Distinctions Between Meaning Mystery and Sacredness

From: jimruttshow8596
The concepts of meaning, mystery, and sacredness are central to understanding the human experience, particularly in the context of the contemporary meaning crisis. These distinctions are explored by John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall, who argue for a reconceptualization that moves beyond traditional, often supernatural, interpretations.

The Meaning Crisis and Its Components

The meaning crisis is characterized by two main components:

• The Perennial Problem Human cognition, despite its adaptive intelligence, is perpetually susceptible to self-deceptive and self-destructive behaviors [00:09:18]. This complex, dynamical, self-organizing, recursive, embodied, and enacted nature of cognition means that “one-shot” interventions to alleviate self-deception are largely ineffective [00:09:27]. What is needed are “complex ecologies of practices” to ameliorate self-deception and enhance fundamental adaptive connectedness, which people experience as meaning in life [00:09:37]. This process is deeply intertwined with the cultivation of wisdom [00:10:06].
• The Pertinently Present Problem Modern society faces a “wisdom famine” [00:10:56]. While information and knowledge are abundant, there are few clear avenues for cultivating wisdom [00:10:19]. Traditional “legacy religions” are often no longer viable for many people, leading to a rise in individuals who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” – seeking wisdom and meaning through autodidactic means, which inherently carries risks [00:10:25]. The meaning crisis is further exacerbated by pseudo-religious ideologies that offer simplistic, often dangerous, solutions to complex problems [00:11:47].

A key distinction in addressing the meaning crisis is between:

• Meaning of Life A metaphysical proposition suggesting a pre-authored plan or destiny for individuals or humanity, often rooted in an external agent or cosmic force [00:13:37].
• Meaning in Life An agnostic perspective focused on the enacted senses of connection a person has to themselves, other people, and reality, which makes life worth living despite inherent futility, failure, frustration, and loss [00:14:05]. The “religion that is not a religion” primarily addresses meaning in life [00:13:31].

The Sacred

John Vervaeke differentiates between “sacredness” and “the sacred”:

• Sacredness A phenomenological experience that is liberating and clarifying, offering insights out of patterns of systemic self-deception [00:42:27]. This experience involves a reciprocal opening where the world opens up to the individual, and the individual opens up to it, leading to an intense intensification of connectedness [00:43:09]. This state is akin to optimal functioning or the Flow State, where one feels to be in “right relationship” to reality [00:43:57]. This experience is achievable within a scientific worldview, as individuals can have profound, transformative experiences, realize non-duality, or perceive “nothingness beyond God” (e.g., Eckhart), while remaining atheists and not invoking a supernatural agent or destiny [00:44:32]. Such experiences are congruent with classic mystical experiences, but do not necessarily lead to supernatural belief [00:45:12].
• The Sacred This term is simply the “ontological placeholder” for whatever is claimed to be the cause of the experience of sacredness [00:42:07].

Jordan Hall links the concept of the sacred to a fundamental human discovery: that some things are incredibly important and some are very dangerous [00:48:30]. “The sacred” contains both these categories, necessitating “potent practices” for careful engagement [00:48:52]. This aligns with the notion of “religio” as ensuring human survival and flourishing [00:49:09]. Sacred feelings can arise from profound personal experiences like witnessing a newborn grandchild or from awe-inspiring natural phenomena like a thunderstorm, highlighting human smallness in a vast, indifferent world [00:49:32].

Mystery

Mystery refers to that which is poorly addressed through propositional knowledge or language [00:38:58]. It acknowledges that complex reality will always be larger than human conceptions and descriptions [00:39:11]. The engagement with mystery requires a different “style of relationship” than that used for navigating the measurable world or social trials [00:39:18].

John Vervaeke views mystery not as something finite or perfect, but as an inexhaustible “fount of intelligibility” in reality [00:59:01]. No matter how much a person expands their understanding, there is always something that goes beyond the frame [00:59:09]. This concept aligns with Gabriel Marcel’s distinction between a “problem” (which can be framed and solved) and a “mystery” (where the frame itself becomes problematic, leading to an endless process of reframing) [00:59:26]. The “grammar of cognition” itself points to this inexhaustible nature of reality, constantly generating new insights and transformations of identity [00:59:55]. Therefore, the appeal to mystery does not require supernatural invocation [00:57:21].

Distinctions of Modalities

Jordan Hall proposes four distinct modalities or “modes of Truth” that need to be disambiguated to avoid confusion:

1. Science Focuses on the relationship between propositions and measurable states of affairs in reality. Scientific truth is about accurate correspondence with observable phenomena [00:37:45].
2. Religion Deals with truth in the sense of “steadfastness” – anchored in a life that works, successfully navigating the challenges of being in the world [00:38:18]. This includes questions of virtue and ethical behavior [00:27:08].
3. Spirituality While not fully defined, it pertains to feelings of Oneness, wholeness, or being part of something greater than oneself [00:50:08]. These are often associated with mystical experiences, which involve expansion of self, connectedness to the world, and awareness of a larger whole [00:50:42].
4. Mystery Represents that which cannot be adequately grasped or framed by language or propositional knowledge. It is the Transcendent, which, by its nature, cannot be described or boxed in [00:53:14]. Confusing these modalities, such as attempting to clothe mystery in scientific stories (the “supernatural”), leads to “category errors” and societal “constipation” [00:39:42].

Religio: Properly Proportioned Connectedness

John Vervaeke utilizes the term “religio” (from the Latin religare, meaning “to bind,” like ligament) to refer to:

• The sense of binding and connectedness [01:17:34].
• Its etymological root for “religion,” linking to sacredness [01:17:38].
• A secular domain of conscientiousness and being rightly ordered towards reality [01:17:48].

Vervaeke often pairs it with “ratio” (meaning “properly proportioned,” from which “rationing” and “rationality” derive) as “ratio religio” [01:17:56]. Religio, in this sense, is part of “secular intelligence” – a relevance realization process where things “grab your attention,” raising arousal and fostering caring [01:18:11]. This fundamental connectedness is the basis of general intelligence and, at a higher level, meaning in life [01:18:59]. When people become aware of this process, they can deliberately cultivate it to enhance meaning, which is where “religion” in its broadest sense emerges [01:19:16].

Ecologies of Practice

To address the meaning crisis and cultivate wisdom, “ecologies of practices” are necessary [00:09:44]. These are not “one-shot interventions” but complex, self-organizing, and self-correcting systems [01:21:19]. Key design principles for such ecologies include:

• Opponent Processing Practices that work in opposition to each other, like meditative practices (stepping back to inspect mental frames) and contemplative practices (putting on corrected lenses to see more clearly) [01:25:11]. If one is done without the other, it can lead to projection or unproductive cleaning of perception without engagement [01:25:54]. This “opponent attentional process” optimizes for “insight-proneness” [01:26:36]. This can be layered, for example, with still and moving mindfulness practices [01:26:50].
• Layering and Pedagogical Programs Practices should build upon each other, and there needs to be a pedagogical program for onboarding people into these complex systems [01:27:11].
• Active Open-mindedness Practices that dampen inferential machinery to allow for more careful inference, working in opponent processing to insight-affording practices [01:27:48].

These practices are not merely intellectual exercises; they include folk psychotechnologies like:

• Singing and Dancing Together These activities foster a sense of collective intelligence and belonging, where individuals experience something greater than the aggregate sum of individuals [01:28:24].
• Ritual Enactment A ritual properly understood is the use of the “imaginal” (imagination for the sake of perception, sensitizing one to subtle patterns) in service of the “aspirational” (the relationship between one’s current and future self) [01:29:49]. A good ritual transfers broadly to many domains of life and percolates deeply through the psyche, affording a profound reciprocal opening with reality [01:33:04]. Examples include the transferable effects of Tai Chi Chuan on cognitive flexibility [01:34:40].

The Religion That Is Not a Religion: Re-evaluating Traditional Roles

The traditional role of religion, particularly those born in the Axial Age, is no longer viable for many because they carry a “Two Worlds mythology” (an illusory everyday world vs. a real transcendent world) that is irreconcilable with a scientific-technological worldview [00:04:03]. This mythology, born from an attempt to explain a new sense of responsibility and transcendence, has become deeply ingrained in human cognition, leading to problematic divisions between mind and matter, self and world, and natural and supernatural [00:22:50].

The “religion that is not a religion” aims to extract the functionality of traditional religions – providing a home and community for ecologies of practices that help with self-deception and enhance connectedness – without adopting their supernatural worldviews or organizational problems [00:04:48]. It seeks to integrate these functionalities with a scientific worldview [00:03:19].

Jordan Hall emphasizes that the mistake of older religions was their focus on propositional content and centralized dissemination [01:54:43]. This leads to dilution and confusion, making them vulnerable to science [01:55:29]. Instead, a new cultural design must prioritize:

• Positive Returns to Scale (Metcalf’s Law) Consciously designing a culture to scale exponentially, fostering robust relationships that self-propagate [01:56:05].
• Holographic, Not Photographic, Propagation Rather than replicating content (like a photograph), the new “religion” fosters distributed learning and peer production of wisdom (like a hologram, where each part contains the whole) [02:00:16]. This means individuals, empowered to be sovereign, share their learning and wisdom from meaningful relationships because it is inherently satisfying [02:01:13]. This distributed, censorship-impregnable, and capture-impeccable approach leverages modern technology to foster deep, meaningful lives [02:01:57].

The urgency of the current “meta-crisis” – where old institutions are failing and the secular world delivers poor results for meaningful life – provides the “wind at our backs” for this new approach to flourish, as people will be actively seeking alternatives that satisfy basic needs for meaning and connection [02:02:49].