It’s All In a Sneeze

When we sneeze we are overcome by an upwelling physiologic response-set: our bodies exert spasms, largely involuntary, to the effect of expelling irritants from the respiratory tract.  “Largely involuntary” is the key aspect of this discussion; we can, to some extent, suppress, delay, or hasten sneezes, and we can position, tense, or relax our bodies throughout the experience.  In short, we do not simply experience sneezes—in the typical instance, we join with the experience.

It should scarcely need to be said that what I just described about sneezes would apply, in general, to other (perhaps more intimate) physiological events.  To grope for an adequate phrase, we are “given over” to sneezes (and other things), though in truth—as regards our limited degree of voluntary control—we can be numbered among the agents that do the “giving.”

We can say, “I am going to sneeze now,” but we might also say that “My body is going to sneeze now,” or that “A sneeze is going to happen to me.”  The important thing here is the fact that a sneeze illustrates the mutable quality of “self.”  We typically attach the concept of volition to self, but to keep the matter (artificially) simple we employ the circular logic to the effect that we can decide to control our selves by simultaneously deciding that our “selves” are those things that we can control.  Other aspects of what perhaps we should call our “persons” (say, our bodies or our subconscious minds) are reckoned to be things with which our “selves” must contend.

The mutability of self exists at both frontiers of our existence as physical persons: the interface between our bodies and the world, and the interface between our “selves” and our bodies.  The first is easier to illustrate.  We sneeze to expel irritants; in the simplest example a fine dust particle (or usually a cloud of them) has elicited the response.  Any given particle might be either expelled or retained and incorporated into the tissues of the respiratory tract.  In either event (if only for an instant) those dust particles have more import and effect than many of the dead or near-dead skin cells hanging at the periphery of the body—indisputable (as we imagine) parts of the body one moment, household dust the next.

At the moment of a sneeze, in other words, our bodies and their irritants are one.  (Or we can consider molecules dissociated from absorbed dust particles and later employed in cellular processes, if we must flog the topic exhaustingly.)  Our bodies are systems within an encompassing world system; we distinguish between our bodies and the world because such distinctions suit our conceits of utility or of psychological necessity.

Similarly, the experience of a sneeze is the experience of a neurologic system of which we have limited knowledge and limited control.  There is a moment in which we know we are going to sneeze (and then sometimes we don’t sneeze—such is the character of our knowledge).  What is undeniable is the fact that either we encourage the sneeze reaction and then experience our success when we know one is going to happen, or we attempt to suppress a sneeze and then realize we are going to fail.  (Or we can try to ignore an incipient sneeze; good luck with that.)

We give ourselves over to the sneeze.  In that moment we are not independent actors; we are (such as we conceive of ourselves as “selves”) participants in a neurologic system.  Could we have successfully suppressed or delayed a sneeze?  (There are, conceivably, instances in which such things would really matter.)  Were we overwhelmed by a purely physiologic process, or did we give in to it?  Perhaps more to the point, why would we—all logic and evidence to the contrary—insist that we are (as we conceive of our “selves”) discrete creatures of thought, rather than shifting and ill-defined thought-collections near the conscious pole of a larger thought-system?

I will provide another example.  A person walks up to a car, pulls out a crowded key-ring, and inserts the proper key into the door.  I will dispense with the silly part first.  In keeping with the “sneeze” discussion, at the moment of employing the proper key, the key is as much a part of the person’s body as the finger bone that allows the person to insert the key into the lock.  Of course it can be objected that the bone is a piece of living tissue, but that fact does not need to detract from the discussion.  It is conceivable (if not already practical) for a compromised finger bone to be replaced by some manner of metal or ceramic.  Would that implanted implement be any more or less a part of the body than the firmly-clenched key?

I bring up the car key example for a specific reason.  It is usually not difficult to pick out the proper key, even from a crowded ring, and insert it into the lock.  But assume the person is suddenly operating under unusual stresses.  Suppose a beloved family member is in sudden danger, and the first person needs to drive somewhere in a hurry.  Suddenly the most mundane of tasks can seem impossibly complex.

Which key is it?  Usually I just pick it out by habit.  How long has it been since I really looked at it?  Should I just try to collect myself and start over, or did I try enough of them that it would make more sense to just plow through all the rest?  Am I really sure the last one didn’t work, or in my panic did I not turn it correctly?  I can do this when it doesn’t matter; why can’t I do it when a loved one is in danger?

What I am describing is the kind of thought event that is a transformative experience.  Reality is no longer what it was, and we are no longer what we believed ourselves to be a few moments previously.  It is not simply that we are confused in that the parts of our lives do not seem to fit together.  Rather, it is that we are so disjointed that our attachments and our viewpoints do not seem to belong to us anymore.  I am reminded of Wilfred Owen’s relation of mental state, warned of poison gas in the trenches of World War One, and presumably straightforwardly afraid and wanting to efficiently don a gas mask: “an ecstasy of fumbling.”

In such a state it is no fancy or hyperbole to say that we must “forget ourselves” and concentrate on the task at hand.  We can clutch the keys in our hand and hope previously-ignored sensations of touch or weight will give us a clue.  We can back up and take a few hopefully-normal steps to the car in hopes that the action will jog memories.  We can narrate our usual course of actions so as to give ourselves a fresh viewpoint.

In short, we can embrace elements of a thought-system to which we have not priorly addressed ourselves.  In an important sense, it does not matter if those elements exist of themselves in the universe, or exist unrecognized in us, or are provided by the divine.  What matters first and foremost is that we recognize (especially later, when presumably we are attempting to incorporate the experience into our belief systems) that we cannot expand our realm of experience in any meaningful way without giving ourselves over to a larger conception of self in the process.

It might be said that the examples of boundary-pushing (or boundary-blurring) I have provided are trivial or uncommon, but it is equally true that—for most people—religious (or other boundary-challenging) experiences comprise very small and very uncommon life experiences.  It is not at all untypical for people to grasp onto a rare event in their lives, and declare those events to be those that inform their views of the ultimate.  What is lacking, unfortunately, is recognition that the challenging of boundaries involves not an expansion of self, but an expansion of what constitutes self.  This true expansion leads to greater life, but the immediate experience of true expansion necessarily requires a “giving-over” to new experiences that smacks of death.

And, it should go without saying, we must be prepared for the notion that further duties of expansion—potentially unlimited—lie before us.