Sep 24, 2024 06:01 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 24, 2024 07:43 PM by Magical Realist.)
We have all experienced the sudden chill down our spine at the possible presence of something otherworldly or supernatural. I remember a moment in my childhood lying in bed at night listening to what I felt to be a ghostly entity walking around in my bedroom. Sweating and laying still without ever looking, I had the full experience of the uncanny. Whether there really was a ghost there or not is irrelevant. The feeling itself was overwhelmingly powerful and real, and it is definitely a hardwired response to something horrific being felt to be present. C.S. Lewis called this feeling the sense of the "numinous" or uncanny, and reasoned that it is something quite different from just fear of danger or harm:
"The first strand is what Lewis calls the numinous. Other words he uses are ‘dread,’ ‘awe,’ or the ‘uncanny.’ He talks about how people aren’t just scared of danger. It is more complicated than that. He talks about if you heard there was a tiger in the other room, you’d be afraid because of danger. But if you were told that there was a ghost, you’d be afraid because it is a ghost. It would produce awe; it would be disturbing. And he says this numinous experience goes way back.
Moreover, he says that we can’t just say that because it goes way back that we can dismiss it. He writes, “Most attempts to explain the Numinous presuppose the thing to be explained—as when anthropologists derive it from fear of the dead, without explaining why dead men (assuredly the least dangerous kind of men) should have attached this peculiar feeling. Against all such attempts we must insist that dread and awe are in a different dimension from fear”. Concerning the numinous then, he concludes that we can believe two things about it: 1) that it is a mere twist of the human mind; or 2) that “it is a direct experience of the really supernatural”.---- https://www.lookingatchrist.com/problem-of-pain-quotes/
It is my perhaps rash but firm inference that this sense of the uncanny, of the supernatural making itself so viscerally real in our very goose-pimpled flesh, is an indication that such a otherworldly phenomenon really exists and always has. No doubt we come from a long history of beliefs in spirits and demons and gods periodically haunting our world. But it doesn't seem likely that such a strong feeling would be passed down genetically to us if it were just a misperception or an illusion to be shrugged off. Our mouths water when we smell food because there is such a thing as food. And our minds shrink back in dread and fright of things that go bump in the night because such things also exist. Or in the very least MIGHT exist. Our bodies seem to know it at a gut level, even while our minds are frantically trying to rationalize it away. Happy Halloween!
"The first strand is what Lewis calls the numinous. Other words he uses are ‘dread,’ ‘awe,’ or the ‘uncanny.’ He talks about how people aren’t just scared of danger. It is more complicated than that. He talks about if you heard there was a tiger in the other room, you’d be afraid because of danger. But if you were told that there was a ghost, you’d be afraid because it is a ghost. It would produce awe; it would be disturbing. And he says this numinous experience goes way back.
Moreover, he says that we can’t just say that because it goes way back that we can dismiss it. He writes, “Most attempts to explain the Numinous presuppose the thing to be explained—as when anthropologists derive it from fear of the dead, without explaining why dead men (assuredly the least dangerous kind of men) should have attached this peculiar feeling. Against all such attempts we must insist that dread and awe are in a different dimension from fear”. Concerning the numinous then, he concludes that we can believe two things about it: 1) that it is a mere twist of the human mind; or 2) that “it is a direct experience of the really supernatural”.---- https://www.lookingatchrist.com/problem-of-pain-quotes/
It is my perhaps rash but firm inference that this sense of the uncanny, of the supernatural making itself so viscerally real in our very goose-pimpled flesh, is an indication that such a otherworldly phenomenon really exists and always has. No doubt we come from a long history of beliefs in spirits and demons and gods periodically haunting our world. But it doesn't seem likely that such a strong feeling would be passed down genetically to us if it were just a misperception or an illusion to be shrugged off. Our mouths water when we smell food because there is such a thing as food. And our minds shrink back in dread and fright of things that go bump in the night because such things also exist. Or in the very least MIGHT exist. Our bodies seem to know it at a gut level, even while our minds are frantically trying to rationalize it away. Happy Halloween!