270. Recovering the Depth of Experience in a Flattened World- Radically Personal

What do we mean when we speak of human experience?

In this fourth installment of the Radically Personal series, Jerry Martin takes up that question and follows it carefully. Modern philosophy and science often frame experience in terms of sensations, data, or brain activity. Yet the way we actually live and perceive suggests something more expansive.

Drawing on William James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hilary Putnam, Martin Buber, Edith Stein, and others, Jerry reflects on how we encounter the world in practice. He considers perception and embodiment, the depth present in persons and things, the pull of beauty and awe, and the way empathy makes another’s inner life accessible.

The discussion gradually turns toward love and value, tracing how worth emerges within experience itself. As the episode moves from perception to relationship to meaning, a picture comes into view: depth is not added from outside but belongs to experience as lived.

Join Jerry in taking experience seriously; it may open new ways of thinking about meaning, reality, and the possibility of the divine.

Get the books: Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age | God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher

Other Series:

The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:

• Radically Personal: Reflections on lived experience, divine encounter, and personal vocation, drawing on a seeker-centered approach to spirituality in a new Axial Age.
• From God to Jerry to You: Divine messages and breakthroughs for seekers.
• Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue: Love, faith, and divine presence in partnership.
• What’s Your Spiritual Story: Real stories of people changed by encounters with God.
• What’s On Our Mind: Reflections from Jerry and Scott on recent episodes.
• Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: A dialogue on God, truth, and reason.
• The Life Wisdom Project: Spiritual insights on living a wiser, more meaningful life.
• What’s On Your Mind: Listener questions, divine answers, and open dialogue. 

Stay Connected: questions@godanautobiography.com

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Transcript

Scott  Langdon [ 00:00:17,220 ] This is God: An Autobiography, The Podcast — a dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin. He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered — in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

Scott  Langdon [ 00:00:59,190 ] Episode 270: Welcome to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. I'm Scott Langdon, and we return you this week to our limited series from Jerry Martin Radically Personal.  In this fourth installment, based on Jerry's new book, Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, Jerry reminds us that we must take experience, the embodied experience of our very lives, more seriously if we seek to have a more personal relationship with the divine. How seriously do you take experiences in your own life? What experiences have changed you? Here's Jerry Martin. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:02:02,390 ] Well, thanks for joining me. This is the fourth in a series of talks drawn from my new book, Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age. If we're going to draw our theology or spiritual thinking from the fullness of human experience, we need to have an adequate understanding of what experience is and does; of what it offers us.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:02:36,160 ] We will not be talking here, at least, about religious experience as such. Those discussions suffer in our time and culture from a conception of experience that is so barren that spiritual experiences seem brazenly bizarre and carry an unbearable burden of proof.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:02:58,060 ] We need to remind ourselves of the full range, richness, and depth of experience. Unfortunately, we live in what African-American scholar Nathan Scott calls a ‘time of dearth’. We need to regain, he says, a sense of presence, of intimacy, of relationship with reality. Modern science tends to flatten, narrow, and even erase what it is to experience something.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:03:36,430 ] This problem was already evident in William James’ day. He wrote in The Principles of Psychology, “Most books start with sensations and proceed synthetically, constructing each higher stage from the one below it.” But this is abandoning the empirical method of investigation.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:03:58,350 ] “No one ever had a simple sensation by itself,” James says. In other words, we do not actually experience momentary sensations and sense data. Those are abstractions analytically removed from the actual, full-bodied encounter with reality.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:04:20,829 ] Later, when the emptying out of experience had become more acute, French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty sounded the same warning. He wrote that experience had once more become a question for us, and that empiricism and the scientific attitude had leveled out experience and emptied it of mystery.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:04:49,740 ] To the contrary, he argues that perception is inhabited by a significance that illuminates the world and its meaning for us. What is true of a particular way of studying nature, Merleau-Ponty says, is not necessarily true of nature itself. Physics treats nature in mathematical terms. That approach has been powerfully effective for its purposes. However, nature is not itself geometrical.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:05:24,180 ] That is merely an analytical method. We must now, he says, return to the world of actual experience, which is prior to the scientifically described world — even for the scientist himself or herself.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:05:41,310 ] He or she encounters a full, richly inhabited world before going into the lab and looking at mere numbers, maybe results of experiments. To recognize the deeper reaches of meaning, we have to regain a richer understanding of experience. It is, in fact, at hand. We sometimes forget what we know. The distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam reminds us of what he calls the depths and shallows of experience.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:06:13,890 ] There is, he notes, a concept of experience that leaves literally no room for depth — a conception of experience as, so to speak, all psychological surface. The experience becomes a flat screen.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:06:31,630 ] Or the screen shifts to the sheaths of the brain itself, or the impressions become electrical impulses, or in the AI version, bits of information. These may be excellent ways to talk about behavior, brains, and computers, but they deflect attention from the depth of human experience, which those research programs are not designed to explore.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:06:58,020 ] Of thinking, Putnam says, “concepts provide the only depth.” That is, the flat sensory data come in according to their account, all further dimensions and richer meanings are added by concepts — our conceptual interpretive structures. But to the contrary, according to a more accurate, robust sense of what experience actually is, we do not have to construct depth out of flat surfaces. We see the depth in what we encounter.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:07:34,070 ] The depth dimension is easy to forget. Modernity came into the habit, for its own purposes, of peeling off qualities from things. We do not see red things, it was said. We just see red. We see qualities. The things become, for British empiricist John Locke, something “I know not what.”

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:07:59,460 ] And for Kant, an inaccessible thing-in-itself, with concepts being rules for synthesizing bits of experience. Research in many fields is still dominated by the idea of flat, discrete bits of experience.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:08:20,090 ] Data can be analyzed quantitatively, compared objectively — traits often treated as essential to scientific research. Well, okay, we are having our own methods of research dictate what it is we encounter and experience, rather than letting experience teach us its own lessons, messages, and meanings.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:08:43,880 ] By noting the flattening of experience in empiricism and in psychological research, I'm not trying to press an argument or prove a conclusion. In general, when I talk or write, I'm not trying to talk somebody into something. I'm just inviting you to consider thoughts, and in this case inviting you to reconnect with your own actual experience, unencumbered by current theoretical formulations, and to take in its full range and diversity — inner, outer, and in between — in one's body, mind, and soul, in one's interaction with the surrounding world, with the people, culture, and whatever else one encounters there.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:09:32,780 ] Let us remind ourselves of what we know. We see a three-dimensional world — that is to say, a world with depth.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:09:43,720 ] In fact, it is not easy to visualize it as two-dimensional. Sometimes artists do that, or try to do it for their own purposes, but it's not the world we see. We see a world with depth. After the pandemic, I was struck by the profound difference between seeing people on Zoom, which we'd done for a time, and seeing them in person — in the flesh, human beings. They actually have substance and depth and vitality that one encounters in experience, and their personal depths are real and present, not just projections from an image.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:10:21,890 ] We see objects, even such as tables, not only as three-dimensional with other sides, but as solid, as having insides, or as something on which to set a teacup or change a baby, or we see it as luxuriant mahogany, or as too large for the space or for its role, say, in the dining room or in front of the altar.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:10:46,000 ] We normally do not take in the full surround of meanings because we have, at any given moment, a limited purpose that focuses our attention. We can even forget that we are embodied agents.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:10:59,640 ] As British philosopher Roger Scruton writes, ever since Descartes' cogito, the idea of the self as an inner homunculus — as though there's a little mind in here running things — has cast its shadow over our views of the human person.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:11:17,610 ] The Cartesian picture tempts us to believe that we go through life dragging an animal on a leash — our own bodies — forcing it to do our bidding, the mind directing it, until at last it collapses and dies.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:11:32,950 ] On this view, Scruton writes, “I am a subject, my body is an object. I am I; it is it.” In this way, the body — one's own, your own body — becomes just a thing among things. If Scruton is right, we have to rediscover our own bodies and our agency as embodied selves. We are embodied selves. Consider the implications of the fact that we are mobile.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:12:03,090 ] We do not just observe the world or receive its stimuli on the surface of our bodies. That is itself an abstraction, useful for some purposes, but not for understanding the meaning of our worlds. We are organisms, not just machines, not just wet robots, as some like to say. Robots are not organisms, we are. For a similar reason, I have never resonated with the idea that we are socially constructed.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:12:34,090 ] That's a mechanical analogy. We are not constructed at all. We grow and develop in a family and community shaped by our language and culture. The older term was better. We are acculturated right from the beginning.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:12:52,280 ] We are living. And because we are living, we have needs. And enabling us to meet our needs, we are mobile, and because mobile, we are agents. And with needs and desires and much more, we have aims and values.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:13:09,860 ] All the mysteries of life and death spring from these fundamental features. And, of course, not just them, but also the realities thereby  encountered. We do not just take in a picture of the world on a mental or neurological screen. We move about in the world. We feel it under our feet. We bump into it. We fall off its cliffs. And if we fall into the lake, we get wet and gasp for air.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:13:42,080 ] Like all living creatures, we are sentient and have needs. We explore the world around us. We do not just encounter items. We encounter a world. We can only see to the misty edge of the horizon, which is itself open to indefinite dimensions beyond.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:14:05,060 ] We explore this world — its forests and rivers and lakes, its hills and canyons and mountains, and especially its foliage and myriad life forms — because it offers what some ecological psychologists call affordances — features relevant to our purposes.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:14:26,760 ] Is this water potable? If so, it can satisfy our thirst. Can these rocks be scaled? If so, they afford a particular mobility if our legs are strong enough. The affordances are not limited to utilities. Are these rocks beautiful? If so, they afford a scene of beauty. Are the starry heavens breathtaking? If so, they afford a moment of awe and an understanding that the world, in some respects, invites awe. -MUSIC BREAK-

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:15:35,110 ] Thus, experience involves action in a value-laden context, the ultimate depth of which it would be premature to circumscribe. One does not know the full range of possibilities — of depth and of height — in one's idealities and understandings.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:15:59,120 ] Nature, in a non-reductive sense, does not exclude the deeper or higher dimensions of meaning. For example, it includes aesthetic dimensions. We appreciate the symmetry of a flower, the rhythm and deep tones of the waves beating against the rocks, the harmonies of the breeze and the counterpoint of the wind.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:16:29,510 ] Seeing Mount Fuji can be awesome and full of grace. Looking at the night sky, the experience can be cosmic. However, often the aesthetic eye is trained on the particular.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:16:45,410 ] Not just flowers, but this flower. Not just poetry, but this phrase — “the red wheelbarrow.” Not just the symphonic, but the tiny sequence of notes that define a Chopin nocturne. As Roger Scruton notes, the deepest aesthetic responses fade into spiritual responses. The beautiful is appreciated as an end in itself, as a thing intrinsically meaningful.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:17:22,349 ] As the poet William Blake expresses it, “To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower.” Nathan Scott agrees: the poetic world is rooted in the concrete particularity of lived experience, and poetic art, in its deepest aspect, is a way of loving the concrete, the particular, the individual.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:17:51,630 ] It has the dimension of presence. We confront, he writes, concrete particulars with such intensity that their significances are beheld. The disclosed meanings dispel threats of nihilism and nightmares of the absurd by showing us that the empty spaces those attitudes have projected are actually replete with intensity.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:18:20,550 ] When the particular is faced with great intensity, Scott goes on to say, without losing any of its bright actuality, it tends also to suggest overtones of something more. Scott quotes Wordsworth as “finding all the concrete realities of experience to point beyond themselves.”

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:18:50,000 ] This is perhaps why Philip Wheelwright condemned theories that claimed there is nothing more. To say that was to draw a shade over the windows. Let us continue to survey the reaches of experience. One of the most remarkable abilities we have, of course — we take it for granted because it is so pervasive — is to understand one another.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:19:16,610 ] Even to understand people quite different from ourselves, even those distant in time. The picture of starting as an individual in private isolation and working our way outward toward other people is deeply unrealistic.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:19:33,960 ] We start in a mother's womb, in shared personhood. That inseparable connection lingers until the newborn becomes able to differentiate itself from the mother and from the developing scene.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:19:51,170 ] For those of us who have a strong sense of personal relationship with the divine, something like interpersonal understanding is necessary. We relate to each other and to the divine, as Martin Buber said, not to an “it,” but to a “thou,” which can be addressed. Empathy enables an intimate relationship with the personal manifestation of the divine reality,

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:20:23,960 ] or with a non-personal manifestation that nevertheless invites us, as Buber puts it, to say “thou” to nature. The most profound study of interpersonal understanding began with the phenomenological, the experiential. The study is Edith Stein’s neglected classic On the Problem of Empathy.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:20:49,500 ] Stein is famous, but for other things — her amazing spiritual journey and her tragic fate at the hands of the Nazis. Earlier in life, she had been Edmund Husserl’s assistant and submitted a profound study of empathy for a degree in 1916. According to Stein's account, I do not see only the surfaces of other people — their facial expressions and such — but also, she says, what is hidden behind them.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:21:21,750 ] For example, she writes, “I see that someone makes a sad face, but is not really sad. I may also hear someone make an indiscreet remark and blush.” Then I not only understand the remark and see shame in the blush, but I also discern that he knows his remark is indiscreet and is ashamed of himself for having made it.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:21:46,560 ] Psychologists call this phenomenon fusion, usually reducing it to mere association.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:21:52,970 ] This word “mere,” she says, indicates psychology’s tendency to look at explanation as an explaining away, so that the explained phenomenon becomes a subjective creation without objective meaning. Stein objects: we cannot accept this interpretation. Phenomenon remains phenomenon. The seen living body is given in experience as a sensing living body.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:22:22,940 ] Similarly, I personally would add: the sensed divine reality is not merely subjective creation, but an encountered living reality.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:22:35,070 ] According to psychoanalytic theorist Heinz Kohut, empathic understanding is as basic an endowment of human beings as vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Empathy involves what Kohut calls vicarious introspection — a way of entering vicariously not only the consciousness but the bodies of others.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:23:06,480 ] Which Stein calls sensual empathy — a sensing-in. Michael Polanyi calls it an indwelling. Sensing-in, or indwelling, may also be apt terms for what is sometimes felt as a connection with something divine or spiritual.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:23:26,750 ] The human capacity for empathy makes it possible for us to connect with one another as persons. It is the precondition for all language, all social interaction, cultural engagement, and historical understanding. Empathy allows us to love each other, to respect one another, and to make sacrifices for others.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:23:51,910 ] That makes it possible for Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Confucius, and Rumi to plumb life’s deepest meanings, and for us to understand what they are revealing. Empathy brings forth the depth, richness, meaning, and drama of experience, including its sublime or transcendent dimensions.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:24:18,870 ] When we bring emotions into the picture, a new dimension of the self appears, as Edith Stein observes, “In the act of love, we have a comprehending or an intending of the value of a person. This is not a valuing for any other’s sake. His value is not that he does good, even if he perhaps comes to light for this reason. Rather, he himself is valuable, and we love him for his own sake.” Stein’s analysis is reaching both greater theologically suggestive depths, but also higher levels of meaning pertinent to transcendence or ultimacy.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:25:07,730 ] In her exploration, Stein turns up aspects of experience with depth, drama, and normative structure, without delving into unusual or mystical moments. A rich world of multiple dimensions is revealed, flowing directly out of our embodied experience and encounter with one another. It is this experience, understood in its full depth and drama, that provides an opening to the divine reality.

Dr. Jerry L. Martin [ 00:25:43,570 ] This is a question we will explore next time. Thank you for joining me. And next time we will ponder the world’s many religions and what we are to make of them. I hope you can join us.

Scott  Langdon [ 00:26:09,670 ] Thank you for listening to God: An Autobiography, The Podcast. Subscribe for free today wherever you listen to your podcasts and hear a new episode every week. You can hear the complete dramatic adaptation of God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin by beginning with Episode 1 of our podcast and listening through its conclusion with Episode 44. You can read the original true story in the book from which this podcast is adapted — God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher — available now at amazon.com, and always at godanautobiography.com. Pick up your own copy today. If you have any questions about this or any other episode, please email us at questions@godanautobiography.com, and experience the world from God’s perspective — as it was told to a philosopher. This is Scott Langdon. I’ll see you next time.