March 27, 2016

March 27, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand describes that “these personal experiences are the truest and most genuine expressions of faith, out of which less genuine, acquired expressions arise.” How can it be, that out of something genuine, something less genuine arises? This writer knows exactly how this happens. It happens because of how we talk about our religious experiences. The subtlety of the experience is lost as our way of talking makes it disappear.  Things even get worse when we write about our religious experiences.  We would write about them more accurately, if we could speak about them more accurately, but as long as we haven’t really acknowledged that writing about them is a function of our inability to speak about them, this is not going to happen. The less genuine version of our religious experience, that is, most of what has been written about it, does NOT arise out of our genuine experience.  Indeed, the less genuine version emerges from the absence of and a longing for genuine religious experience.

Another question needs to be asked: why is it such a problem to talk about the subtle experiences, which we call religious experiences? Many so-called spiritual people, those who are believed to have reached enlightenment or self-realization, insisted we shouldn’t even try to talk about these religious experiences and that we should remain silent. Why is it that our meditation ends the moment we open our mouths? It is not because of the fact that we are talking, but it is because of how we talk. If we would talk in a meditative, sensitive way, we engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but if we talk  in a mechanical, insensitive way, we have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

NVB cannot give rise to SVB and SVB cannot give rise of NVB. When we have SVB, NVB stops. Likewise, when we have NVB, SVB stops. The environment inside and outside of our skin changes at any given time and these environmental changes are causing our SVB or NVB. If we knew about the SVB/NVB distinction, we would be able to continue with SVB, but since we don’t know about this difference, we keep unknowingly swinging back and forth between SVB and NVB, while we are mostly engaging in NVB.