I’ve been watching the quite fascinating Netflix show The OA recently, and it’s got me thinking about the line between the rational and the mystic.

Because there is a certain bank of emotions and imagery that I intuitively and completely understand without reason and rationality even getting a look in. Because of that. it is a difficult thing to describe or define in the rational realm of human language.

And it hurts me a little to admit that, as for long as I can remember I have found other people saying that kind of thing to be very annoying and thought to myself that they simply weren’t trying hard enough.

More fool me, then.

It is only a fool who thinks that all that resides within them can be bound and explained away by the powerful but limited toolset that it rationality. It’s like a hammer thinking that all the world is merely a nail to be pounded. It’s profoundly ignorant.

The only word I have, at the moment at least, for this bank of imagery is “mystical”. It contains deep imagery about doorways, the immaterial, connections between souls, darkness and light, getting lost and finding oneself, walls, barriers, containers, being trapped and how it can free you and being free in a way that traps you, the yearning of one soul to touch another, wells, water, fountains, the sea, rivers, and other such water images, innocence and purity on a spiritual level, and so much more than I am not thinking of at the moment.

Astrologically, this is all Pisces imagery, and I have Mars in Pisces, so it makes sense that I connect with this kind of thinking.

Another Netflix series, Sense8, also taps into the same part of the human zeitgeist. That show is about eight people from all over the world who discover they have this psychic connection between one another, and how they fumble towards accepting it and being able to use it to draw on one another’s strengths in times of need.

That’s very Pisces. The whole idea of souls finding one another in the dark without the distractions of the material world and, by connecting, becoming far more than the sum of their parts is a very deep Pisces notion.

It can be very confusing. Many times in my own life I have found myself pulled in two different directions at once. One direction is the here and now physicality of the world and the other direction is the way I perceive others that bypasses that physicality and has more to do with the inner self than anything external.

On a deep level, I see people as souls. The fact that said souls have bodies with faces and identities and literal structure is secondary. Superficial. If I like someone, it is because they look good to this inner vision of mine. I perceive their inner beauty. To me, they are beautiful people no matter what their outer packaging looks like.

The confusion mostly comes from having to deal with both inner and outer vision at the same time. Without a certain kind of self-discipline, I would always default to the inner vision and ignore the outer packaging.

But the world does not work that way.

None of this, by the way, conflicts with my deep and fundamental philosophical materialism. I don’t consider this inner vision of mine to be some kind of door into a superior reality, nor do I consider it to be the work of any kind of spiritual intermediary.

As in all things, it is merely a way for the human mind to understand the inputs it gets from the perceptions it cannot integrate with everyday consciousness. This can be because of a lack of the right ideas and concepts to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious levels of these perceptions, or it can be the work of things operating on a deep level that is simply too “big” to fit in the conscious mind.

So to me, there is no conflict between the rational scientist and the mystic poet in me. My fundamentally rational worldview is not perturbed by mystic perception. It is merely one of the manifold filters that can be used to better understand one’s life, and life in general.

Nevertheless, I believe that there has been substantial conflict between the rational and the intuitive on a deeper and less intellectualized level. It’s that split perception effect that is to blame. Had I not embraced hardcore rationality as my salvation at an early age, I might have had the flexibility needed to balance my two level of perception and thus integrate them into a single, cohesive consciousness.

Instead, I embraced the great power and deep roots of rationality, and treated that other level of perception as noise, filtering it out much of the time as I raggedly but determinedly clung to the seeming solidity a sensible and rational outlook – one in which all the parts of a perception could be taken out and inspected for logical consistency, and hence be believed to be rational, and thus… safe.

The problem is that, no matter how sturdy one makes one’s fortress of rationality, it still lies on one small island in the vast ocean of human reality, and choosing to ignore what goes on outside your fortress by no means renders you unaffected by it.

No matter what, you will remain an irrational, flawed, emotional, subjective, solitary being… a naked beach ape in a hopelessly complex jungle who only sees a small part of the big picture but has no choice but to proceed as if you understood the whole.

Rationality is a very powerful tool. Its application has changed the world in far too many ways to count, let alone innumerate. And it is tempting to pretend that, with so powerful a tool in one’s possession, there can be no problem that you cannot solve.

But rationality is helpless before the irrationalities of life.

To solve those, you have to be willing to feel your way around. Close your eyes, follow your emotions, and stop imposing your notion of order on the results.

It’s the only way to find out how you really are.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.