Believing and Knowing
Hideo Kobayashi
Lecture: Believing and knowing
Hideo Kobayashi
Recently, a young man called Uri Geller conducted a telekinesis experiment that caused quite a sensation. The father of my friend Kyoka Izumi, who has since passed away, was the oldest captain of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK Line). After he retired from being a captain, he became interested in spiritualism and became a member of the society of a famous Indian mystic named Krsinamurti. So I knew a lot about that sort of thing from my student days. However, sometimes stories about supernatural phenomena such as telekinesis cause a stir in the world. I believe that such phenomena have always existed, but that various conditions are necessary for them to become a major topic of public interest. I have no doubt that such mysteries have always existed, and are always accompanying our lives. However, if you look carefully at the newspapers and magazines that deal with this, you will realise that their criticisms are very shallow. There are many mysteries in the world, but modern intellectuals have lost the open-mindedness to see mysteries as mysteries. When we are shown wonders on television, we either take a derisive attitude towards them or an amused attitude, as if we were watching a sporting event. Among today's intellectuals, there should be at least one person who thinks about the correct attitude towards such things as telekinesis. However, there is no one. For them, any voice that they do not understand is abnormal. Intellectuals have really fallen into depravity. They all talk a lot, but they do not have the right attitude towards such things.
When I was just starting university, I read Bergson's writings on telekinesis. I read it again the other day to see what I could tell you about it. The text is the transcript of a lecture Bergson was invited to give to the Psychic Society of London in 1913. (Note: The Japanese translation is 'The Magic of the Living and Psychical Research' in 'Energies of the Mind,' Vol. 5 of the Collected Works of Bergson, translated by Watanabe Hide, Hakusuisha.) Let me tell you the general gist of it.
Bergson was attending a major conference when the conversation happened to turn to psychic sensitisation, or telepathy. A lady told a story to a well-known French scholar, a doctor. During the last war, her husband was killed in action on a distant battlefield. She was in Paris and dreamt that her husband had died in the trenches at that very time. She even saw the faces of several soldiers surrounding him. Upon closer examination, the husband died at that exact moment, dressed exactly as she had seen him, with several of his fellow soldiers surrounding him. It is impossible to think that the wife had imagined this on her own. No artist, no matter how many faces he has painted, can imagine the face of a single person he has never seen. The same is true for the lady who saw the face of a strange soldier in her dream. If she saw it in a dream, she must have seen it directly, by some unknowable force of telekinesis. There is nothing unreasonable in assuming this.
However, after hearing her story, the doctor responded as follows: "I believe the story. I believe that the lady is a person of fine character, and would never lie. However, there is one thing that bothers me. Since ancient times, there have been countless cases where when a family member dies, a notice of the death is sent. However, there have also been many cases where the notice of death is incorrect. There are countless incorrect illusions. Why should we pay attention only to the correct visions, while neglecting the incorrect ones?"
Bergson was standing next to her, listening. Then there was another young woman who said to the doctor, "What you are saying is logically very correct, but I think there is something about you that is wrong." Bergson said that he thought the woman was right.
What does this mean? In his lecture, Bergson explained it this way. The more prestigious scholars are firm believers in their own methods. And so, unknowingly, they enter into that method and become obsessed with it. Therefore, they are blind to the concreteness of various concrete phenomena. Even in the present case, the man changes the story of the dream the lady had as he pleases. Is the story true or false? He turns it into a question of whether her husband was indeed dead when she dreamt the dream, or whether he was alive when she was mistaken. But the lady did not talk about the problem; she talked about her own experience. The dream was so tantalising a sight that she told it to others as it was. For her, it was the only empirical fact. The doctor called it subjective. That's ridiculous, isn't it? I do not think so. A truly poignant experience is neither subjective nor objective. It is the same as the experience of being pinched and feeling pain. Is pain something subjective or objective? It is neither. It is really and directly an experience in the mind. If we turn the question of whether the husband was killed or not, we have to compare the number of cases where the dream was right with the number of cases where it was wrong, and the number of cases where it was wrong would be infinitely greater. The ones that were right would be coincidence. The reason why they come to the conclusion that it is a coincidence is that they do not believe in the concreteness of the lady's experience, but instead replace it with the abstract question of whether her husband actually died or not.
It is difficult for you to understand this kind of argument, is it not? But it is not easy to understand, because at the bottom of it lies Bergson's great philosophy. Today, all learning is science. However, it has only been three or four hundred years since science began. The scientific spirit is a very recent trend. There is the term "empirical science," but that term is a very misleading one. Experience is something that humans have had since ancient times, but it has only been in the last three hundred years that human experience has been replaced by scientific experience. As a result, today's science has made great advances, but this scientific experience is completely different from our experience.
That experience that science is talking about today is rational experience. By and large, the range of our experience would be very large. Almost all experiences in our lives are not rational. They include emotions, imagination, moral experiences, and many other things. But science has narrowed it down to rational experiences. It is a vast expanse of human experience condensed into a very small, narrow path. We must consider this carefully. Science has narrowed it down to only those experiences that can be measured.
The vast field of experience, which can be extended in many different directions, has been reduced to only those experiences that can be accounted for, that can be measured. It is because of that narrow path that the discipline has developed so much. That is why science as we know it today would not be possible without mathematics. Astronomy was the first to be created. Then mechanics, physics, biology, chemistry, and so on gradually developed, but the ideal has always been clear-cut calculation. Therefore, if we define the law of modern science, it is the constant relationship between one measurable change and another measurable change. Science is always subject to this law. Science has narrowed human experience to only those experiences that obey the law. You must know this clearly.
Because measurement is the most important thing in science, the most troubling thing for science since the seventeenth century has been the problem of the spirit, the problem of the mind. You will never be able to measure the psyche. Science will never be able to calculate your sorrow. So science replaced the human psyche with the human brain. It hypothesised that if only the movements of the molecules of the brain could be accurately measured, then the psyche could be accurately measured. This is the hypothesis of the mind-body parallelism. Since the brain is made up of molecular movements, we can follow the movements of the brain and use this as a basis for mathematics. Science was on the path of understanding the laws of the mind, which were still unknown, but which, if measured more and more precisely, would eventually lead to the mind. Bergson says that this long-held parallel between the brain and the psyche was suspect from the start. Common sense tells us, "What in the world is this nature that is so futile?" There is no such thing as waste in this whole nature. One thing is translated and expressed in the movement of the atoms of the brain on the one hand, and on the other hand, the same thing is translated and expressed in the language of consciousness on the other hand. How can nature be allowed such a luxury? If indeed there is a parallel between the movement of the brain and the movement of human consciousness, the movement of the psyche, then why did nature need these two expressions? Then why do we need the psyche at all? The appendix is a useless, unnecessary organ of the human body, so it disappeared. Useless things should have disappeared a long time ago. First of all, when it becomes a habit, there will be no need for consciousness. At that time, your consciousness would have completely degenerated and disappeared. If the movements of the brain and the movements of the mind are two expressions of the same thing, then only one expression would be enough.
So he went into the study of memory. The reason why he did memory research was because he knew that the human verbal memory is located in one part of the cerebral medulla. The language centre is located in one part of the brain, and when that limited area is damaged, aphasia occurs. He studied aphasia for a long time. And he made a genius discovery. Today, the finer details have gradually developed, but the fundamental basis of this discovery remains unchanged. What kind of discovery was this? It was that the movements of the mind and the brain are not parallel. If the part of the brain where memory is supposed to reside is damaged, it is not the memory that is damaged, but the mechanism by which we try to remember, the memory-sensing apparatus that is damaged. Therefore, people lose their memories, but the memory itself is not damaged at all. If it is parallel, then
If there is a parallel, then damage to such a localised area would cause the memory itself to disappear. But the memory itself does not disappear. It is just that the mechanism that evokes it has been damaged, so that the memory is as if it were gone. So, what we have learned through detailed study of the molecular movements of the brain is that, to use Bergson's analogy, it is like the conductor's baton that conducts an orchestra. You can see the conductor's baton, but you can never hear the sound. The baton is the function of the brain and the sound is the mind. Our brain is the organ of pantomime. We can see the actors on the pantomime stage making different gestures. The movements of the cerebral spinal cord are those gestures. But we never hear the dialogue. This dialogue is memory. It is the psyche. The brain marrow is not a function of the psyche. The brain is the directing device that orients the human mind to this real world.
That is why Bergson writes that the human brain marrow is an organ of attention to real life. It is an organ of attention, but not an organ of consciousness. It acts to keep consciousness connected to this real life. It is said that all human beings forget, but there is nothing more difficult for a human being than to forget. For example, you often hear stories about a man who drowns and sees his whole life before he dies, or a man who falls down a mountain and at that moment sees the whole of his life from his childhood. That is memory. At that moment, the human being loses all attention to this present world, this real life. He becomes totally indifferent to this reality. But humans, who have this brain next to us, are always designed to recall only the memories that are necessary. The brain is always selecting and reminding us of only those memories that are useful for real life. When the function of the brain, which is the organ of attention, slows down, memories suddenly come to mind. So you have your entire history with you at all times, only you are not aware of it. That is called unconsciousness. What you are conscious of is the consciousness that allows you to act well in this world. The unconscious is always hidden within you.
Around the time Bergson made this discovery, the concept of the unconscious became very popular in psychology. Mysterious things are occurring in this world. The spirit is always beyond our consciousness. And it is always waiting for the opportunity to appear. In this light, the existence of the soul cannot be denied out of hand. Everyone thinks that when we die, the spirit ceases to exist. But this belief is not based on solid evidence. This is being fooled by the way science has thought for the past three hundred years. What if the brain and the human spirit are not parallel? In that case, even if my brain were to disintegrate, my mind might still be independent.
This is something that can be understood by common sense. Memory and brain activity are parallel and independent of each other. The only reason to think that the soul disappears when a human dies is because the body perishes. This is not a sufficient reason.
It is my reason that speaks when I speak, and Bergson is preaching so earnestly in accordance with reason. However, this is not scientific reason. It is the wisdom we are born with. It is the reason we are born with. Science processes this innate reason and turns it into the scientific method. Being able to calculate is different from having reason. Being able to calculate is a certain method of a certain discipline, but we must also consider that there are an enormous number of different disciplines. There are probably people who are able to pursue good academic studies without following only such methods.
We can go to the moon now. The scientific method is what is getting us there. That means we have made great progress in our behaviour. But how much progress have we made in wisdom for living? For example, do we have more wisdom today than in the Analects of Confucius? This is questionable. Our behavioural and practical conveniences are due to science, which has led the human spirit down a very narrow and abstract path. You must always be aware of this.
Reason must always criticise science. We must not forget that science is nothing more than one of the abilities that man has conceived. Psychology has also developed greatly, but it has developed along the line of treating the human mind materially, so it cannot handle things like human personality. It has not developed at all along this line. Nowadays, there is no such thing as fox possession, as there used to be. But there are a lot of neurotic patients. We just label them as neurotic. There is no difference at all between the label of silver evil and labeling them. However, modern intellectuals are very arrogant and conceited about their own rational consciousness. They say things like, "According to recent research, that neurotic seems to be a slightly different kind of neurotic." They believe that the matter is over. That's the end of it. That's how it has become.
The other day, before I came here, I read a book by Kunio Yanagida called 'Seventy Years in My Hometown.' I have heard about Kunio Yanagida for a long time, but I had not read his book yet. I recommend that you all read up on Kunio Yanagita. There are generally no good books that look like they have new faces now. It is not just Japan. No country can do that.
The book, 'Seventy Years in My Hometown,' is a book that he dictated when he was eighty-three, and it was serialised in the 'Kobe Shimbun.' In it, there was this story. It is a memoir of that man when he was fourteen years old. At that time, he was left alone at the home of his eldest brother, Mr Takashi Matsuoka, in a town called Nunokawa in Ibaraki Prefecture. In the neighbourhood of that house there was an old house called Ogawa, which had a very large collection of books. Yanagida went there every day and read so many books that his health deteriorated and he was unable to go to school. There was a storehouse at the back of the old house, and in front of it there was a garden of about twenty tsubos. There were two or three trees growing there, and a small stone shrine. When Yanagida asked what the shrine was, he was told that it was a shrine for his dead grandmother. Yanagida, as a child, had a strong desire to see inside the shrine. One day, he decided to open the stone door and looked inside. There he found a wax stone about the size of a fist. He saw a truly beautiful ball. At that moment, he said, he was struck by a strange, indeed bizarre, feeling. So he squatted down there and suddenly looked at the sky. It was a beautiful, clear spring sky, a perfect blue sky, and he could see many stars. At that time, he was very educated at the age of fourteen, so he had read many books and knew a lot about astronomy. He even thought at the time that, based on his knowledge of astronomy, there was no way that the stars could be in such a place. However, he could not dispell this strange feeling. At that moment, a crane circled high in the sky. When he heard a duck's call, he was horrified and came back to himself. "If the duck had not quacked, I would have gone mad. But I had to go through a great deal of hardship in life afterwards, and that is why I was saved," he wrote.
I was deeply moved when I read that. I thought, now I know who Mr Yanagida is. Without such a person, folklore would not be possible. Folklore is a study, but it is not a science. Folklore cannot be studied with such narrow-minded methods as those used in science. More importantly, folklore cannot be done without the kind of nerves that make people go mad when the ducks do not quack. Think about that carefully, gentlemen. I was moved at that time and realised that the secret of Mr Yanagida's learning lay in this kind of sensitivity.
Mr Yanagida has many disciples. However, although Mr Yanagida's writings are very interesting, those written by his disciples are not interesting at all. The reason is that his disciples are learned, but they lack a certain sensitivity. What is this sensitivity? Mr Yanagida saw an old lady's spirit in the wax stone in the shrine. Yanagita says he heard later that the old woman had a stroke and was lying down, and she always rubbed her body with the wax stone. The grandson said that this ball would be the best memorial for the old woman, and placed it in a box to worship her. The boy felt suspicious when he saw the ball, because he could see the old woman's soul residing in it. It was nothing. That is why Mr Yanagida writes such stories, saying that there are many ridiculous stories. But they are true stories. It is not a lie just because it is ridiculous. That is what Mr Yanagida wants to say.
Yanagita says that he was saved because he was fortunate enough to have to go through the hardships of life later on. However, everyone goes through the hardships of life. It would be particularly foolish to respect this. It is a matter of course. There is no need to bring up and discuss the existence of the grandmother's soul; it is a matter of course. There is no need to bring up and discuss the hardships of life; it is a matter of course. That is what Yanagita wants to say. Ladies and gentlemen, you all live with the souls of your loved ones. It comes to your hearts when you fondly remember your dead grandmother. It is the soul that people of the past experienced so keenly. It is something as mundane as the hardships of life, and just as real. Yanagida's folklore is possible because he has this kind of thought. However, the intellectuals of today cannot easily have such a sound thought. This is why folklore studies loses its vitality.
Since we are on the subject of Mr Yanagida, let me tell you something else. Mr Yanagida has a book called 'Life in the Mountains.' He writes about various mysterious stories of people living in the mountains. In the preface, he writes, "I'm sure there's no one else who remembers this story except me, so I'm writing it down." It is the story of a certain prisoner in the country of Mino. Before he went to prison, he was a charcoal burner. He burnt charcoal in the deep mountains and took it to his village to sell. His wife died early and he had a boy who was thirteen. Then, for some reason, he married a girl of the same age. The three of them lived together, and although he usually made enough to buy a cup of rice when he went down to the village, he stopped selling any charcoal. One day, he went down to the village with charcoal, but he still could not sell it. He returned empty-handed. Then, afraid to look at the starving child's face, and feeling so sorry for him, he sneaked into his room. He fell asleep without a word. He woke up suddenly and heard a sound. Looking in, he saw the boy sharpening a hatchet. The girl crouched down to watch. The evening sun was shining all over the entrance to the hut. The boy took the hatchet and lay down on a log at the entrance where the evening sun was shining. The girl also lay down. Then she said, "Father, kill us." At that moment, the charcoal burner felt dizzy and, not knowing what was happening, ended up killing the child. He cut off the child's head with the hatchet. He also wanted to kill himself, but when it did not work out, he wandered around the village and was caught by the police. This is the story written in the preface. What was Yanagita thinking at that time?
At that time, naturalistic literature directly imported from the West was flourishing. A number of psychological romance novels were written, and people were proud of claiming that this was the truth of life. I think that must have been really disturbing to Mr Yanagida. The simple story of a prisoner who has killed two children is a very tragic story, but it is a wholesome story that knows no guise. The child felt sorry for the father. No doubt they were starving, but I think they were filled with the feeling that if they died, their father would be spared at least a little. With that kind of spiritual power, he must have sharpened his hatchet with aplomb. When I see such things, how can I put it? I feel a real human soul that is not bound by words, that is to say, not bound by psychology. If I am moved by such stories, the soul of such a child must be there somewhere. The current intelligentsia has to go down to that point. Otherwise, I believe, this arrogant devastation of the soul will never subside. There are too many words. There is too much empty chatter about what to do about humanity.
I have something to say to you all about believing and knowing. To believe is to believe in your own way. To know is to know like everyone else. There are two ways of being human. There are two paths for humans. I know, but you do not know, and that is not the way of knowing. But it is my belief that I believe, not your beliefs. It is said that today we live in a very irresponsible age. Today's intellectuals are really irresponsible. For example, they say that we should save a young man in Korea. Do you take responsibility? They do not take responsibility. They are always saying things for which they cannot take responsibility. To believe is to take responsibility. I may believe wrongly. Because I think in my own way, of course I am sometimes wrong. But I take responsibility. That is believing. When we lose the power of belief, we stop taking responsibility. When we do that, we become collective. Because we do not believe in our own way, collective ideology prevails. Because people do not believe in their own way, collective ideology has a lot of power. Therefore, ideology is always anonymous. It takes no responsibility. The power of the unaccountable mass, the collective, is a frightening thing. Because the group does not take responsibility, it will invade anywhere, saying that it is right. People at times like that are frightening. That frightening thing comes out when they become collective. When I read Motoori Norinaga, I find that he really dislikes "know-it-alls." He hates them so much that it seems a little strange. He hates them to the core.
The "know-it-alls" he refers to are, in today's terms, intellectuals. I also dislike intellectuals. Journalism only publishes the words of intellectuals. Do not think that Japanese culture exists in such a place. Left wing, right wing, conservative, progressive, if you love Japan, why do you form groups like that? They are so quick to form Japan-loving associations. It is meaningless. The reason is that Japan is in my heart. It is in the hearts of all of you. Even if you create an association, it will not grow. A nation with such a long history cannot keep its own soul. It is what he refers to as ancient learning. It is the study of human expression. So, in essence, it is about thinking about human beings. Human beings are not dead matter, so we cannot objectify them and observe them from our perspective. As I said before, when thinking about human beings, we must inevitably consider the activity of the human mind. When thinking about the mind scientifically, as I said before, we must inevitably convert it into a physical body that can be calculated. That is what happens with the scientific method.
It is not possible with the scientific method to think of the human being as he is alive. So the only thing we can do is to interact with it. We cannot do that with science. You have to put yourself in the person's shoes. In order to think about it, we need an immense amount of imagination. People talk about science, science, but that is what all people who have made real inventions and discoveries have done. For a long time, they interacted with facts as if they were human beings. They interacted with them. The various things that you experiment with have become truly personal to you.
When it comes to knowing, there is the word "familiarity." You think you know, but you really do not. To truly know, superficial observation is no good. Observing or interpreting something requires a certain perspective. You stand on a certain point of view and observe from that point of view. But in order to truly know, we have to stop looking at things from such a perspective. I have written about Pascal's statement that man is a thinking reed. Perhaps Pascal did not mean that man has the capacity to think about many things. Rather, the true meaning is that human beings are as weak as reeds, but we must think without forgetting our human status. This is my own interpretation, but when humans think abstractly, they stop being human. He forgets his weak state of following his emotions. However, when humans think about others while retaining their human status, does this not mean that he interacts with that person? You dive into the heart of the other person. It is said that parents are the best judge of their children. Parents know their children because they have known them for a long time. A mother has no perspective on her child. She does not observe her child from a scientific point of view, or from a psychological point of view. She piles up intuitions that penetrate into the child's mind. We talk a lot about telepathy and the like, but we are all sensitive to it. There is such a thing as knowing people at a glance. It is clairvoyance.
(Kirishima, Kagoshima Prefecture, 5 August 1974)