Caught by Truth: Kierkegaard on How Experience Leads to Simplicity

“If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.” S?ren Kierkegaard

What does he mean? It is impossible to understand what we have not become. Understanding follows experience — becoming. Understanding what rain is arises from experiencing rain. Understanding the other person arises from experiencing them. Understanding God comes from experiencing him.

To understand means to “stand under” — experience it. According to Kierkegaard,

“The simpler you are, the closer you are to the truth. Only when you forget the systems, forget the learned disputations, can you truly find the truth for your own life.”

Understanding is the fruit of standing under. Whatever we stand under (experience) we participate in. We always become what we experience. True understanding comes from that union between me and what I experience. Kierkegaard says that experience gives rise to simple thinking. Refusal to experience breeds complex thinking.

To understand a waterfall I must stand under the waterfall. When I stand under it I truly know what it is. Now I can speak about it. My words will be simple — I will not create systems or “learned disputations” about it. I will speak as a lover. A lover is someone who has tasted the goodness and knows what he is talking about.

He simply says,

“One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

The Pharisees don’t believe him. They insist on analysis and investigation. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?” they ask the man’s parents.

They try to complicate matters,

“Give glory to God by telling the truth,”?they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”

The man refuses to complicate things,

“Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

When you have had an experience, your knowledge is simple, your words are simple, your thinking is simple, and your life is simple. Kierkegaard insists,

“The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.”

When you have had the experience, you are caught. You cannot experience something true and remain uncaught. If you are not caught you have not experienced. You don’t yet know. You don’t yet understand because you don’t stand under.

All truth is simple. It is bound to “standing under” and “being caught.” When you are “under,” you talk about what you know. You are in “it,” and “it” is in you.

As Einstein said,

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

And Sir Isaac Newton,

“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

When we are caught by the experience, we speak simply, like a poet guided by the Muses. Yet, the simple things we say open up like a nesting doll into multiple layers, meanings, and overtones.

“The more simple and unified something is, the more it approaches the nature of God” Meister Eckhart.