Summer Solstice and Qualia

 

Datura in our front yard

Last night marked the summer solstice here in Mountain Standard Time (11:04 p.m. Thursday).  Most of my friends are on Eastern Standard Time, and their solstice is today (1:04 a.m Friday).  In our front yard, the Sacred Daturas looked like they would bloom during the night.  But when I got up to take the dog out at 2 a.m., they hadn't unfurled and this morning they're still in the blossom stage.  Their blooms open at night and then close up and wither as the sun rises.   This morning, it's apparent that the blooms are closer to opening.  Tonight, then, will be the night.  I'm sad that Mike is in Ohio caring for his mother and won't be here to share this sight with me and to photograph it.   Last year, since we didn't move here until the end of July, the Daturas were already in the midst of blooming so we weren't here to enjoy the anticipation of the first ones growing in the spring and then opening around the solstice. 

I watched the moon climb in the sky last night and illuminate the garden.  In the foreground were some squash plants with this year's blossoms a sign of the food to come, and the work that the sun does to feed us.  In the near background, the dried stems and seeds of tall grasses reminded me of last year's growth and last year's suns.

I had watered the plants in the garden shortly before the moon rose, and in the moonlight and waning light of the sun, birds flew down to perch on the fence, attracted to both the water and the insects that were themselves drawn by the water. 

Moonrise over the garden on the Summer Solstice

After dinner, I walked down to the road to the river.  The sun was low in the sky, barely over the mesa to my west.  As I neared the level of the river, I saw in the light of the declining sun that the air was filled with downy fluff--seeds released from the Cottonwoods along the river.  I came to a complete stop and just watched it float, and I saw the small shifts in wind over the river and road change the flow in direction of the fluff.  In these moments yesterday evening, in the garden and the yard, and on the road, I felt awe and grace, and experienced beauty and oneness with the world.     

I would not at all describe myself as mystical in the sense of believing that there are things that cannot, in time, be described and explained by science.  However,  I do believe that there are multiple ways of describing things.  For example, the color orange can be described scientifically, as can the process through which my eyes and brain create my experience of an instance of seeing orange.  But while these things can be explained and described, they don't capture my direct, personal, subjective experience of an instance of orange, or the qualia (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/). 

And I don't believe that the things I tell myself about those qualia are always true in the sense of describing anything about the world.  It's critical to make the distinction between the qualia and the things I tell myself about them, the judgments I make about them, and especially the claims I'm tempted to make about the world from them.   The qualia just are, they're my subjective experience; it would be incorrect to state that they're true or false, or that they by themselves reveal something about the world beyond my subjective experience of it.

So, when I have a spiritual experience of sorts, a feeling of oneness and connectedness, and a sense of awe about the world and me in it, that is a wonderful thing to experience and I seek out those kinds of experiences and cherish them.  But I believe it would be a mistake for me to conclude merely from those experiences that I am one with the universe, that there is some transcendental universal spirit or something like that. I think it's important to keep in mind that to come to such conclusions is to take a step beyond the qualia and to take a stance about the truth or falseness of something, and that the qualia are not sufficient justification to do so.

Keeping this in mind does not at all diminish the value my experience.  I still had an experience of awe and grace, beauty and oneness last night as the moon rose over the mountains, as light of the setting sun and the rising moon washed over the garden, and as the cottonwood seeds drifted over the river and across the road.