A Dispatch from Terra Incognita
I walk down the street on a cool fall day in Pennsylvania. I walk past homes and trees, which are stationary. I’m the one who is moving. I feel the exterior world is primary, and I am a part of it, a small part, on a planet with billions of other people. Let’s call this the exterior view.
I’m sitting on a sofa, watching a similar scene on TV. I am stationary. The homes and trees on the TV are moving. I’m immersed in a movie. I identify with the detective who is about to open a door. Will he find the suitcase with the missing money? Or a villain with a gun? I feel what the TV detective feels as he opens the door. Here, I am primary and the TV movie is a part of my consciousness. A part as I’m also aware of the sofa and that it’s almost time for lunch. This is an interior view, a virtual interior view.
The genuine interior view sometimes occurs when I’m in a meditative state. I walk down the street and it appears the homes and trees are passing me by, as if in a movie. Sometimes I even see myself as a character in a movie, like the detective. I experience a man’s body from the inside, a stationary man watching the homes and trees pass. During such times, I sometimes feel as if I’ve returned home, as if I’ve left the exterior world of places and things, and even left my ego, i.e., left myself. I feel peaceful and closer to God than when I’m my normal self.
Some religions seem to recommend such detachment as a goal, as something to be desired. There’s the Buddhist view that detachment is a way to cope with the fact of disease, old age, and eventual death. There’s the non-attachment and renunciation recommended by some Hindu sects. The teachings of Jesus to turn the other cheek and forgive seventy times seven can be regarded as putting detachment from the external world into practice. To emphasize their detachment from their own ego, some mystics refer to themselves in the third person. For instance, Evelyn Underhill, in her classic Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness[i], says the Christian mystic Suso usually spoke of himself that way. Thus, Suso was speaking of himself when he wrote, “On a certain Whitsun Day a heavenly messenger appeared to him, and ordered him in God’s name to continue it no more. He at once ceased, and threw all the instruments of his sufferings [irons, nails, hair-shirt, etc.] into a river.”
Irons, nails, hair-shirt? A doubt about the wholesomeness of this practice arises. Indeed, the experience may well be described as a depersonalization experience, “a dissociative experience where someone feels disconnected from their thoughts, emotions, body, or actions.” Says the Mayo clinic[ii]:
Depersonalization-derealization disorder occurs when you always or often feel that you're seeing yourself from outside your body or you sense that things around you are not real — or both. Feelings of depersonalization and derealization can be very disturbing. You may feel like you're living in a dream.
Many people have a passing experience of depersonalization or derealization at some point. But when these feelings keep occurring or never fully go away, and they make it hard for you to function, it's likely depersonalization-derealization disorder.
Yet, I find the experience uplifting in a way, and it doesn’t seem to impact the ability to function of the retired man in his mid-seventies which I am. Besides, the fact of death remains, immutable. I shall one day leave this external world and this body. The experience seems a reasonable way to prepare. So, I persist but am cautious and wary. Perhaps one day I’ll find myself in a dark place, even suffer a “complete loss of mental faculties” as did the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Or perhaps it will all prove beneficial, even leading to some sort of enlightenment experience. Or perhaps it will end in insignificance.
“A Dispatch from Terra Incognito” is, perhaps, a melodramatic way to describe this is meditative experience.” But lacking a better title, I’ll use it.
[i] https://www.ccel.org/ccel/u/underhill/mysticism/cache/mysticism.pdf, p. 201
[ii] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depersonalization-derealization-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20352911