Powerful Literature

I am fascinated with Quantum Change stories. Read my blog post for an explanation.

In last week's post, Our Resourceful God I mention two Russian literary powerhouses, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Though they never met, they lived and wrote during the same period in the 19th century. Both men had interesting religious conversion experiences, which empowered them to affect spiritual awakening in a dark period into the future, during the Communist Soviet era.

I like the dramatic story of Dostoevsky (1821-1881), whose writings continue to show up on the lists of "top 100" novels of all time. Philip Yancey, best-selling American Christian author calls The Brothers Karamazov the greatest novel ever written. Anyone who has ever attempted, and succeeded, in slogging through the dense material (paragraphs can run on for many pages!) and heavy themes, (and keeping up with all those Russian names and nicknames!) is rewarded by an insight that is potentially life-changing.

What makes Dostoevsky's plot and characters so relevant, more than 130 years after his death?
His literary works delve into the troubled human condition of 19th-century Russia which is not so different from the troubled human condition of any era.

The young intellectual Fyodor was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for attending secret Utopian society meetings which the Czar Nicholas I believed were subversive. A few years into his Siberian imprisonment, he learned that his sentence, along with many other prisoners, had been changed to execution by firing squad. While Dostoevsky waited his turn, three prisoners, clothed in white burial cloaks, were matched in front of the armed men, kissed a cross offered by a priest, tied to a stake, caps pulled down over their eyes, and waited for the guns leveled at them to fire. The prisoners waited in cruel, exaggerated suspense. Then the guns were lowered and the caps removed. It had been a malicious hoax.

Dostoevsky immediately wrote his brother about how the experience had changed him:

"When I look back on my life and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul—then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift . . . I will be reborn for the better."

While still in prison, Dostoevsky was the recipient of a peasant's unwavering friendship. One day the peasant looked at Dostoevsky with overwhelming brotherly love, and another layer of Dostoevsky's soul was peeled away:

"When I got off the plank bed and gazed around, I suddenly felt that I could look on these unfortunates with quite different eyes, and suddenly, as if by a miracle, all hatred and rancor had vanished from my heart."

Dostoevsky went on to write some of the most powerful literature in the history of Russia, awakening a spiritual  yearning in future Russian intellectual heavyweights in the 1970s like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the United States in 1974 because his writings raised global awareness of injustices in the USSR, for which he had earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

A great paradox. Out of suffering often comes life-changing insights and victory. One of Jesus' most repeated themes in the Gospels it that one most lose his life to save it, not physical death, but death of "Self," followed by rebirth in the Truth of God.

The most compelling "proof" of God? A changed life.

Quantum Change

It isn't likely that many readers will identify with Ebeneezer Scrooge. He was a hardhearted, miserable miser until, in the course of one night, he made a 180 degree turnaround, transforming into a giddy, compassionate, altruist.  Does this kind of change happen in real life?

For most of us, change happens so gradually it goes unnoticed until we look back and everything is different. For some of us, change is more startling.

William R. Miller and Janet D'de Baca, PhD clinical psychologists and teachers of traditional approaches to self-improvement, became intrigued by stories of clients' experiences of sudden, dramatic change. Miller and D'de Baca placed an ad in a local newspaper for people to share their stories of unexpected, personal transformations. They were shocked by the deluge and content of responses .


They were struck by the diversity of the responses, and also by the common thread that ran through them. The personal testimonies included "bolt-from-the-blue" and "seeing-the-light" types of mystical encounters to  life-changing insights and "powerful, sudden moments of consciousness." (I describe my own transformation experience in But the Greatest of These is Love as "the scales falling off my eyes.)

To document their data, Miller and D'de  Baca published  Quantum Change, When Epiphanies and Sudden Insights Transform Ordinary Lives (2001). They define Quantum Change as being marked my four elements: vivid, surprising, benevolent, and enduring. It is vivid in that it is an identifiable, distinctive, and memorable moment when the transformation occurred, or at least began. The person is aware that something extraordinary has happened, providing the element of surprise, or awe. Even though the experience is often unsettling, there is a benevolent quality to the event, an overwhelming quality of "loving kindness" surrounding it. The change is enduring. Even decades after the event, the transformation is still intact.

These transformations are mostly dismissed by the Western world  as delusions (Science) or presumption (Religion). But the "evidence" exists in a changed life. Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx would have likely scoffed at the idea of Quantum Change, yet, William James, their contemporary, often referred to as the father of American psychology, wrote about the same phenomena in The Varieties of Religious Experience (originally published in 1902 and still available today). Stories of Quantum Change are common among spiritual giants like St. Paul, St. Augustine, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Teresa. In fact, most spiritual giants have a Quantum Change story.  The experience has shaped the lives of great thinkers and writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and C. S. Lewis, who said he got on a bus an atheist, and got off, a believer. Quantum Change has been the impetus of many social reformers like Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, and Bill Wilson.

After my spiritual metamorphosis in 2000, a friend who was aware of my experience, shared an article from Christianity Today which led me to this book, which I immediately ordered, ravenously read, and wrote Dr. Miller. He wrote me back, stating that Quantum Change isn't as rare as one might think. People hesitate to talk about their experience because of the inadequacy of words to describe their experience,  and they "feel odd." I understood this awkward difficulty. Still, it gave me hope. Miller described himself in the letter, not in the book, as a "devote Christian" and described these as "born again" experiences. Yes, me too!

In the surveys of respondents, Changers reported their priorities reversed. Characteristics that seemed important before the change, like wealth, pleasure, attractiveness, abruptly diminished in importance. The biggest single gain was in the priority given to spirituality, which previously had been at the bottom or close. Many reported that Quantum Change was a process, a series of changes, like a "primary earthquake, followed by a series of aftershocks." Many Changers felt moved to acts of compassion and service to others. My experience paved the way for my adoption of an older Russian boy.

The final chapter, "Message to Humankind," sums up that Changers acknowledge there is a Truth in the experience, "sensing a great Whole of which all humans are a part" (Italics mine). A common theme in the aftermath of Quantum Change is humility, and a feeling of unworthiness of the experience. And immense gratitude. I must be a textbook example—I related to all "symptoms."

 Read the book, (and mine!) Consider your own spiritual journey. If you have experienced a Quantum Change, be it an epiphany or a sudden insight that sparked change, please leave me a message. Share your testimony. You are in excellent company!