It’s built into humans to be curious about mysteries. It motivates to explore and get familiar with more of the world, and this gives us a survival advantage. In today’s world, it’s expressed in many ways: a fascination with scientific investigations, crime mysteries, mysteries in the world, the supernatural, and so on.
I listened to parts of an interview about the latter, with someone who has dedicated his life to collecting strange and supposedly real-life stories from his region in the UK. This is obviously valuable, either as an example of living and continued folklore or as a starting point for a more thorough – ideally scientific – investigation to see what’s behind it. (Probably the usual mix of hoaxes, tall tales, misinterpretations, and perhaps something genuinely unexplained and mysterious.)
What all of this has in common is that it’s happening within the world. It’s happening within the content of our experience, and it’s relatively localized and narrow in focus.
I love some of these mysteries as much as others, but something else is even more fascinating to me.
MYSTERY OF EXISTENCE
There is another mystery, and that’s the mystery of existence.
This is the mystery of what we are. When I explore what I more fundamentally am in my own first-person experience, what do I find? Am I this human self? Am I any particular content of experience? Or am I more fundamentally something else? What we find is, in one sense, very simple and familiar, and yet it keeps revealing itself and it’s endless in how it unfolds itself in this human life.
It’s also the mystery of who we are, as a human being in the world. This is immensely complex and here too, there is always more to explore and become familiar with. It’s an exploration that offer endless new terrains as well as insights and perspectives.
There is perhaps the ultimate mystery, which is that anything exists at all. Why is there something rather than nothing? To me, this is a question that stops my mind and leaves silence. It’s something I can’t even begin to grasp.
There is also the mystery of the nature of reality. I can find my own more fundamental nature, and yet, is that the same nature of all of existence? It obviously seems that way to me, since the world – to me – happens within and as what I am. To me, it inevitably appears to have the same nature as me. This is a question both for science and inner exploration.
And there is the mystery inherent in anything, including anything within the world. There is always more to explore and discover. Always new insights, perspectives, and contexts. We cannot capture anything accurately within thought since thought is different in nature from what it is about, and is very limited and simplified compared to what it is about. Reality is always more than and different from any maps.
INITIAL OUTLINE
- fascination w. the weird / mysterious
- w/in the world, localized
- mystery of existence
- mystery of what we are
- simple yet many fascets + how it unfolds in our human life
- mystery of who we are
- innumerable things / dynamics to explore
- innumerable insights, perspectives
- endless
- the mystery that anything exists at all
- the mystery inherent in anything
- cannot know for certain, cannot fully know, always new insights/perspectives/contexts, only a very small pice of the picture
- mystery of what we are
- mystery of existence
- inherent in all there is
- cannot know anything for certain, w/in stories
- what we more fundamentally are, in our own first-person experience