Of Beauty and the Invisibility of Man

The power of awe goes beyond the ultimate questions we mentioned before.

Even in the small moments of our lives, we show an unusual appreciation for our surroundings which is truly astonishing.

When choosing the interior design of our homes or the style of our clothes, we carefully select colors, patterns, and specific combinations. Many hours, if not days and months—sometimes years—are spent on this endeavor. For most people, this is far from a waste of time; it is the fulfillment of a deep emotional need.

Things must flow into each other, creating a picture of harmony, tranquility, and beauty. One blotch of paint will not inspire us, but a specific combination of them does. One musical note is boring, but the weaving of many of them into a wondrous pattern will make a symphony that can bring thousands of listeners to exultation.

Art collectors will pay huge sums to own paintings that are sometimes no larger than a few square centimeters. Some paintings are valued at millions of dollars, and are viewed by multitudes of people—many of whom are prepared to travel long distances to view them. The world of haute couture produces an endless stream of elegant (and not so elegant!) garments of all kinds and fashions.

Rather than tiring of all these efforts and getting bored, we are deeply involved in all this—searching for every possible avenue to make sure that we are constantly surrounded by beauty and novelty.

Why are we like this?

Let us ask: How is it that we are like this?

The German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) has shown that there is no adequate explanation why we enjoy music, fall in love with a painting or gaze longingly at the seashore. In his classic work Das Heilige, or The Idea of the Holy, Otto compares the experience of beauty to Jacob’s famous dream, described in the book of Bereshit, Genesis (Chapter 28) when Jacob dreams of a ladder on which angels descend and ascend. This dream, writes Otto, exemplifies the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”, an overwhelming experience which cannot be grasped or explained by the rational mind.[1]

What is there about beauty that makes it beautiful? What is so wonderful about a van Gogh painting, or the music of Beethoven? Is there not a certain absurdity to it all? How is it that we can hear more than one musical note at a time? And why is it that we don’t just hear individual notes distinctly, but also apprehend them as a chord? We somehow grasp them. We are conscious of the music and its beauty.

The American psychiatrist G. N. M. Tyrrel, (1879-1952) in his Grades of Significance, in writing about “reading,” reminds the reader of this miraculous faculty:

A book, we will suppose, has fallen into the hands of intelligent beings who know nothing of what writing and printing mean, but they are accustomed to dealing with the external relationships of things. They try to find out the laws of the book, which for them mean the principles governing the order in which the letters are arranged…They will think they have discovered the laws of the book when they have formulated certain rules governing the external relationships of the letters. That each word and each sentence expresses a meaning will never dawn on them because their background of thought is made up of concepts which deal only with external relationships, and explanations to them means solving the puzzle of these external relationships…Their methods will never reach the grade of significance which contains the idea of meanings.[2]

Why do we associate a combination of letters with meaning? How is it that meaningless shapes can spark within us the experience of significance?

Perhaps the most outstanding example of our mysterious nature is love. If we could imagine a creature from outer space looking at the human body, what would he see? Probably one of the most repulsive creations walking around in the cosmos: “Deformed” organs protruding from both sides of some kind of enlarged balloon on top of the human body. In the middle of this ball, called a head, there is another extension placed between two items of glass, and below, a hole into which we dispose of all sorts of substances (which by outer space standards would be most disgusting!) Legs and arms would be described in most uncomplimentary terms. Most astonishing of all would no doubt be the fact that these “monstrous” creations fall in love with each other, fight wars because of jealousy, and engage in intimate relationships that result in producing even more of these unsightly creatures.

Why, indeed, do we not experience physical love as a most repulsive act, consider music an abhorrent experience, view a Rembrandt painting as the scribblings of hideous human creativity?

Amazement

Even more astonishing is the observation made by psychiatrist and neurologist Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953) in Psychological Commentaries concerning the invisibility of man:

We can all see another person’s body directly. We see the lips moving, the eyes opening and shutting, the lines of the mouth and face changing, and the body expressing itself as a whole in action. The person himself is invisible… If the invisible side of people were discerned as easily as the visible side, we would live in a new humanity. As we are we live in visible humanity, a humanity of appearances… All our thoughts, emotions, feelings, imagination, reveries, dreams, fantasies are invisible. All that belongs to our scheming, planning secrets, ambitions, all our hopes, fears, doubts, perplexities, all our affections, speculations, ponderings, vacuities, uncertainties, all our desires, longings, appetites, sensations, our likes, dislikes, aversions, attractions, loves and hates – all are themselves invisible. They constitute “one’s self.”[3]

Nicoll insists that while all this may appear obvious, it is not at all self-evident:

It is an extremely difficult thing to grasp… We do not grasp that we are invisible. We do not realize that we are in a world of invisible people. We do not understand that life before all other definitions of it, is a drama of the visible and the invisible.

When I buy grain, my main interest is that it is alive and not dead. But that life I cannot see, touch or smell. An unconscious cat, even though still alive, is not a real cat until it regains consciousness. This is what philosophers call “inner space.” The matter itself is, however, mysterious. “Analyze, weigh and measure a tree as you please, observe its form and function, its genesis and the laws to which it is subject, still an acquaintance with its essence never comes about.”[4]

As we mentioned before: All this touches on the very core of genuine religion and the problem of secularism. Western civilization has a very specific approach to life—one that is highly pragmatic. Matters are seen from a purely utilitarian point of view. Actions are measured by the standard of whether they achieve results. What matters is whether things “work.” Humans are seen as tool-making creatures for whom the world is a gigantic toolbox for the satisfaction of their needs. Satisfaction, luxury, and pleasure are man’s goals. Everything is calculated, and there is supreme faith in statistics.

And yet, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel so astutely observed, what smites us with total amazement is not what we grasp and are able to convey, but that what lies beyond our grasp—not the quantitative aspect of nature, but something qualitative. Everything is more than the sum total of its parts. We are aware of something that is entirely beyond description or comprehension.

In fact, the very act of thinking baffles our ability to think. The most incomprehensible fact is that we can comprehend at all! That which we can apprehend we cannot comprehend. That which we take account of cannot be accounted for! In Heschel’s famous words:

The search of reason ends at the shore of the known… reason cannot go beyond the shore and the sense of ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh… We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips, we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.[5]

Only through the awareness of this mystery do we begin to live. Only then can we experience what real life is all about.

The beginning of happiness lies in the understanding that life without the awareness of mystery is not worth living. Why? Because the beginning of happiness has its origin in surprise.

Struck by the impenetrable mysterium of all being, the soul becomes reawakened. As if struck by lightning, we are recreated.

What really needs to be fully understood is why we are often so insensitive to all this. Why do we not faint when we look into the mirror or see another human being or a flower blossoming? Why do we not pass out with astonishment upon seeing the birth of a baby, who nine months earlier was no more than a seed and an egg?

All of this is totally beyond us and even when it astonishes us for a moment, we soon fall back into apathy, into a state of passivity.

Let us consider these questions further in our next essay.

Notes:

[1] Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy (London, 1923; rev. ed. 1929).

[2] Quoted by E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1978), p. 42.

[3] Maurice Nicoll, Living Time and the Integration of the Life, quoted in E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for The Perplexed, p. 33.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Avraham Joshua Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, Studies in Prayer and Symbolism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), xiii.