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Thinking In Pictures
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P190 ...To my mind, all methods and denominations of religious ceremony were equally valid, and I still hold this belief today. Different religious faiths all achieve communication with God and contain guiding moral principles. I’ve met many autistic people who share my belief that all religions are valid and valuable. Many also believe in reincarnation, because it seems more logical to them than heaven and hell.
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For many people with autism, religion is an intellectual rather than emotional activity. Music is one exception. Some people feel much more religious when their participation is accompanied with extensive use of music. One autistic design engineer I know said that religious feeling is utterly missing for him, except when he hears Mozart; then he feels an electrifying resonance. I myself am most likely to feel religious in a church when the organist plays beautiful music and the priest chants. Organ music has an effect on me that other music does not have.
This seems to be one part The Birth of Tragidy and one part The Righteous Mind. Music in particular and religion in general connects us with something more profound and brings us together in our group.
P191 Music and rhythm may help open some doors to emotion. Recently I played a tape of Gregorian chants, and the combination of the rhythm and the rising and lowering pitch was soothing and hypnotic. I could get lost in it... I have strong musical associations, and old songs trigger place-specific memories.
I’ve already written about this.
In high school I came to the conclusion that God was an ordering force that was in everything after Mr. Carlock explained the second law of thermodynamics, the law of physics that states that the universe will gradually lose order and have increasing entropy. Entropy is the increase of disorder in a closed thermodynamic system. I found the idea of the universe becoming more and more disordered profoundly disturbing...
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Stairway to Heaven
P197 This is something Grandin wrote in 1974 after completing her first major project for the Swift facility in Phoenix which she called “The Stairway to Heaven” as it led the cattle to the place where they were slaughtered.
"I believe that a person goes on to someplace else after they die. I do not know where... I watched the cattle die and even killed some of them myself. If a black void exists at the top of the Stairway to Heaven, then a person would have no motivation to be virtuous."
So she’s in Dostoevsky's camp here. Meaning must exist or we would not behave ourselves.
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P198 In the summer of 1978 I swam through the dip vat at the John Wayne Red River feed yard as a stupid publicity stunt. Doing this stunt provided a great boost to my career and got me several speaking engagements. However, coming in contact with the chemical organophosphates had a devastating effect. The feeling of awe that I had when I thought about my beliefs just disappeared. Organophosphates are known to alter levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain, and the chemicals also caused me to have vivid and wild dreams. But why they affected my feeling of religious awe is still a mystery to me. It was like taking all the magic away and finding out that the real Wizard of Oz is just a little old man pushing buttons behind a curtain.
This is amazing, her experience of losing her religious feeling due to exposure to chemicals suggests a chemical basis of religious feelings.
Also, she was building her Stairway to Heaven while I was driving taxis. That sounds about right.
This raised great questions in my mind. Were the feelings of being close to God caused by a chemical Wizard of Oz behind the curtain? In my diary I wrote, “To my horrified amazement the chemicals blocked my need for religious feelings.” They made me very sick, but gradually the effects wore off and the feelings returned. However, my belief in an afterlife was shattered. I had seen the wizard behind the curtain. But there is something in me that really wants to believe that the top of the Stairway to Heaven is not a black void.
She needs to read what I blogged about Zen Physics.
P199 The possibility that a void exists after death has motivated me to work hard so I can make a difference -- so that my thoughts and ideas will not die... Ideas are passed on like genes, and I have a great urge to spread my ideas... Maybe immortality is the effect one’s thoughts and actions can have on other people.
... It was quantum physics that finally helped me believe again, as it provided a plausible scientific basis for belief in a soul and the supernatural...
She proceeds to push quantum entanglement where she wants to go.
P204 [She talks again about the kosher slaughter house from before] ...during those few hot days in Alabama, old yearnings would be reawakened. I felt totally at one with the universe as I kept the animals completely calm while the rabbi performed shehita. Operating the equipment there was like being in a Zen meditative state. Time stood still, and I was totally, completely disconnected from reality. Maybe this was nirvana, the final state of being that Zen meditators seek. It was a feeling of total calmness and peace until I snapped back to reality when the plant manager called me to come to his office...
P205 When it was time to leave, I cried as I drove to the airport. The experience had been so strangely hypnotic that I was tempted to turn around and return to the plant... I thought about the similarities between the wonderful trancelike feeling I had had while gently holding the cattle in the chute and the spaced-out feeling I had had as a child when I concentrated on dribbling sand through my fingers at the beach. During both experiences all other sensation was blocked. Maybe the monks who chant and meditate are kind of autistic. I have observed that there is a great similarity between certain chanting and praying rituals and the rocking of an autistic child. I feel there has to be more to this than just getting high on my own endorphins.
She returns to the plant months later,
"When the animal remained completely calm I felt an overwhelming feeling of peacefulness, as if God had touched me. I did not feel bad about what I was doing. A good restraint chute operator has to not just like cattle, but love them. Operating the chute has to be done as an act of total kindness. The more gently I was able to hold the animal with the apparatus, the more peaceful I felt. As the life force left the animal, I had deep religious feelings. For the first time in my life logic had been completely overwhelmed with feelings I did not know I had."
I hate to toss this into such a tender moment, but I’m almost certain I could find a similar quote from a serial killer or sniper or torturer. These feeling are telling us something but I’m still not quite sure what.
She goes on to wax poetic about global slaughter traditions and I don’t disagree with what she writes. But what interests me is that this religious transcendence is part of life not part of the ritual avoidance of life practiced by many religious cults. We’re back to Moksa and Lila and the Hindu goddesses.
Well this ending pushed the book from a "maybe" to a "must blog." It will be shorter, less in depth (I think) but there's too much good stuff... plus our overlap at ASU is just too perfect.
A New Beginning
It had always been my expectation that I would, eventually, blog about The Magic Mountain. I even have notes from my last reading. But at this point I don't think I need to. In time I may change my mind and return to this, but for now I'm going to move on to something new: writing an actual blog in real time. This suddenly appeals to me so I'm going to give it a shot.
If you care to follow me there, HERE's the link. [But not yet, perhaps tomorrow?]
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