a moment of transcendence
Posted: April 24th, 2023, 12:08 pm
I once watched a National Geographic documentary on the phenomenon of "angels" - apparent visitations by strangers or the dead who appear to individuals under extreme duress. The video included 1st person accounts by a 9/11 survivor who claimed he'd been guided down through a burning stairwell in the South Tower by a person unknown to him; a scuba diver who foolishly made a solo dive into a cave, and after losing her guideline was led back out by her recently-deceased husband; and astronaut Jerry Linenger, recounting the stresses of keeping the aging Mir space station in working order, and the extreme isolation and loneliness he felt hundreds of miles from Earth with a Russian crew who barely spoke English. He used the treadmill as a means of escape, and claimed that during an exercise session he'd had a visitation/hallucination in the form of his father, who'd offered him comfort and encouragement.
The video described a few conflicting hypotheses based in neuroscience that might explain these occurrences. They all have something to do with our sense of Self as an entity separate from the rest of the world - that in certain extreme circumstances that sense gets confused, so that the Self is vaguely perceived as Another. Some posit that under conditions of extreme stress, the body starts shutting down subsystems deemed less essential to survival in order to allocate energy resources to those deemed moreso. According to this hypothesis, those brain regions involving Self and body sense are among the first to go - "browning out" in the documentary's words - leading to the impression that there is suddenly another shadowy individual present, one who is there to assist you in your time of need. It's called "The Third Man" hypothesis.
And while watching, it suddenly occurred to me that I may have had that very experience.
Those occasions I've perceived myself to be in grave physical danger are very few. Even my final scuba dive was probably not as life-threatening as it had felt at the time - it had been just frightening enough to force me to think, remain rational, and to follow accepted protocol. Instead, the circumstances under which my "angel" had appeared were more like Linenger's - an extended period of continual low-level stress combined with a profound sense of hopelessness and social isolation.
It happened in late August 1978, when I was a computer programmer at the National Grange Mutual insurance company. I was desperately unhappy in my job, at odds with management and overwhelmed by the bewildering complexity of the software systems I was responsible for maintaining. Like the Mir, they had evolved organically for years before I was ever hired, and I had no idea what their overall architecture might be. My ignorance of the insurance business was (and remains) abysmal. Further, I had married about a year earlier despite misgivings, and time had only reinforced my doubts about the wisdom of that union. Weeks would pass without physical intimacy; and after living for years surrounded by woods and open pastureland, I now found myself imprisoned within a tiny 3-room apartment in the middle of Keene, just another of many such tiny apartments bordered by asphalt. My wife was lobbying - hard - to buy a house, but I saw this enormous financial commitment as just another of the traps snapping shut all around me, blocking every possible avenue of escape. For months I'd been living in Elliot's state of quiet desperation, with no way out in sight.
During the summer months, the programming department would gather every Friday afternoon at Otter Brook State Park to grill burgers, drink beer, and smoke copious amounts of controlled substances. On this particular evening, my wife had chosen to drink wine instead, and was making significant headway into the two bottles we'd brought. She was always flirtatious by nature, but the alcohol - and perhaps the extended periods of celibacy that seemed to characterize our marriage - was making her particularly so tonight. Ordinarily I'd gamely play along with the act, but on this occasion she seemed especially reckless and forward, and some of the responses to her faux overtures struck me as overly sincere.
It was clear to me that her demeanor was intriguing the department bachelors (and arousing the bemused curiosity of the attached) as if I weren't even there. I felt keenly that I was pointedly being excluded. Unable to bear the performance any longer, and nursing a dull sense of resentment, I slipped away into the background and began walking slowly along the waters' edge toward the marshy savannah where the river slows and begins to pool into the reservoir. At the end of the groomed beach I tossed my beer bottle into a rusted 50-gallon trash drum and lit up a joint. Then I continued on into the marsh. Before long I found myself out of sight and hearing of the revelry. I might have been the only person in the park.
It was a lovely late-summer afternoon. A golden sun was still a few diameters above the horizon, and reflected off the glittering waters of the pond. The ambient sounds seemed to wrap around me like a warm, soft shawl: the chorusing crickets & katydids, the territorial chuck-chuck of the red-winged blackbirds, the occasional plop of a frog taking to the water. I stopped to regard the sylvan skyline of the far shore, and settled down on a stone facing the pond and the setting sun. The blessed solitude and tranquility were badly-needed respites from the colorless Hell I felt my life had become, and I could feel the tension draining away. I found myself awash in a deep, comforting peace cleansing my heart of all the unhappiness of the past months.
In fact it felt like a homecoming. It was as though this place, this small enclave of wilderness, were embracing me, protecting me, nurturing me, assuring me that here, anyway, all was well. That other world of uncertainty and misery was far, far away, and on this rock by this water's edge I would be cared for. Here, I was welcome. Here, I was loved.
This feeling of benign, caring Presence was so powerful, so sudden and overwhelming that I burst uncontrollably into tears. In the calming, soothing presence of magnificent Nature, I sobbed with a relief and gratitude I'd never experienced before, nor have since. Eventually the sobs would slow; but then an errant dragonfly would hover nearby, or a frog would bob to the surface before me; and, interpreting these manifestations as familiars of the Divine, I'd break down again.
Concerns that my absence from the party might soon be noticed, and of being discovered in such an overwrought state, compelled me to start pulling myself together. It wasn't easy. It felt like telling Cosmos, "Thanks, Lord, but I really must be getting back to the House of Pain." I didn't want to leave - how could one simply walk away from such an awesome, loving Presence? Merely contemplating such a loss triggered more tears. It felt like saying good-bye for the last time to a lover. I don't know how much time passed before I'd mustered the confidence to face people again, but I somehow managed to compose myself enough to tear away from that blessed sanctuary and return to the party. By this time my wife had passed out, and everyone else was either too drunk or stoned to take notice of my sudden reappearance or my red puffy eyes.
It was my one and only Transcendental Experience, and for it I am deeply, profoundly grateful, even if it was only a perceptual error induced by prolonged stress and cannabis intoxication. Maybe it was only a slight, transient synchronization problem between two lobes of my brain. Maybe it was only a minor neurological hiccup.
Maybe.