All the modern existential philosophers accepted Kant’s approach to metaphysics to a significant degree. We can’t see the world in any other way than in terms of quality, quantity and relation and so forth --subjective categories. We can never perceive the actual noumena —the true reality that supports or gives rise to these phenomena.
Space and time and the categories which include such notions as plurality and existence can only be applied to the phenomena of our experience. If we apply them to things which are not experienced we end up with antimonies --contrasting statements which both can apparently be proved by purely intellectual argument.
In this way Kant demolished all purely intellectual arguments for the existence or nonexistence of God. We simply cannot apply such a category as existence to such a non empirical entity. How do you and Kastrup deal with Kant’s argument?
It seems to me that a lot of people are using quantum mechanics as a trump card to reintroduce their pet metaphysical system. The proposition seems to be that if anything is possible on the basis of quantum physics, then my metaphysical system is possible. The problem is that if anything is possible everything is possible. How do you decide?
And then there is the study of theology from a neuropsychological perspective–neurotheology.
The mystical experience of unity.
In “The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience” neuroscientists d’Aquili & Newberg propose six types of religious experiences:
The numinous experience of the holy
The transformative experience of reorientation
The courage of facing suffering and death
The moral experience of obligation
The experience of order and creativity in the world
The thesis of this thread is mainly directed toward the last of those types–the mystical experience of unity. The meditation on impermanence which we discussed above, is directed primarily toward transformative reorientation.
Bob–I watched Jonathan Pageau who is back on YouTube after getting sick with covid-19. It was you that introduced him to me.
His vision is literally a geometrical hierarchical pattern. In his latest video he discusses the story of Jesus and Peter walking on water. The disciples were in a boat on the water. Jesus was on a mountain praying. Marcus Borg interprets the story metaphorically as a parable. What’s my point? The story is based on a vision and image, a series of images really. The text conveys images. It stimulates the imagination.
Ludwig Wittgenstein said "we make to ourselves pictures of facts. The picture presents the facts in logical space, the existence and non-existence of atomic facts. The picture is a model of reality. To the objects correspond in the picture the elements of the picture. The elements of the picture stand, in the picture, for the objects. The picture consists in the fact that it’s elements are combined with one another in a definite way. The picture is a fact. That the elements of the picture are combined with one another in a definite way, represents that the things are so combined with one another. This connection of the elements of the picture is called its structure and the possibility of this structure is called the form of representation of the picture. Is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture. Thus the picture is linked with reality; it reaches up to it. It is like a scale applied to reality. "
This of course is on a high level of abstraction. Ludwig Wittgenstein said much more about the picture which I think will be worth reading and presenting here. But we can already see the importance of the pictorial imagination to Wittgenstein who was a mystic and a contemplative.
Paugeau is not nearly as articulate as Jordan Peterson. He’s a bit too conservative for me. But he is quite literally a visionary. And he’s able to convey this well enough to stimulate the imagination. He’s done a lot to bring the Eastern Orthodox Church to the public eye. The public eye --imagine that!
The structure and content of his vision is archetypal. Although he is not a big fan of CG Jung. As you know, he analyzes popular culture this way. But his method is traditional, based on the teachings of the early church fathers.
His vision, which he claims is the vision of Christian orthodoxy, putatively outlines the structure of reality. It is ontological. It is the putative structure of being. It is a Mandala no less than the Tibetan Buddhists.
Now a big question for the Christian metaphysician is where if anywhere does Jesus as the Christ in the structure of being?
Matthew Fox takes on this question in his book “The Coming of the Cosmic Christ”. He asserts that the coming together of the historical Jesus and the cosmic Christ will make Christianity whole at last." He’s right to the degree that he can accomplish that.
The Cosmic Christ he defines as the pattern that connects all the atoms and galaxies of the universe – a pattern of divine love and justice that all creatures and all humans bear within them." He goes on to discuss the holy omnipresence of the Divine One in all things. This he says is the Cosmic Christ. Your thoughts?
I think you’ll find that Kastrup also supports the Kantian perspective:
This means, of course that it is an aspect of mind and doesn’t necessarily interrupt with Kastrup’s hypothesis. Mind, according to him, is the greater mind at large and the “lesser” mind in us.
Kastrup is quite a sceptic if you read him carefully, and Michael Shermer had to admit after their interview, that the conversation had taken a different turn than he had expected.
“1975 veröffentlichten Waxman und Geschwind, dass Patienten mit Schläfenlappenepilepsie auffällige Veränderungen in Selbstgefühl und Verhalten entwickelten, unter anderem intensive Religiosität (hyperreligiosity).“
Of all the examples that Kastrup gives, the experiments with psychoanalytic drugs, such as psilocybin, has interesting therapeutic uses and assists the feeling of unity that has been lost through depression or some other cause.
What seems to have happened is that they have discovered the secret of Eleusis, the cult that went on for an incredible length of time until the Christians destroyed it and was noted by historical people to have given them a deep life changing experience. Some have said it was like dying before dying, which has Christian connotations with regard to kenosis.
I’ve listed all the general effects, and some are not so good, so I’m not saying that this is the way to go. But the experiments point to the fact that the experience of death before dying, by whatever method, leads to ego-drop and feeling of unity of self and the universe. Kastrup points to the possibility that we are blinded by our brain functions to that unity, and by restricting the brain activity, we can peek at the reality behind the impression we get through the interpretation of the brain.
I found this on YouTube with regard to geometrical patterns: youtube.com/watch?v=utMx48aGndI - YouTube which is quite short but interesting.
Recently I have had some problems with Pageau, although not serious ones, but I started looking in other spaces.
When you speak to people about life, you notice how they also portray scenes in anecdotes, which seem to be images they have and which they are describing. That is why it is no surprise to me that we make ourselves pictures of facts. The best rhetoricians seem to paint pictures with words, leading you into a scene they have created, and I find that, if they are good, it isn’t only true that a picture paints a thousand words, but that a thousand words should paint a picture.
I believe now that the Gospel story we have in the NT was firstly written as a Greek tragedy by Mark, and that this was “improved” in particular to include the divine nature and the resurrection by Matthew and Luke. Of course, there were also some other stories added as well. But I see the story as a composition of images, each with a particular lesson to teach, which was the way the church told the story in the cathedrals, with pictures of scenes on the wall for those who couldn’t read.
I think that this was his intention all along, and being an artist, he has a natural adeptness at creating a scene in his woodcarving. They speak to me more than some of his explanations. However, using his methods for creating a scene, he has found he can explain experiences in a way that people find interesting, because it is different. Back when I was doing youth work, I found I could excite the young people especially when I used art and expressionist methods to illustrate a point. I found that my sketches even found interest amongst preachers, even if they interpreted them differently to the way I had thought of them.
It was the mandalas that caught my attention early on in eastern teaching and continues to do so. Not surprising that I found CG Jung’s mandalas and pictures interesting for that reason. Surprisingly, because I included the contemplative/meditative aspect into the circle, older Evangelicals weren’t that happy. I continued because it was by this method that I gained insight into spiritual matters and I was able to cope with the stress of medical life better, and include the spiritual into my work.
The cosmic Christ is also a subject that Richard Rohr picks up on. I have read Rohr’s book on the subject but had some problems with his enthusiasm, which went overboard on occasion (in my view), but the amalgamation of the historical Christ with the cosmic is the Gospel story. Christianity is the reaction to that story, and its wholeness has been neglected because of human egocentricity. Once the church had power, it corrupted, and as a result it split, over and over again. It led to even further divisions between Christians and other traditions, which were “heathen” and “idolatry” in the eyes of the church. The attempt to understand and find common ground took so long that much damage has occurred.
The cosmic Christ has also been of particular interest among Asian Christians. This was particularly evident in the debates held at the World Council of Churches meeting in New Delhi in 1961, when Paul D. Devanandan of India argued, on the basis of Ephesians 1:10, that a cosmic Christ unites all things with himself; this includes non-Christian religions. This continued to be argued by South Asian Christians such as M. M. Thomas from India and D. T. Niles from Ceylon as a rationale for dialogue and cooperation with other religions. (Wikipedia)
The YouTube video you posted about the sacred geometry is an infomercial for a laptop computer. How ironic is that?
Capitalism reigns. We can become conscious of this fact, but the extent to which our cognitions are conditioned by it goes deeper than consciousness. We can study it objectively as in an economics class. But only when we ask what are the implicit presuppositions on which our thinking, propositions and assumptions are based can we begin to imagine capitalism and to understand how it shaped and continues to shape us. Nevertheless it is the water we swim in.
In The Dimensions of Paradise: Sacred Geometry, Ancient Science, and the Heavenly Order on Earth by John Michell starts off by explaining:
“Ancient science was based, like that of today, on number, but whereas number is now used in the quantitative sense for secular purposes, the ancients regarded numbers as symbols of the universe, finding parallels between the inherent structure of number and all types of form and motion. Theirs was a very different view of the world from that which now obtains. They inhabited a living universe, a creature of divine fabrication, designed in accordance with reason and thus to some extent comprehensible by the human mind. The special regard paid to mathematical studies in the ancient world arose from the understanding that number is the mean term in the progression from divine reason to its imperfect reflection in humanity. At some very early period, by a process quite beyond explanation, certain groups of numbers were brought together and codified. Thus was created that numerical standard, or canon of proportion, which was at the root of all ancient cultures and was everywhere attributed to some form of miraculous revelation. It was taken to be the nucleus and activating principle of number generally, a summary of all the types of progressions and relationships that occur within the field of number and thus a faithful image of the numerically created universe.”
Michel goes on to demonstrate how sacred geometry permeated ancient culture throughout the world. Pythagoras and Plato were steeped in this tradition as just two examples in philosophy. Jung began to investigate the geometry of images produced by the unconscious psyche. I haven’t done the work, but I hypothesize that the pattern of iconic imagery the Jonathan Pageau in Christian tradition will fit nicely within the ancient sacred geometry.
You are probably aware that the dimensions of the Hebrew tabernacle and temple conform to the dimensions of paradise which are imagined on the macro scale in the dimensions of the New Jerusalem in the last chapters of the book of Revelation. Secret societies like the Freemasons were well aware of that. Washington DC was constructed under the architectural vision of the sacred geometry. That isn’t a trivial observation, since it shows that the so-called fathers of American democracy understood what they were doing as in continuity with the ancient symbolic world. It is significant as well that most Americans are not conscious of this. So they lack a depth understanding of the symbolic system in which they are existentially involved.
“The Letter into the Hebrews” chapter 8 verse 5 says that the priests serve as “a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary; for when Moses was about to erect the tent (the Tabernacle in the wilderness), he was instructed by God saying 'see that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.”
And the author of the letter to the Hebrews quite clearly envisions the Cosmic Christ saying that he is a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of majesty in heaven and that if he were on Earth he would not be a priest at all since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.
So now this all seems bizarre and absurd to the modern mind. And that includes me. To modern psychoanalytic theory after Freud these are all projections of the unconscious mind. The cosmic Christ would be nothing but wish fulfillment. CG Jung understood that as a psychotherapist he was working in that context. That’s why he always maintained the role of a scientist seeking to objectively describe the phenomena of the psyche. Only once did he famously slip out of the agnostic position and even then he did it with an ironic wink.
I too endeavor to maintain a position of phenomenological caution. Agnosticism follows from that. Yet from that position one can remain open to the full panoply religious experience. In fact it has opened more to me since I have bracketed the phenomenon of belief in the epoche. The question of whether or not I had faith had become a burden to me.
Like all the contents of the psyche faith has a dual aspect. Faith is both conscious and unconscious. One may consciously have faith and unconsciously doubt and vice versa. Theists and atheists are mirror images of each other. They often behave as if they’re trying to convince themselves. The believer represses the unbeliever in himself, the unbeliever represses the believer in himself. “Thou dost protest too much” is the relevant cliche for both.
Coincidentally, when I flipped on the radio this morning they were in interviewing Donald D Hoffman the cognitive psychologist, who wrote the book Visual Intelligence How We Create What We See. (A minor instance of synchronicity?) He gave a TED talk in 2015 entitled Do We See Reality as It Is wherein he argued that our perceptions have evolved to hide reality from us. Peterson’s form of pragmatism as far as he goes in Maps of Meaning seems consistent with Hoffman’s approach to me. That is that our perception of reality is actually an illusion we perceive as an evolutionary adaptation to keep us alive. “Illusion” would probably go too far for Peterson as it would for Pageau. It’s a map of meaning to Peterson and a pattern of reality to Pageau. It’s the archetypal structure of the collective unconscious to Jung. It’s the world of representation to Schopenhauer and so forth. But, I haven’t read Hoffman’s books so I don’t know how far he goes with metaphysical idealism.
I have seen that Hoffman flips the commonly held assumption the brain activity causes consciousness on its head. He points out that that hard problem of consciousness is intractable from the standpoint of that assumption. Instead he proposes the view that consciousness causes brain activity and in fact creates all objects and properties of the physical world. I could go on but I’ll stop here and ask-- how does Hoffman’s theory line up with Kastrup’s? And, more importantly, with your own?
I noticed that at the end of the video, do you think the whole video was just for advertising? I didn’t get that impression, but then again …
Randal Carlson honoured John Michell in this video: youtube.com/watch?v=R7oyZGW99os Unfortunately it is far longer (2 Hrs), but has a lot of information.
This has always interested me, although I’m not really a numbers type at all, but the shapes and forms intrigued me. The fact that, like the macro-cosmos, the micro-cosmos doesn’t reveal matter, but form the smaller you go, is amazing. This is something that the ancients couldn’t have seen without technology, but they seemed to deduce it. The question that is asked by many, including Carlson, is how old is this information? How long have people been aware of the inherent structure of numbers and forms? It was significant enough to be found in the great pyramid.
The last video from Pageau seemed to be more involved with St. Ephrem’s book ‘Hymns on Paradise’ and there was a lot of symbolism in there regarding the holy mountain, but I couldn’t make the association so well. But on a second look, the Gospel is presented even more as a symbolic composition. His interpretation needs more time probably, because it is so different to what we have heard in the past and is refreshingly free of materialistic interpretation.
There are videos from Michell on YouTube in which he links Stonehenge, Avebury, Glastonbury and many other mystical locations throughout England to an advanced ancient order that had a direct connection with Atlantis. He saw influences in Britain stemming from the West, from the Atlantic, that led to the building of these large structures. It is a very romantic idea that was going around at the time. The thing is though that he notes that the buildings and the way they were set up reveal a startling adherence to geometrical forms, not only in themselves, but as structures over many miles and, as some have said, across the globe. There was a clear connection made between the universality of geometry and the divine.
Yes, the subject was the theme of Dan Brown books, but this only pointed a finger at things that have been going on for millennia without being popularly known. The secret organisations throughout the world have been keeping secrets for that amount of time, fearing the misuse or even that it could be reduced to banality, if it were known by those not inaugurated. Much of the geometrical symbolism of the Bible is either still regarded as secret, or it has been lost to the church as carrying any particular meaning. Looking at how modern churches have been built in Europe (at least since the war), there hasn’t been that much invested in them with this regard. This may have to do with the loss of mysticism and a materialistic reading of the Bible.
It is quite clear that in the days when Hebrews was written, there was still an awareness of these mystical elements of the tradition, which seem to have been lost over time. I feel that Rome has done a lot to transform the mystical teaching that became Christianity into something that provides a new norm to streamline society rather than have the diversity it previously had, and which mirrored the diversity of the Greek/Roman pantheon to a certain degree. The Romans were already fickle about what could be accepted as religion.
I think that it is bizarre and absurd if you are used to having a clear and precise understanding of how life began and developed, how people and societies work, and a rough idea of how the world came into being. I think that reality forces us to accept that this certainty is still on a dodgy standing. I read authors who are calling into question these certainties and there is a lot of opposition to overcome. There is also a lot of tomfoolery to avoid as well. But people like Kastrup, Sheldrake, Hancock, Carlson, and many others, are asking the questions that the self-proclaimed experts don’t want to hear. Science is inquisitive, not dogmatic, if it is to be science at all.
I think that the secret to this mystery lies hidden in whatever consciousness is. If we could understand consciousness better, then we would understand much more about existence and the experience of life. It might even help us understand the universe better. This is the great mystery that eludes people who don’t like mysteries, especially when they see themselves as the great educators and those responsible for getting rid of religion and superstition. There are enough indications that point to the fact that the great religions were not what they have become today (especially in the West), but that they were carrying to inquiry into the ground of existence beyond the materialistic view of things.
I believe faith is a state of mind based on the intuition and knowledge we have. As the intuition or knowledge increases in validity, faith grows, and when it becomes less valid, it loses its strength. Theists have generally been guilty of creating atheists, much like the church created satanism. Atheists and Satanists ridicule the church for what its members say, do and encourage, because in many cases, there has been reason to. Hypocrisy is alive in people with fervent faith, whether in one direction or the other. It is only where humility is retained that hypocrisy can be combatted.
Hoffman and Kastrup have often met up and even had discussions online and their opinions are not that far apart. Here’s Hoffman:
So you can see that Hoffman isn’t that far away from Kastrup, who spoke of Berkeley more favourably:
Where does this leave me?
I think that we have to accept that our reconstructed reality is beneficial to our progress, and it is important that we realise that this is a step towards understanding consciousness. That, as I said above, is also a step in the direction of understanding our mysterious existence. The element of mystery marks the area in which we find sacredness, the sense of the holy, and a calling to be aware in a way that, under normal circumstances, we are not. It is a calling to step out of the run-of-the-mill way of life, out of banality and frustration, and find meaning in what otherwise lacks meaning. I think Kastrup is right that there is meaning in existence, which is what ancient traditions have been telling us for so long. There are a number of indicators for this, like the above, which are telling us something that is important.
I also believe that Graham Hancock may be right about the dangers of not understanding the messages we get from the past, and that there may well be cleansing episodes during the lifetime of the planet, which may be imminent. But that is another story ….
Listening to Randall Carlson for a few minutes it occurred to me that in the book of Revelation chapter 14 verse 1 it says “then I looked and lo on Mount Zion stood the Lamb and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.” 144, 000 1+4+4+0+0+0=9.
Let’s look at the gematric symbolism of this for a moment. The Bible says that the world is created in six days. God rested on the seventh day. Jesus the Christ resurrected on the 8th day. So what is the significance of the ubiquitous nine in the ancient symbolic system?
Curiously I read John Michell’s book and there upon became interested in the sacred numerology back around 1990 which was a period of great psychological turmoil in my life. I became somewhat obsessed with doing everything in terms of the number 12. I suppose it brought an order to my inner life which had become somewhat chaotic and anxious at the time.
Presently I’m living in a relatively chaotic time and situation as are many people throughout the world. I’m far less anxious than I was back then, a fact that I attribute to my psychological growth for which I am grateful. (Hey and I’m living in First World comfort!) Nevertheless this is a challenging time for me as it is for most people.
The phenomenal space of mind which is provisional and agnostic is where philosophy occurs. It is the metaphoric light in which Descartes saw his clear and distinct ideas. The immediate consciousness of what is going on cognitively precedes belief and non-belief. CG Jung understood this. Asked if he believed in God, he said I don’t believe I know. And then he grinned mischievously. He knew that by claiming to know he was claiming gnosis. To the Gnostic, gnosis is higher than faith.
Free will and predestination are not an either/or, mutually exclusive, dual phenomena. They are both/and modes of existence that are playing out in time in the unity of the Eternal God.
On the cross, Jesus Christ expires at the ninth hour.
Jesus appears nine times to his disciples and apostles after his resurrection.
The nine spiritual gifts of God listed by Saint Paul: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gift of healing, to operate miracles, prophecy, distinguishing spirits, to speak in different kinds of tongues and the gift to interpret them. (1 Co 12,4-11)
Paul also counts nine fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Ga 5,22)
There are nine degrees of prayers. The four firsts are the vocal prayer, the meditation, the affective prayer and the innate contemplation. The last five are the types of the mystical prayer: the innate contemplation, the quiet prayer, the prayer of union, the prayer of union in conformity, and the most mystical is the prayer of transforming union.
R. Allendy speaks about the curious arithmetical properties of the nine which gives it a very particular character because of the use of our decimal notation system. In another numerical notation system they would cease to exist: the difference between an unspecified number and the number formed by the inversion of its digits is always a multiple of 9 - example: between 26 and 62, the difference is 36, multiple of 9; the multiples of 9 are always composed of digits where the sum (once reduced) is equal to 9; the product 123456789 x 9 gives 9 times the digit 1 in the answer (1111111101). Concerning this last property, Elisabeth Haich mentioned the next calculations:
0 x 9 + 1 = 1
1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 + 10 = 1111111111
9 is the number of patience, of meditation.
It is the number of harmony; it represents the inspiration and the perfection of the ideas.
It is the expression of “the power of the Holy Spirit”, according to Etchegoyen.
It symbolizes the plenitude of talents, the reward of the tests.
It is the symbol of the creation and the life as a rhythm and development.
As a product of 3 x 3, it is the expression of the perfection, the symbol of the virile power, in addition to be associated to the couple.
9 is the number of the one who accomplishes the divine will. According to the Cabal, it is also the number of the achievement.
The freemasons have made 9 the eternal number of human immortality.
Being the last simple number, it is the number of finalization or finition; it is therefore the most complex, that marks the full lighting up of the numerical series.
9 was considered as sacred in Egypt and in Greece.
It is the number of humankind, as a numeral symbol of their gestation (nine months).
I think that abstract formalities, even though we might smile looking back on them, can help to bring some kind of order into our lives. It is the reason that habits, though a potential cause of obsession, can bring order into our lives – 12 Rules for life …
It is a bit like having a map when you are in a foreign country, which is an abstract method of orientation, but you need to know where north is. We all need some means of orientation in life as well, a point of focus which we can hold to, so that we can get the rest in relation to that.
The challenge of our times is probably accentuated by the fact that we think we have so much sorted. We have people telling us what we should know, telling us stories about the nature of existence as far as they have sorted it. But there is much insecurity about because we are noticing that we are also being manipulated. There was a report in German television that pointed out that political manipulation is going on in every country and our democracy is being undermined by unscrupulous people, who are just out to make money. Anti-democratic groups are paying them to help do away with the nuisance of appearing to be doing the will of the people.
In such a manipulated scenario, our orientation process is more difficult than ever before, simply because we are inundated with information, flooded with supposed facts, and have difficulty in deciding which of them to believe. We have politicians who are blatant liars, repeating their lies over and over again and you have the feeling that everything is on hype, with people who seem to be professionally offended, with issues being blown out of proportion. Included in this setup are the militant believers or atheists, spouting off their vitriol on social media, as well as the advertisements that are driven by algorithms, following your every move. It all becomes too much.
I was always the introvert, even when I was playing the extrovert in professional life, exhausting myself, but I feel that I have retired into our house and garden, becoming virtually a hermit, whose main communication is via the internet. There are few people with whom you can have meaningful discussions, mainly because they are largely uncertain about so much. I write to people in America and Australia via penpal sites because people here feel too overwhelmed. The churchgoers want their beloved routine, which reminds me of what a catholic priest once told me. He said, “On Sundays a catholic priest needs two things, a new shirt and an old sermon!” It is something that people want to nod in agreement to – probably it is also an orientation point, from which they can attempt to manage the next week.
Probably, many people have these points of orientation. Perhaps it is a newspaper or old books, perhaps it is the family, or the next football match. People need something solid, fixed, firm, and permanent. In the Bible, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob repeatedly returned to the last altar they had built, as though it was a fixed point of reliability from which they could venture out again. For me it is the cushion and the silence, excluding the madness from my little room for a while, connecting with a sustaining tranquillity.
Some of those terms for nine are suggestive but none captures its place in the system of symbolic numbers for me. Whenever I read about symbolism I must be able to verify what is said phenomenologically or it means nothing to me. Hence the failure of many such books on symbolism. The worst are the ones that claim to tell you what your dreams mean. (Contemptuous eye-roll).
So the precessional cycle of the Earth on its axis is 25,920 years. Divided into four seasons under the signs of the zodiac that’s 6480 years. More or less the time span of literate human civilization. It’s also known as the platonic season. The platonic month is 25,920 / 12 or 2160 years. That’s roughly 139 years more than the years since the birth of Christ. A trivial factoid perhaps, but it’s a product of decentering, a meditative practice we discussed above. Thus, contemplation of the symbolic number system is a way to expand the mind and contract the ego to a vanishing point.
In the Tractus, Wittgenstein says that the totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world. More like it’s a picture of the picture of the world. Metaphorically the world is a container. Often it is placed in opposition to the mind --another container. Jaspers refers to this ever receding horizon as the Encompassing. Heidegger said that the kind of being which belongs to Dasein is rather such that in understanding its own being it has a tendency to do so in terms of that entity towards which it comports itself proximately and in a way which is essentially constant in terms of the world. (Pg. 36) That’s a way of saying existentially what Husserl said phenomenologically–that consciousness always has an object. When the object is being- in -the -world, we’re looking at the whole structure of our conscious existential experience.
Contemplating the ancient symbolic system I get an intuition of what Pythagoras meant when he stated that everything is made of numbers, that is, number is the essence of reality.
The number nine incarnate in everything reminds me of the incarnate logos. But in the geometric system of symbolic number, it is viewed meta-perspectively. It can be imagined as if standing inside or outside of it like we sometimes imagine the visible universe.
I can feel with you. Symbolism catches my eye, but, as I said, I’m not the numbers type. I see the important things with my mind’s eye, between lines of a book, viewing a scenery, listening to meditative music. That happens mostly after a period of silence and solitude. Last night I pulled my notebooks from the shelf, which I had been neglecting for a while, long enough to find pleasure in the things I have collected again – lists, pictures, diagrams, quotes, advice. I also have the jottings of quiet nights, or early mornings. The symbolism I found there was restricted to mandalas and images of Buddhist celestials, as well as several reproductions of CG Jungs Red Book pictures.
That is the reason I have these notebooks. They encourage open-minded thinking and help me forget myself for a while. The processional cycle suggests a time of development, a becoming that culminates in an end, or an entering into a new step of development. I can’t help thinking about Randal Carlson’s portrayal of the catastrophic past of the earth, and how in the space of 150,000 years, there have been major upheavals on the planet in the time since people who looked like us have been around. His argument is that the last one happened 11,600 years ago, and that his reckoning shows a regularity in these occasions, which may have extra-terrestrial causes (i.e., comets) that appear cyclically.
That is interesting, but what are “true” thoughts, as against thoughts in general? I have grown to see mind and world less as separate, but in fact that mind is all encompassing, much like Kastrup (and also Sheldrake in his way) has proposed. I find the sentence about Heidegger complicated. I would understand it in this way: “Heidegger said that the nature of being that belongs to Dasein is rather such that, in understanding its own being, it tends to do so in terms of that being to which it relates in immediate proximity and in a way that is essentially constant in relation to the world.” I think I have understood it correctly, meaning that we can’t understand ourselves outside of the structure of the world in which we live and which we experience. I hope that is right, it sounds right to me.
Pythagoras may have been a philosopher who believed in worshiping the numbers and conceptualising the numbers in different forms. But rather than saying that all things are made from numbers, I’d say that numbers provide another means of portraying all things made.
So we are studying perennial wisdom. From the modern point of view this stuff is nonsense. But it never went away. It just went underground and became the object of esoterica. Hello Madam Blavatsky!
And now traditional wisdom has re-emerged through the back door of postmodernism. It’s ironic that Jordan Peterson seems to have an almost physical aversion to postmodernism. His thinking wouldn’t have a 10th the audience that it does if he were speaking outside the intellectual context of postmodernism.
Incidentally, I think Stephen C. Hicks, whose book on postmodernism Peterson endorses, is wrong insofar as he reduces the trend to the disappointment of the Left with the failure of Marxism. Peterson should be paying attention to Habermas who has a far more penetrating understanding of the philosophical phenomenon of modernity and postmodernity.
Anyway Wittgenstein notes “it used to be said that God could create everything, except what was contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is, we could not say of an “unlogical” world how it would look.” (3.03I) We are studying the logic of a world --the ancient cosmology.
Now modern cosmology exploded in the 20th century with Einstein and Edwin Hubble and others in the 20th century.
Modern science was thought to overthrow and supplant traditional wisdom. Those who attempted to integrate modern with ancient science were marginalized.
Now the internet has provided a platform for such thinkers much to the chagrin of the secular humanists. So synonymous with ultimate truth did they see their point of view in the mid 20th century that they rankled at even being called “secular humanists”. Likewise the materialists and and naturalists, three largely overlapping categories of the same cohort.
And yeah to Martin Heidegger, Being- in- the- world is the whole as far as it can ever be apprehended.
I would argue that we are always in a proximity to the source of being, and so is everything -
thus we can always revitalize our understanding of ourselves independently of the nature of that which surrounds us, and thereby also revitalize that which understands itself in terms of us.
Revitalization. Right. Well, there’s this inescapable temporal structure of being in the world. From the sense of what we have become among a range of present possibilities we project our future being. This is the structure of every situated action. Charles Taylor confirms this reading of Heidegger in his book “Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity”, page 47.
And I was surprised to see that he reads this in relation to the good. “From the sense of where I am relative to it (i.e. the good”) and among the different possibilities, I project the the direction of my life in relation to it. My life always has this degree of narrative understanding, that I understand my present action in the form of an ‘and then’ : there was A (what I am), and then I do B (what I project to become)."
I have found this way of atomizing being in time instructive. Peterson breaks it down in a parallel way. And we’re already doing this unconsciously.
It also parallels Socrates’ teaching that ignorance is the source of evil. Evil actions, no matter how destructive, are always relative goods. “Silver Linings Playbook” , the movie, romantic comedy that it is, nevertheless, stories this point beautifully.
Why do we do anything? To make life better. We aim at the good. Even the suicide aims at making the situation better by ending it. The rest of us will aim at it by taking the next breath. Do not the bhikkus themselves forget that they are breathing? When they do it’s because they are in pursuit of other goods.
Even the professing nihilists on ILP are pursuing the good which they see as the hard truth that life is meaningless. “Better than living under the illusion that life is purposeful and meaningful when ultimately it’s not”, they project. And thus they contradict themselves in the act of pursuing the good that is truth.
Let me see if I can follow Taylor’s line of thought a little further. He proposes that we can’t think of human persons of selves in the sense that we ourselves as neutral punctual objects. “And what is in question is, generally and characteristically, the shape of my life as a whole. It is not something up for arbitrary determination”. (Pg 50)
He points out that we can see this in two dimensions, the past and future, “ekstaseis” that Heidegger talks about. I don’t have a sense of where and what I am without some understanding of how I got there or became so. My sense of myself is of a being who is growing and becoming. “My self-understanding necessarily has temporal depth and incorporates narrative.” The theologian Paul Tillich looked at existence the same way. The Gestaltists likewise. On reflection the self pops out of Being as figure to ground.
But here I want to comment on the central problem in today’s meaning crisis. Taylor calls this “one of the great paradoxes of modern philosophy”. (Pg 175). “Give disengagement and objectification has helped to create a picture of the human being, at its most extreme in certain forms of materialism, from which the last vestiges of subjectivity seem to have been expelled. It is a picture of the human being from a completely third person perspective. The paradox is that this severe outlook is connected with, indeed, based on, according to central place to the first person stance. Radical objectivity is only intelligible and accessible through radical subjectivity.” Taylor thought that "modern naturalism could never be the same once it sees this connection. "
But naturalism is an abstraction and abstractions don’t see anything. Naturalism describes the content of thought of a mind insofar as it is embodied in someone who is more or less a naturalist. And in that view he sees himself from the outside as if he were a third party. He has been objectified to himself. He takes, if only provisionally, the view that he understands to be empirical science’s. This could be the view projected by a persuasive well-written peer-reviewed scientific journal article. Great that we can comprehend the view of science from outside of ourselves and stand as if in a place we will never stand from a point of view we will never occupy, as long as we hold to our own phenomenal center.
The naturalist, a conscious centered human with a particular point of view, is forgetful in a way that modern naturalism is not. “The turn to oneself is now also and inescapably a turn to oneself in the first person perspective–a turn to the self as a self. That is what I mean by radical reflexivity. Because we are so deeply embedded in it, we cannot but reach for reflexive language.” (Pg 176)
“So deeply embedded in it”, and yet according to Buddhism, modern behaviorism and postmodernism, it is an illusion. When we look on being- in- the- world who indeed is doing the looking? An illusion that is happening where? In whose mind? Does that question not defeat the proposition?
And yet are we not most alive, (and so perhaps most ourselves) when we forget ourselves?
"The most obvious examples of cultural values that assuage death anxiety are those that purport to offer literal immortality (e.g., belief in afterlife, religion). However, TMT (terror management theory) also argues that other cultural values – including those that are seemingly unrelated to death – offer symbolic immortality.
Examples:
values of national identity,
posterity,
cultural perspectives on sex,
and human superiority over animals…
have been linked to death concerns.
In many cases these values are thought to offer symbolic immortality either:
a) by providing the sense that one is part of something greater that will ultimately outlive the individual (e.g., country, lineage, species), or
b) by making one’s symbolic identity superior to biological nature (i.e. you are a personality, which makes you more than a glob of cells).
Because cultural values determine that which is meaningful, they are also the foundation for self-esteem. TMT describes self-esteem as being the personal, subjective measure of how well an individual is living up to their cultural values." Source: Terror management theory" Wikipedia.
So far I have found the Epicurus’s argument on death to be the most effective proposition for coping with death anxiety.
Death, Epicurus argued, cannot touch us because “while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.” Since death cannot touch us it cannot be bad. Fear is rational only for something bad. So Epicurus concludes that fearing death is pointless. I think the terror management theory is right. Death anxiety and avoidance underlies our deepest values. It is a gestalt the ground upon which our finite life is the figure.
Epicurus’s argument didn’t eliminate my death anxiety. But it taught me that the anxiety of non-being while always present can be managed. Whenever I am conscious I I’m alive. And so shall it ever be. So the anxiety of non-being can be relegated to a corner in the periphery of my consciousness while I pursue my best life. Thus have I managed my panic attacks for 6 years.
Symbolic immortality could not be banished despite the heroic efforts of doing that by scientistic modernity and the academic philosophical heirs of logical positivism. Who benefits? Religious institutions and mortuary services benefit from the practices of symbolic immortality. Millions of books on the subject are sold as means of consolation. Are then the social political intellectual elites the primary beneficiaries of the technocracy the ones with the greatest interest in and resources and power to promote the suppression of religion’s symbolic afterlife?
Reading about Anthony Ashley-Cooper the third Earl of Shaftesbury in Taylor’s “Sources of the Self”.
Shaftesbury thought that in our natural tendency to love the whole the goal we seek might be put negatively as clearing away the obstacles to this love which arise from our believing that the world is in some way imperfect and bad. I must love whatever comes, and see it all as fitted to me and orderly with respect to the whole even “the sack of cities and the ruin of mankind”.
Now Taylor observes that some of Shaftsbury’s principles–that good needs a foil in evil, that partial blemishes work for the whole, that the universe has to proceed by general laws–became standard in 18th century provincialism of the kind which Voltaire savagely satirized in Candide. But, Shaftesbury’s crucial consideration was that nothing ought to distress us or matter to us except the state of our own mind or will or." Not even my imminent death ought to distress me… I should part “giving thanks to the master of the banquet” pg. 252
God the framer of this order is rather different from the God of Abraham of revelation. God is the mind that not only “designs but moves and animates the whole”.
The goal of loving and affirming the order of the world could also be described as bringing our particular minds into harmony with the universal one: “the particular mind should seek its happiness and conformity with the general one, and endeavor to resemble it in its highest simplicity and excellence.”
We don’t think like this. The highest good for humans is to love and take joy in the whole course of the world. Someone who achieves this love reaches a perfect tranquility and equanimity. They are proof against all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. They can love those around them constantly and steadily, undiverted by their own pain and disappointments or their own lesser interests. They attain “a generous affection an exercise of friendship uninterrupted a constant kindness and benignity”. Beyond even that, this love is intrinsically satisfying. By nature we love the ordered and the beautiful, the highest and most complete order and beauty is the object of the highest joy. It’s impossible to contemplate the One without ecstasy and rapture.
To experience this natural tendency to love the whole, one must clear away the obstacles to this love which arise from believing that the world is in some way imperfect and bad. What separates us from this peace and equanimity is our false opinions whereby we see some things in the universe as and imperfections. Right opinions enable us to love the all.
Taylor proposes that even outside a theistic perspective it is quite possible to conceive that the best theory of the good may be a thoroughly realist one. He defends the theory without making a claim about how things stand for the universe in itself or for a universe in which there were no human beings.
“Realistic view is perfectly compatible with the thesis that the boundaries of the good, as we can grasp it, are set by that space which is opened in the fact that the world is there for us, with all the meanings it has for us–what Heidegger called ‘the clearing’.”
But we moderns view the universe from a very different perspective. To the ancient philosophers it was a self manifesting reality. We moderns view it from the standpoint of our own subjectivity. The mind now sees itself as separated from nature.
“But the very concept of ‘eidos’ or Form resists this separation. The very essence of things is an entity closely related to mind (nous) and reason (logos). The ideas for Plato are not just objects waiting to be perceived; they are self manifesting; the Idea of Ideas is itself a source of light, following his master image. The logos is ontic.”
The modern mechanistic picture of the universe, and the disengaged perspective of the subject have created a gap between mind and world. The question ‘what is it about the subject which makes him recognize and love the good’ can no longer be answered simply by the ancient conception of rational which meant to see the ratio in things.
The question is psychological. It points inward to our own needs, desires and feelings. The theory of moral sentiment arises and with it the question of projection.
As for Plato, one need look no further than Gorgias to confirm the above proposition. For even the tyrant wills the Good, he is merely mistaken about the means by which to achieve that end. For Jesus, one need look no further than John 3 where he says verily verily I say unto thee unless a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. For Paul, one need look no further than 1st Corinthians 13 where he says that now we see through a glass darkly but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known.