It is interesting to explore what happens when someone tries to communicate a spiritual experience he/she has had to another person. Often, such communication attempts fail - in terms of making the other person understand what exactly was experienced. This happens mainly because of two reasons. First, spiritual experiences are highly personal. Second, language is an inadequate (or even inappropriate) tool to communicate such experiences.
A similar argument can be made, to a large extent, in the case of religious experiences also -even when the experience happens in the context of a religious ritual that both the parties (the sender and the receiver of the communication) participated at the same time/place. Whole the ritual or ceremony is exactly the same, each person experiences it in his/her own way. Yes, the mechanics or the outer shell of the experience can be described - but it misses the essence of the experience.
This brings to mind two stories.
The first one is a Zen story - about the so called 'first principle of Zen' - the understanding of which leads to 'satori' or enlightenment. Once, a beginner asked a Zen master, "Master, What is the first principle?". "If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle", replied the Zen master.
The second story is about a 'failed scientific experiment' that I had conducted many years ago. I come from Kerala and I, like many other Keralites, am very fond of eating fish-based dishes. 'Karimeen' or 'Pearl Spot' is often considered to be most tasty fish in Kerala. In a way, what Karimeen is to Keralites is what Illish (Hilsa fish) is to Bengalis (West Bengal is another Indian state where most people are fond of eating fish based dishes). I had an argument with a Bengali colleague of mine on whether Hilsa fish is tastier than Karimeen. We tried to resolve this dispute experimentally by having lunch together at Bengali and Kerala restaurants on alternate days and eating the Illish and Karimeen dishes. To make the experiment more 'scientific', we did try to control for the possible variation because of preparation by picking the top 3 preparations for both Hilsa (Shorshe Illish, Bhappa Illish, Illish Bhaja) and Karimeen (Karimeen Fry, Karimeen Mappas, Karimeen Pollichathu). The dispute remained unresolved even after both of us had put on quite a bit of weight because of this experiment (and the experiment had to be discontinued for health reasons)! Then I came to realize that 'the experience of a Bengali eating Hilsa can't be replicated by a non-Bengali eating Hilsa'. The same can be said about 'the experience of a Keralite eating Karimeen'.
Any comments/thoughts?
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