ARGUMENTS (2) 281to outlast it in order to do so. A person could be indestructible just as a
person could be stronger or smarter than any other person. A person
who was indestructible or strongest or smartest could learn that he had
this exalted status. But the ways of learning this would not include
directly experiencing those qualities in oneself. Regarding being
strongest, one could discover that one could lift heavier weights, or
throw heavy objects farther, than anyone else could. Regarding being
smartest, one could find that one’s intelligence test results were above
anyone else’s or that one has made discoveries in vastly different areas
that no one else had thought of.
Discovering that one was indestructible would be harder. No one
claims the indestructibility of one’s body. Those who have held to the
inherent indestructibility of the person have identified the person with
the mind or soul. They have then argued that the mind or soul is
immaterial and not subject to anything analogous to erosion or
decomposition. Plato’s Phaedo is a classic example. Jain texts at least
contain the raw materials for such an argument. But unlike being in
pain, being indestructible is something one would seem to have to learn
one had by inference. Even if one had some sort of series of experiences
in which one had reason to believe that, if one’s mind or soul
destructible, it would by now have been destroyed, this would still be
knowledge by inference, not by direct awareness.
The problem, then, is that the relevant states or qualities – the ones
that we would have to have awareness of in order for enlightenment
experience to be evidence for religious beliefs – are not possible objects
of awareness. If this is so, then there will not be any principle of
experiential evidence by virtue of which being aware of such states or
qualities is evidence for religious belief, because there will be no such
awareness to be evidence. The principle
(P*****) If a person S has an experience E which, if reliable, is a
matter of S being non-introspectively aware of being in
an experience-independently existing state or having
an experience-independently possessed quality X of S,
then S’s having E is evidence that S is in state, or
possesses quality, X
will not help because it will not apply to enlightenment experiences.
The fact of the matter is that there seems to be no principle of
experiential evidence on which enlightenment experience provides
evidence for religious belief.