Subjective Experiences and Isolation

So much of human experience is trying to share subjective experiences with other people. Imagine that you're sitting at the dinner table and you taste something that's disgusting. What's your first reaction? I bet you look over to whoever you're sitting next to and say, “here, try this.” Even unpleasant things are often shared with other people. There is an inherent satisfaction, enjoyment, fulfillment, quenching, or completeness that is experienced when we share a subjective experience with someone else.

This is different from sharing objective experiences. Objective experiences are ones that anyone can see, and describing them is merely a narrative. In fact, it is more closely related to teaching or explaining something. An objective experience of visiting the supermarket would be what other people could see, hear, or perceive as you walk through the supermarket. It would lack all of the internal experiences that were invisible to casual observers. In other words, anything that occurs inside of one's own mind that is not observable by others through their normal senses, is a subjective experience. And until the inner workings of the mind can be explained in such a precise manner as to achieve objectivity between different testers, the subjective experience will still remain a bit of a personal mystery.

Objectively, I entered my car, drove to the supermarket, went into the grocery store, bought cheese, waited in line for 10 minutes, and then came home. Subjectively, I smelled beautiful flowers in the floral department, saw the love of my life, and experienced an emotional roller coaster when she looked at me. I also had lots of anxiety and apprehension when I saw everyone with a mask on because of the pandemic, and I wondered whether there would be any shredded cheese left. The first narrative is objective and it's completely boring. The second part is subjective and it's far more interesting. There doesn't need to be a debate between what's more or less interesting, but more importantly, sharing an objective experience is rather flat. It isn’t very satisfying. Someone asks, “how was your day?” and you respond, “I woke up, I had tea, I ate food, I read the paper, I went to sleep.” That experience doesn't tell you much about the person's day, other than what they actually did. It tells you about what activities were performed. But so what? A robot could have done all those activities theoretically, and I wouldn't care because I don't care what robots do when I'm not around. I'm not interested in what the machinations of non-living creatures are. I'm interested in what humans are doing because they have subjective experiences and emotions, that for the time being, are unachievable or unattainable by robots. And it's those subjective experiences and emotions, that in my opinion, give life meaning.

We, as humans, have a craving to share our subjective experiences with other people because it gives our life meaning. If I have a dream, it's rather meaningless to everyone else. They can't imagine what my dream was like, and there are no rules of logic in the dream world. So it's very difficult following a dream-story because there is no cause and effect or consequences that matter. A dream is like: “well then I went to this room and a unicorn appeared and farted out a rainbow and then I ate lucky charms and I shot the president in the face.” Because it lacks causality or a continuous chronological narrative, and because it didn't actually happen in real life, it's hard for other people to be engaged in it. But a dream is a subjective experience. In a dream you experience emotions, events, activities and feelings, and those are all the same types of things that happen to you when you're awake, aside from the activities not actually impacting real life. But your emotions and your feelings feel the same in the dream world as they do in real life. In fact, we know that you can have night terrors which increase your heart rate, you can have fear which changes your breathing, you can have joy, and you can even have an orgasm. Many of us wish to share our dreams with others when the emotions are intense or the experiences are extreme. Others might hate hearing a dream, but there's an urge to share that subjective experience. By sharing a subjective experience with someone and having them hear it, I mean actually listen to it and validate it as real, it brings it from the fantasy world where no one actually cares about it, to the real world. If we only care about objective experiences, we turn our world into a robotic machination of objects that could literally have no emotion, meaning, value, spirituality, or pleasure whatsoever. The world becomes a place where all that matters are actions and deeds, and where feelings, intentions, and personal experiences and emotions are irrelevant.

Where do you think pain exists? Not in the body, that's for sure. Pain exists in the mind, the brain, and the conscious experience of a person. Pain requires consciousness to be perceived. Pain is a subjective experience, which is why we need to ask other people what their pain level is. We cannot determine pain reliably from any type of machine or sensor, as research has shown. Pain is not objective, and therefore it is difficult to treat because you have to rely on the person's story. You have to listen to what they say and use it as a guide to how to treat them.

But why stop with pain, when most feelings and emotions are subjective by definition. True, laughter is generally an indication of happiness, and one can see objectively that you are laughing and assume that you are full of pleasure in that moment. However, there can be fearful, embarrassed, or shy laughter, so objectivity is not guaranteed. Simply observing the outside state does not tell the whole story of the inner experience.

Moving on to grander experiences, such as peak, mystical, or spiritual experiences, we see that people may go to any length to share this experience with others. In other words, people will do anything to share the most intense and pleasurable experience in the world with other people. A spiritual or peak experience is, by definition, the most intense euphoric moment you've ever had; it changes you forever. Think of taking all the best drugs simultaneously and then amplify the experience ten-fold; that’s what a peak experience is like. It's essentially the fullest actualization of a human being. This intense euphoria is often what gives people meaning in their lives, and gives people a spiritual direction. But this blissful experience is purely subjective. There is no one else that can observe what's happening to you and understand what you experienced without you explaining it to them. And even then, it is incredibly difficult to explain the feelings experienced during a spiritual or peak experience. This inability to describe your experience in easily understandable terms can be piercingly isolating. You know that your experience was real, and you weren't dreaming, so people should care about it. If they want to know how you are, you're better than ever. But then they want to know why you're better than ever. So you share your experience with them. But because they haven't had it, they feel detached from you or absent from you, as if you're telling them about a dream. And since you are so happy, yet they see no concrete evidence or something for which they understand to explain why you're so happy, it creates distance between you and them. They either see you as attaining something they never have and possibly never will, in which case they get jealous. Or, they see you as a crazy person who has become delusional, and can no longer distinguish between what is true and what is fantasy.

So this rift forms between the person who had a peak experience and the listener who's trying to understand it. How do you describe to someone what it feels like to be on a roller coaster if they’ve never been to an amusement park? How do you describe to someone what ice cream tastes like if they’ve never had a single frozen treat?

We have generally created words to describe concepts and objects that are either shared between us or understood as objective in the observable world. Yes, we have abstract concepts like justice and truth that many of us can agree upon, but when it comes to spiritual enlightenment or peak experiences, there are not enough separate words that can truly distinguish these experiences from other words that we use in daily language. For example, if I'm describing my peak experience as oneness or euphoria, people just think that it sounds like gibberish. These words aren’t sufficient to transfer the weight and meaning of my experience.

Regardless, this urge to share subjective experiences with other humans and have them fully understand us is so overwhelming that it often drives these people into states of irritability and aggression. People who have undergone these experiences are certain that it was more intense than what most people have experienced. Yet, they now find themselves trapped in their own subjective bubble where no one else really understands or believes them. This isolation after such a joyous experience is so ironically harmful. We need to have a place where people can share their subjective experiences about their peak moments and spiritual enlightenment so that they do not feel isolated, lonely, scared, irritable, angry or frustrated. We need to help expose to the world that these experiences are occurring on a regular basis, and are fundamental to what a human being can fully achieve. We need to take back the significance of the subjective experience as meaningful in itself and not let scientific objectivity determine what's meaningful for us. We need to realize that a single dream may be fantasy, but when thousands of people across the world are having the same dream, at the same time, it is more than fantasy. It is now a shared experience that needs to be acknowledged and recognized. The time has come for these people to have a voice, and to share their experience. The isolation is over, and the healing and celebration can begin.