharge mentally, physically, and spiritually.

The concept of the "vacation" has been around for a very long time in Western history. Interestingly, as an NPR interview from about ten years ago notes, the purpose of self-discovery has long been part of vacationing. With widening income inequality in America, a shrinking middle class, and the continuous pressure for efficiency and productivity at the expense of leisure, fewer and fewer people in this country are willing and able to take time off from work. According to the subtitle in one article, "Americans are expected to work like robots." 

The part of me that is terribly cynical about our culture does not find this surprising: vacations are wonderful opportunities for contemplation, which gives one time to think, and our culture does not like to spend time thinking. American capitalism and consumerism encourage the busier, faster, more distracted lifestyle. We live in fast-forward when we need to hit "pause" far more often in order to get a really good look at ourselves. 

Another part of me feels a mix of gratitude and guilt: I am extremely fortunate to be able to have been able to spend this time with my parents when I was younger and now with my wife and children. So many do not have that chance. Humans need space to figure out --- or perhaps more accurately, simply remember -- who they are. Vacations have always served that role for me. I remember one summer (1996, to be exact) when I did not really feel the greatest about life or who I was, looking out at the clear,  star-filled Wyoming sky and thinking, "You know, it's not all bad." Hitting the "pause" button gives you a chance to figure out -- no, remember -- what's really important. There is no debate for me.

The Upper Peninsula, Lake Superior, the Porcupines, and Ontonagon have become special places for us. It was tough to say goodbye to them, but hopefully it will only be for a little while, and then we can go back to the spot where we remember ourselves.