I have a good friend who describes religion as a node for all we cannot explain.

Another good friend would describe transcendental meditation as a religious experience.

Albert Einstein had his own node for the unexplained.  He said, “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science.”

In discussing man and the power of myth, the late philosopher Joseph Campbell provided a powerful explanation for the common elements in religions across disconnected cultures.  He believed that man requires myth as a way of imposing an overarching unit upon what he observes in the world.  Myth may become elevated to the level of religion and acquire a life of its own.

And Andrew Neuberg of the University of Pennsylvania talks about religion as a natural human response to certain experiences that can be observed, on a CT-scan, taking place in the brain.  For ”mystics,“ he says, the transcendant state “is more real than ordinary reality.”

Scientists have recently told us, in fact, that the oracles at Delphi were almost surely transformed into a trance-like state by gases rising from intersecting faults in the earth’s crust below Greece.  Doped by the fumes and the reduced oxygen in the temple, they drifted into a trancelike state.  Someone at the time may have suspected the particulars of the ”magic” of the place, or may even have put some special spin on it all, but the phenomenon went unexplained among those who traveled to Delphi to consult the oracle.

Reading the signposts of history, physiology, and history suggests that access to this higher state of awareness is available to anyone who drops the barrier of natural skepticism and, through meditation, exercise, repetition, or concentration beyond effort, avails himself of a connection to something greater already part of every human being.

For some writers, the experience comes in a particular way that bears a strong resemblance to the mystic.

Almost two decades ago, I put myself through a year of focused effort on a novel.  I arranged to be out of work for the year, throwing fiscal caution to the winds.  I had acquired one of the very early portable computers from Radio Shack, and it became my creative tool of choice.  Each day, I awoke no later than 6:00, and went running, usually one full turn around Roosevelt Island.  After a shower, I packed a backpack and bicycled to Octagon Park, where I could usually count on a an uninterrupted morning and noontime of creation.

I observed the rule that I would always write, even knowing I might later judge the work unworthy of paper.  There was a discipline to the routine, interrupted only by the occasional rainy or unseasonably cold day.  I kept the connection going on such days by rewriting, organizing, and thinking ahead.

One morning, I sat at the picnic table that was my usual place to work, and started writing.  I was at the point in the novel where a critical change needed to take place in one of my characters -- a pivotal point after which the course of the novel’s psychological action would change.  I hadn’t a clue how I would bring this about, but following the established discipline, I started.

I can’t say how long it took, but at some point in the scene I was writing, the characters took over.  I wasn’t consciously involved.  They played out the scene with surprising resourcefulness, behaving more like themselves than ever before.  I was no longer consciously a writer.  I was merely taking dictation.

It was an intensely moving experience.

Later, subjecting it and surrounding chapters to a rewrite, I found that only the typos needed correction.  The scene was perfect.  Somehow (this is the mystery) I had transcended the mechanics and effort of the writing experience, connected with something greater, and creation had become effortless.

I might describe it as a religious experience.  But I do not cite it as evidence of existence of God or as rationalization of religion, nor as a claim for the power of a particular place presumed to be at the nexus of mysterious and powerful forces that cause things to happen.  Being the natural skeptic that every journalist must be to make sense of a world intent upon influencing his view of things, I set aside the temptation to explain the experience, even while remembering its strength and essence.  It did not persuade me of the existence of any power or force other than the higher power within myself, but I allowed it to remain the mystery that it was.

Yet I can see how others might wish to attribute such a profoundly moving experience to some special force.  And why not?  For my part, I have a clear sense that surrendering to the mystery has a distinct advantage over explaining it.

DL