Ed from Aeon sez, "The Scottish science fiction writer Ken MacLeod, (Intrusion, The Night Sessions) has a short essay in Aeon magazine exploring two strange sensations. Each one sounds like a mystical experience, but 'solves no problem, conveys no insight, and yet leaves me with an impression of significance'. Are they mere glitches in the mechanism by which his brain makes meaning? Are they rare or common? Do they mean anything?
"Aeon is a new online magazine about nature, culture, ideas and experience. One of its themes is finding new ways to grapple with spirituality, whatever it might be."
When I tell people about it they either look blank or say: 'Oh! You mean you have that too?' But it isn't a bond between us, not a secret, just a peculiarity, an anomaly, perhaps as random a feature of our minds as the ability to roll one's tongue is of our bodies. It solves no problem, conveys no insight, and yet leaves me with an impression of significance. It has an aftertaste, but no taste. That impression, that aftertaste, may be its empty secret: it may be a tiny glitch in the process by which our brains find meaning in sense.
(Thanks, Ed!)
