He was in contact with “the god” who surpasses full understanding. He knew but a whit.
knows
Morality is about well-being. All moral ideals such as goodness justice fairness virtue freedom rights and compassion stem from our fundamental concern with what is best for us. Judgments about how we are to live follow from this.
define well & best
Thinking about well-being involves moral accounting . Well-being is wealth. An increase in well-being is a gain and a decrease in well-being is a loss. We can profit from experience. We should invest in goods that make us happy and not waste our lives. Happiness is the most valuable commodity. What’s the best is what brings the most well-being.
paging Dr. Biggy
Mc Gilchrist quotes Joseph Campbell: "Joseph Campbell writes, “I think there are three states of being one is the innocent expression of nature, another is when you pause analyse think about it, then having analysed becomes a state in which you’re able to live as nature, but with more competence, more control, more flexibility”. That to me summarizes the proper relationship between the right and the left hemisphere: the right seeing the initial whole, the left taking it apart in certain ways but crucially, not ending there but giving it back to the right hemisphere that can understand it now in an enriched unfolded whole. " YouTube video
“There are two related consequences of such a state of affairs that appear diametrically opposite but, as so often, for that reason are closer than we are normally willing to accept. They are the coming together of unreasonable gullibility with unreasonable scepticism. The left hemisphere is both unreasonably willing to jump to conclusions (and stick to them), and inclined unreasonably to put in doubt the basics of existence. While it is extraordinarily credulous (believing that a paralysed arm functions normally), it will simultaneously exhibit doubt as to the most basic foundations of reality – believing that people are really all involved in a play-acting conspiracy, that their continuing corporeal being is an illusion, that they are not conscious but really machines, and so forth. This is entirely to be predicted. When you are out of touch with reality you will easily embrace a delusion, and equally put in doubt the most basic elements of existence. If this reminds you of the mindset of the present day materialist science and philosophy establishments, as well as of the loudest voices in the socio-political debate, we should not be particularly surprised, since they show all the signs of attending with the left hemisphere alone. I live in the hope that that may soon change: for without a change we are lost.” Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things
This would be a kind of internal dialectic of the brain’s hemispheres. First there is the initial undifferentiated whole of the right brain perspective as the thesis. Next there is the differential analysis of the left brain as the antithesis. Finally there is the synthesis in the integrated whole as conceptualized by the right brain.
This can be illustrated by the most mundane perceptions. You look at an object in the room and immediately see that it is a piano bench. If you ask what it consists of you realize it’s a seat rectangular in shape with four legs, the contour of the legs, the depth of the seat, the light and shadow on the angular surfaces, the color of the bench being dark brown, the hinges on the seat that opens and closes, the reflection of the light, the interior of the bench for holding sheet music or whatever, the sharpness of the corners, the uses, it’s fixedness and impermanence, it’s being and non-being, it’s intersection with time and space etc, ad infinitum.
In the enriched synthesis one sees that the object is both a bench and not a bench. Not merely a but a and not a. Thus wholeness transcends the law of non-contradiction. In addition to either/or we begin to see both/and.
This should become a normal understanding of how things are perceived, and we should get away from “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” as it was conceived. As McGilchrist quotes, I can’t remember from whom, we only possess half-truths, because we only see things from one perspective. The number of influences that affect my perception are legion, and it is therefore vital to get another perspective, which we can also do ourselves, by doubting that we have the whole story and gathering other people’s observations. In that way, we might even find that from another perspective, the opposite to what I perceived is true (as well).
Yes. We are enlarged by entertaining many perspectives with the understanding all of them put together is not the ultimate one.
What is truth?
The book is so full of wonderful insights that I can only recommend it. I have also acquired Kindle versions of many poets he quote, especially Wordsworth, which provides a special delight in each case.
Truth as relationship is the case here in relationship to wholeness and the self. Two features of science elude this discussion. Wholeness cannot be taken absolutely or objectively. Nor can it be delimited independently of description or interpretation by any subjects. It can only be described as it is imagined —- a metaphor that takes the wholeness of objects perceived in the world and applies it to the self as a sense, a feeling ang a goal. In this it is related to the peak experience as opposed to the experience of being and feeling fragmented. It is the imagined epitome of mental health.
What it is
It is nonsense
says reason
It is what it is
says love.
It is misfortune
says the calculation
It is nothing but pain
says fear
It is hopeless
says insight
It is what it is
says love.
It is ridiculous
says pride
It is frivolous
says prudence
It is impossible
says experience
It is what it is
says love.
Erich Fried
Right! It is nirvana and the kingdom of God! Literalist religion concretizes it. Despair says it is an unreachable goal of the imagination. Pie in the sky when you die. Jesus says it’s already here!
Let the image of wholeness nourish your soul in every experience of a fragment in time.
That is the phenomenon the recently departed Thich Nhat Hanh called “interbeing”.
The Christian equivalent of what the Zen Buddhists call an unobstructed mind is a pure heart. In the beattitudes Jesus says “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
True faith involves letting go of one’s attachments. This is the cathartic side of the Theosis process by means of which the mind and body are purified by God. The other side of the coin is the Divine illumination by which we realize we are one with God.
This is the highest realization of Wholeness. According to this vision the purpose of human life is transformation. It is to wake up from the dream and realize who we really are.
Mythically one can see how Western monotheism led to the disenchantment of the world. The jealous God who disallows other Gods succeeded so well that it created a vaccum in the human soul that has been filled by dehumanizing techno-science. In the late 20th century post-moderrnism proclaimed the end of all grand narratives. Imagine Cronus devouring his children! Since then the Gods have returned in many disguises to those who, blinded by the light of the age, can’t see them. Watch!
Don’t you get the feeling that people are stuck in the words, the letters, the images, unable to see what is meant? I think that Buddha had a rationalist approach to the troubles of the world, whereas Jesus awakened empathy. Jesus encouraged people to see each other as complicit with each other in the suffering we cause and endure. He wanted us to feel for each other so that we can understand that we all feel, and we all suffer in a very similar way. With a reduction of biases and a reduction of ego, although they will hardly fall away completely, we could begin to see with a “beginners mind”, as if for the first time.
Naked awareness, the embarrassment of what we’ve become, should lead to letting our persona masks fall, accepting our mutual fragility, and embracing our humanity, and to the awareness, that we are strangely wanted. The intention of our existence should lead then to the realization of our being one with the source of that cosmic purpose and to a search of where we belong.
The vacuum caused by monotheism was increased by the rejection of God. Then all nightmares were absorbed with the dreams, and in a short time everything that had been marginalized in the past manifested itself. All imaginable atrocities became reality, and all dreams were rejected as romantic fantasies and became harmless and useless in contrast to the technocratic reality that quantified quality and suggested it could do everything. Its face is the legion of imagined cruelties, ubiquitous in cheap horror novels and films, acted out in the name of nationalist aspirations to conquer the world and champion an ideal.
What do you envision it will be the outcome of Putin‘s invasion of the Ukraine?
The second coming of Christ is no less than a vision of civilization and the planet being made whole. For the impure of heart the devil is in the details. Obviously in a divided world no two see it alike. But the vision is here for all not just the true believer. It’s easier these days to believe in the apocalypse that is prophesized to precede the glorious day. And now the nuclear threat is greater perhaps than since the Cuban missile crisis. Cold War 2.0. Not to mention the signs of global warming that surround us.
So here we have two visions that collide with each other. They represent transformation on a cosmic scale. If we take them to be revelations of ultimate reality as they claim to be, they speak of a universal alchemical process in which matter is changed into a divine substance, the temporal into the eternal. “ I beheld heaven and earth pass away and there was a new heaven and new earth.” Amen. Nothing less will do it.