Spiritual Phenomena: A Gentle Prelude

The multifaceted experience of phenomena

Do you want to feel the nudge of a provident Destiny en route to your aspired goals? Do you know what it's like to be favored by a stroke of luck, even when the odds are stacked against you? Have you ever sleep-walked into a moment of serendipity, serving you quantum leaps on a silver platter?

Just three examples of intangible influencers Destiny, good fortune, and serendipity.

If you are looking to improve your navigation of life's boons and dooms, you'll find that there is plenty of insight, if not benefit, to be gained from knowledge about these fabled topics. Here at Destinosophy, you'll find heightened awareness of the invisible while keeping many of those probabilities and more or less intended consequences that are pushing and pulling the threads of our existence brightly on the radar.

I see spiritual phenomena as inner truths untouched by dogma and, ideally, independent of our physical senses. Humans acknowledge them through firsthand experience, subtle, yet deeply real. Resonating with a greater order that speaks not to belief, but to our inner certainty. We are not asked to adopt someone else’s ideas or adventures, whether or not codified. We perceive from within, guided by the authenticity of our own experience. Our very Destiny.

Hence, I anchor Destinosophy in the spiritual aspects of phenomenal forces, especially those pertaining to Human Destiny. My approach is holistic, tolerant, and respectful, yet it does not pander to any agenda, movement, religion, or worldview.

Let's have a brief overview of the history and philosophy of the general term phenomenon.

What is a phenomenon?

A phenomenon is a personally experienced, remarkable event, directly observed and witnessed. It can have a spiritual cause, like a portend. It can appear through nature, like a rainbow, or even be man-made, as in Artificial Intelligence, or it may manifest invisibly, like gravity and gravitation.

We know several 'phenomenal' classes and categories, but that's for my next story, in which I will go into quite a bit more detail.

Our term phenomenon developed from the Greek phainómenon for the appearance of something unusual that shows itself before us. Something that alights, as in phaínō/phainein for I show/to show. It refers to an outstanding occurrence. Something extraordinary. A wow! moment or encounter.

Who featured phenomena in their theories?

The Hellenic/Roman skeptic thinker Sextus Empiricus (late 200-early 300 CE) originally addressed phenomena as appearances to our unique subjective senses, processed by our psychological states, mirror neurons, echo chambers, ideals, aspirations, fears, you name it. In his undogmatic view, nobody knows anything for certain. So any judgment of the reality of a definitive truth compared to other suggestions would not have been his preferred position. He clearly was a "different strokes for different folks" man. And today, many centuries and large technological and other leaps later, still nobody knows.

The German polymaths Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) later extended the metaphysical meaning of the phenomenon. Leibniz believed it to be an appearance of reality.

To Kant, who properly coined and put the term on the map, phenomena were versions of reality shaped by our human minds. According to him, a phenomenon is the opposite of its interconnected term noumenon, from the Greek nooúmenon, a derivative of the famous noûs, meaning intelligence or mind.

Immanuel Kant classified a noumenon as something which can only be knowable through purely intellectual intuition, a standalone factual reality, whereas a phenomenon is a subjectively perceived affair.

Have you ever heard of Phenomenology?

It is the philosophical exploration and thought school of how things appear unfiltered by analysis, science, or biased interpretation through our more or less conscious, subjective experience. It does not ask for causality or definition. It’s how we note our surroundings, process meanings, and feel about our memories.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), the Austrian-German mathematician, philosopher, and godfather of Phenomenology saw phenomena as firsthand knowledge because of their appearance in our awareness. The Nazis "cancelled" him, to no avail though, as his achievements, including his influence on Existentialism, prove impossible to be marginalized.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), the French existentialist, described phenomena as meaningful results of our interconnected experience of body, perception, and world.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), a student of Husserl and magnificent yet controversial German existential philosopher, included unique angles on the paths of Destiny and fate in his views and work on Phenomenology. He saw phenomena as a lived approach to reveal our very "being-there" while decoding the framework of existence, or "being-in-the-world."

A note for completeness

We should not confuse the school of Phenomenology with the similarly-sounding Phenomenalism. The latter developed from the work of British thinkers. These were George Berkeley (1685-1753), who claimed that to be is to be perceived, and David Hume (1711-1776), who argued we only have ideas and impressions but cannot know “things-in-themselves". Both reduced knowledge to experience. Modern European scientists and philosophers like Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970 ), and Alfred. J. Ayer (1910–1989) formalized a science-based Phenomenalism. They rejected Metaphysics, believing physical objects to be constructions of logical sensory experiences.

And then there is yet another branch called Epiphenomenalism, credited to the British biologist-philosopher Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). It claims that a brain's physical workings generate mental events without any effective power or meaning. Reminiscent of that battlefield of minds called free will v. determinism debate. To be revisited.

Why should you become accustomed to phenomenal forces?

Because there's likely never been a better, or rather a worse time to rediscover an essence that could help us evaporate the mundane mist we're more and more exposed to. You see, anything can and will occur, and nothing ever stays the same. Take this from someone whose journey is living testament to dealing with human Destiny, fate, the many hands of luck, and serendipity.

Just another reason I wrote that book about Destiny & Co.

Into the Unseen

From the rise of Ancient Skepticism to the Enlightenment, from Phenomenology to modern Metaphysics, phenomenal experiences are both fascinating and debated. But how do they appear in our lives today and beyond the senses? Let’s find out more in my next article Phenomena All Around: From Nature to Spirit.

Story by Helena Lind, author of The Destiny Book