The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

In a recent thread on the nature of enlightenment, we got onto the subject of the myth of the given and post-metaphysics.  I suggested starting a new thread and Julian offered the following questions, so here we are….. :)

1. the myth of the given: what does it mean? what are the implications of this idea?

2. what is symbolic, what literal? why does this matter?

3. what is metaphysics, therefore what is post-metaphysics?

4. how can we tell if something is pre or transrational?

5. what do we mean by “faith” and is faith necessary or useful in a contemporary transrrational spirituality?

6. what are the practical applications/consequences of these abstract signifiers?

Before taking up these questions, I'm going to share a brief passage from Integral Spirituality to see how Wilber addresses some of them…

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

MONOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM AND THE MYTH OF THE GIVEN

If there is a common thread to the general postmodern current, it is a radical critique of monological consciousness - variously referred to as the myth of the given, monological imperialism, the philosophy of the subject, and the philosophy of consciousness, to name a few.  As I started to indicate, what “monological” basically means is “not dialogical” - or not intersubjective, not contextual, not constructivist, not understanding the constitutive nature of cultural backgrounds - basically, not recognizing zones #2 and #4.

The myth of the given or monological consciousness is essentially another name for phenomenology and mere empiricism in any of a hundred guises - whether regular empiricism, radical empiricism, interior empiricism, transcendental empiricism, empirical phenomenology, transcendental phenomenology, radical phenomenology, and so forth.  As important as they might be, what all of them have in common is the myth of the given, which includes:

the belief that reality is simply given to me, or that there is a single pregiven world that consciousness delivers to me more or less as it is, instead of a world that is con-structed in various ways before it ever reaches my empirical or phenomenological awareness.

the belief that the consciousness of an individual will deliver truth.  This is why Habermas calls the myth of the given by the phrase “the philosophy of consciousness” - and that is what he is criticizing because it is blind to intersubjectivity, among other things.  As we have been saying throughout this book, consciousness itself simply cannot see zones #2 and #4, and therefore is deficient in and of itself (e.g., “Not through introspection but through history do we come to know ourselves.”)  You can introspect all you want and you won't ever see those other truths.  So consciousness itself is deficient - whether personal or transpersonal, whether pure or not pure, essential or relative, high or low, big mind or small mind, vipassana, bare attention, centering prayer, contemplative awareness - none of them can see these other truths, and that is why Habermas and the postmodernists extensively criticize “the philosophy of consciousness.”

a failure to understand that the truth that the subject delivers is constructed in part by intersubjective cultural networks.  This is why the myth of the given is also called “the philosophy of the subject” - what we also need is “the philosophy of the intersubject, or intersubjectivity.”

the belief that the mirror of nature, or the reflection paradigm, is an adequate methodology.  The recent move in spiritual approaches is to take the reflection paradigm (or phenomenology) and simply extend it to cover other realities (such as transpersonal, spiritual, meta-normal, planetary consciousness, complexity thinking, etc.)  This is essentially the belief that the reflection paradigm, or monological empiricism and monological phenomenology, will cover transpersonal and spiritual realities.  But the subject does not reflect reality, it co-creates it.

All of those, the postmodernists agree, are shot through with the myth of the given.  In other words, many approaches, wishing to get spiritual realities acknowledged by the modern world, simply take empirical methodology and try to extend it, make it bigger, push it into areas such as meditation, Gaia, transpersonal consciousness, brain scans with meditation, empirical tests of cognitive capacity with contemplation, chaos and complexity science, holograms and holographic information, the akashic field, and so on.  Although they might overcome one problem - such as Newtonian-Cartesian mechanism, for example - by introducing something like “mutually interdependent networks of dynamically related processes” - not a single one of those approaches addresses the more fundamental problem that postmodernists are criticizing, namely, that all of those approaches are still caught in the myth of the given and the ignoring of intersubjectivity.  Indeed, those approaches give no indication that they even know what it means.

One of the general aims of this book is to summarize an integral framework and then point out how it can help spiritual approaches fit into the modern and postmodern world; corollary to that is pointing out both the positives and negatives of various present-day approaches to spiritual realities.  Nowhere is the deficiency more glaring, jarring, and obvious - and yet fairly easily remedied - than when it comes to the basic postmodern message and how its truths of contextualism, intersubjectivity, constructivism, and aperspectivism can be incorporated into various spiritual approaches.  But for the most part, it's as if the entire postmodern message simply passed these approaches by, leaving them untouched, bathed in their inadequacies, such as their sometimes explicit premodernism and their implicit modernism, with its expanded empiricism, its monological awareness, and above all, its fabric laced with the myth of the given.  (Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 2006, pp. 175-177).

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Sorry about the formatting.  No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to accept the bullet points.  And now the editing capability has timed out.  :(

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

nice start balder - thanks!

i probably won't jump in until sunday on this - but am excited to see what we come up with!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

i will never forget a science fiction short story that turned on the premise of a machine that would enable one to see the world literally as another saw it - and each one was so shocked and sickened by how others actually saw the world that it was unbearable…

i've always wondered how people experience simple things as colour… do you feel it the same way i do? and we know that there are people who experience music as colours, or tastes or feelings, and many permutations of similar phenomena so these have a very foundational effect on how we experience reality…

our genetic programming and experiences further lead us to experience people and relationships very differently - some interpreting acts of kindness and generosity as selfish, others unable to interact with people in any meaningful way, and so on…

then we can get into the whole area of quantum and how our attention and subjectivity actually affect the observed…

what a complex topic! no idea where to begin or where to go with it all, but let's have fun… :)

love,

nicole

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi, Nicole, that sounds like an interesting story.  I've wondered such things too – and have long been fascinated by biologists' reconstructions of the sensory worlds of other organisms, or the speculations of science fiction writers about alien modes of “sensing” and experiencing the universe.  We live in a “multiverse” already: so many overlapping worldspaces, with wide interspecies and even intraspecies variations. 

Were I to subscribe to the myth of the given, I might say that birds and ants see trees differently from me.   But such a statement assumes that there is something called “tree” that exists independently of viewing subjects, and that is something that must now be called into question.  But what exactly are we calling into question?  The existence altogether of an outside world?  Some have taken that approach, but from an AQAL perspective, that approach is incomplete.  It reduces everything to the UL.  What is being called into question is the fundamental, independent reality of a particular construct, a particular perspective (here, the “tree.”)  It is a reminder that I cannot accept the conceptual object, tree, as an absolute given, but must acknowledge that that “thing” is something that is tetra-enacted by human beings at particular levels of development.  I am a participant in con-structing and calling forth this phenomenon, and I slip into metaphysics and the myth of the given if I take its existence for granted, as a given feature of a world that exists independently of enacting perpectives.

Does this make sense?  Is this how you understand the myth of the given?

From my perspective, the move to post-metaphysics does not represent a sharp turn away from Buddhist thought – it is, rather, an extension of it.  It expands the scope of pratitya-samutpada, of emptiness, to encompass wider dimensions of existence than Buddhism has consistently acknowledged.  (I say consistently because you do find examples of this sort of recognition in different schools of Buddhist thought, which acknowledge the emptiness and the dynamic “construction” of the world through the interplay of Name and Form.)  It appears to me that “post-metaphysics” is just a wider or fuller application of the fundamental insight into the openness and “emptiness” of phenomena.

From a Christian perspective, I think you might approach post-metaphysics and the myth of the given from a renewed consideration of the notion of perichoresis, and the “embodying Word” … 

Just a few tentative thoughts here.  I'm also not sure which direction we should go with this, but this is a start.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

This is a nice thread, and I just re-read these chapters yesterday (KW-IS).

I was thinking about modes of consciousness. Very basically:
1) experience
2) thinking about experience

It seems the myth of the given is a way of thinking about experience in a litteral way.

Zones #1 and #3 are experiential, as #2 and #4 are interpretative.

We could connect that with states/stages:

State is experience (horizontal experience on the W-C lattice)

Stage is intersubjective (vertical experience on the W-C lattice)

More later

Patrick

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Patrick,

I had to read that twice, but on the second reading I was able to see all your angles and they “lit up” and made perfect sense. I really don’t know much of anything about the WC lattice and ‘zones’, but your post gave me a sudden glimpse. So, thank you and

Merry Christmas to all abstract thinkers on earth.

M

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Balder said:

“Were I to subscribe to the myth of the given, I might say that birds and ants see trees differently from me. But such a statement assumes that there is something called “tree” that exists independently of viewing subjects, and that is something that must now be called into question. But what exactly are we calling into question? The existence altogether of an outside world? Some have taken that approach, but from an AQAL perspective, that approach is incomplete. It reduces everything to the UL. What is being called into question is the fundamental, independent reality of a particular construct, a particular perspective (here, the “tree.”) It is a reminder that I cannot accept the conceptual object, tree, as an absolute given, but must acknowledge that that “thing” is something that is tetra-enacted by human beings at particular levels of development. I am a participant in con-structing and calling forth this phenomenon, and I slip into metaphysics and the myth of the given if I take its existence for granted, as a given feature of a world that exists independently of enacting perpectives.

Does this make sense? Is this how you understand the myth of the given?”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

100 %, yes, yes. There is more to be said about the details and implications, but what you have written above summarizes my understanding and puts it in a nutshell. This is like a Christmas present, tied up so elegantly.

Love,

M

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Couldn't agree with you more, Ma scha. Thanks for the Christmas present, B. – and also for de-shelling this particular nut – it's a lot more digestible now.

Lol

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Just adding to the chorus of thank yous – Balder, your explanation really helps to clarify what was for me (who ain't much of an abstract thinker) a tough chapter in Integral Spirituality. Bows and muchos kudos!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi, friends, I'm glad that summary was helpful.  I agree with Mascha that there are a lot of extra details and implications of such a view that can be, and probably need to be, better spelled out.

Mary and Lol, you probably already know about this thread, but I wanted to link a related thread I started on my TSK pod to this conversation, hoping that maybe they can feed into each other:

The Myth of a Given World

Best wishes, and cups and cups of warm Christmas cheer,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

alright! nice excerpt and some cool comments….

so i am going to jump in with my own associations on the topic.

i am thrilled that wilber is finally including this idea of the myth of the given in his work. he has (rightly so) bashed the problems of pathological postmodernism since SES, but now is making a direct, detailed and compelling case for the very important healthy observations of postmodernism.

basically i think this is crucial because:

wilber like all of us has tended to really idealize and romanticize the eastern traditions as if they were somehow portals into absolute truth. truth that is unobstructed and universal.

now as much as the eastern traditions may be older, more sophisticated and more experientially deep than the abrahamic traditions in very important ways, it is still important to acknowledge that they are not free from socio-cultural construction.

roman catholic nuns do not see visions of avalokiteshvara on their death beds, nor do tibetan monks have visitations from the virgin mary.

the archetypes and interpretatiions of altered state psycho-spiritual experience are almost completely socially constructed and culturally conditioned.

now we are alll at different points in our post-hippie integration of the exotic counter-culture allure of yogis, buddhas and  gurus, but there nonetheless has been a fetishizing of all things eastern in the broad new age spiritual movement.

many a fellow yogi has earnestly explained to me that india is a “buddha-field” - a place where the process of becoming enlightened is accelerated, because, well just because, you know - it's india man!.

many others (including prominent authors and teachers i admire greatly) have extolled the extraordinary virtues of this or that “saint” or “holy person” from india or tibet - mostly by dint of a combination of good p.r. and group willngness to particpate in idealization and projection based in a reallly strong need to belive…unfortunatley the consequences vary mostly from the benign to the  ridculous to the brutal.

now of course it is true that many of the practices available in eastern traditions are demonstrably transformational. i am always in favor of people being exposed to authentic techniques for growth, healing and stagewise development of consciousness.

but there is a substantial amount of unquestioned (and i think pre rational) metaphysical belief in the closet of even the most dedicated and mature yogi/meditator and while i think it is a more sophisticated (and more benign) version of what goes on in the broader and more superficial new age movement. - it's still a little odd.

there is a covert orthodoxy in the spiritual world that is ripe with the myth of the given.

i think that a substantial housecleaning of our fantasy projection onto the east is necessary in order to keep grounding and integrating it's very real gifts.

1) the discusssion of enlightenment in the previous thread is for me a very good example.

enlightenment becomes the new substitute sugar candy mountain that has parallels with both heaven and the idea of good karma, thought created relaity, complete cessation of neuroses after a magical moment in meditation, achievement of some kind of archetypal post-human status etc….

2) deeply related to this is the literalist reliance on metaphysical belief in reincarnation.

a failure to recognize the twinship between the indian caste system and the status quo-perpetuating doctrine of reincarnation and karma is an example of myth of the given naivette.

i often shake my head at the irony of an american rebellious counter culture movement spawned by the green post conventional religious and political  freedom to explore other cultural perspectives settling on conventional and even oppressive blue/red doctrines from exotic cultures as somehow “enlightened” and in touch with that other myth of the given - “ancient truth”.

the caste system
marriages arranged between children based on astrology
sati - in which the widow throws herself on her husbands funeral pyre
repressive transcendentalism
praying to the buddha like another superstitious wish fulfilling deity
corrupt gurus by the dumpsetr load all claiming to be, and revered as, enlightened

i'd rather not have any of that ancient truth, thanks!

but a great many serious meditators are caught up not only in the idealization of eastern traditions and truths as unobscured windows into ultimate relaity - they are often also caught up in the inevitable narcissistic fantasy of being part of a really special in-group who have access to reincarnated tulkus, perfect teachings, a direct line to the buddha, and what have you…

worse than the serious yogic/buddhist practitioner community, the new age has uncosnciously created a hodge podge comsology and unquestioned orthodoxy that informs most of what the cultural creatives call spirituality. it consists in some combination (of two or more :O) of reincarnation, astrology, thought created reality, badly misused quantum physics, and the conflating of all religions and/or “enlightened beings” - jesus, buddha, mohammmed, lao tzu etc….as somehow saying essentially the same thing if you squint your eyes just right - which might be anything from: love one another, to the so callled “law of attraction” (as explained by “the secret”) to submission to gurus who are literally divine because they say so….

we need not only a willingness to apply some serious postmodern deconstruction to these ridiculous ideas, but even more basic - a strong dose of basic critical thinking, before enough rational groundedness can support a serious gesture towards the actual possibilities of transrational consciousness.

this has to start with the teachers, leaders, and authors being willing to drop some the otherworldy mystique lent to them by reliance on the exotic accoutrement of the east.

my gesture toward this for years has been to forego the sanskrit names for the yoga poses i teach and to explore psychologically grounded and anatomically rigorous post conventional interpretations of the chakra system.

both a) the parroting of sanskrit (because it is the holy language you know - with oh so special sacred vibrations) as a veil of authority and the b) literalized pretention of the chakras as something to believe in instead of to interpret symbolically and approach experientially as a metaphor for the mind-body connection, seem to me so far beside the point as to create more confusion and distraction than actual transformational space.

enough for now…


:O)

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi, Julian,

I think you make some good points.  I agree with the general thrust of your comments but have some questions about a few specifics.

You wrote: I think that a substantial housecleaning of our fantasy projection onto the east is necessary in order to keep grounding and integrating it's very real gifts.

This is a very important project for Western Buddhists and Hindus, in particular.  There is a great deal of unrealistic, narcissistically driven projection going on.

However, I have a few comments I'd like to make – a few cautioning statements.  One, I think we should be alert to our Western conditioning too, in which we might find it comfortable to retreat to a (post)modern secular humanist perspective and take its own prescriptions and proclamations as the “truth,” which we unconsciously hold onto or return to in reaction to the “exotic East.”  Just as there are plenty of people who get “lost” in an idealized projection of the East and its mysterious practices, traditions, rituals, and structures, there are a number of folks who hold automatically and rather rigidly to a brand of skepticism that appears to prevent them from actually entering into a space in which they can really resonate with and benefit from the practices which they reflexively want to deconstruct and “reinterpret” along strictly Western lines.

There is a difference, in other words, between a “rationalist” skepticism which is actually rather closed and conditioned, and a perspective which is willing to enter alertly and playfully into alternative spaces, with awareness of and sensitivity to the co-constructing and tetra-enacting that is taking place. 

Rational grounding is obviously important, and will help to bring people “up” from pre-rational perspectives, but I think that post-rationally, there is new freedom to return to ways of “working” energetically and psychologically that may appear pre-rational, but which may be based on altogether different perspectives and insights.  (In the TSK vision, the way this is put is that there is not great concern to separate the real from the fictional in any ultimate sense.  A fuller description of this, as well as a list of the ways TSK works that sets it apart from traditional paths of spiritual inquiry, can be found here: http://pods.zaadz.com/tsk/discussions/view/91578#91748.)

In your letter, you listed a number of things that you found problematic, presumably because they strike you as pre-rational.  I would agree that ideas such as karma and permanent awakening are ripe territory for all sorts of pre-rational manipulation and narcissistic projection, but do not think they are worthless or meaningless terms, or purely mistaken notions.  I have a friend, for instance, who just recently shifted into what he describes as a heightened, open state of awareness that mirrors peak experiences in meditation, but which appears to be ongoing now.  He is not claiming to be beyond human limitations – and that may be the kind of claim you are criticizing – but he does appear to have experienced a state-to-stage transition which has deeply affected the nature and quality of his living experience.

I'm out of time for the moment, so I'll stop here, leaving thoughts dangling all over the place.  But hopefully there's enough here to pick up on and keep moving.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

yea balder, i can dig on the distinctions you are making.

here's one i want to make:

i think that as a writer and teacher i talk primarily from this perspective:

what are the common distortions, misperceptions and oversimplifications that obstruct the general “spiritual” public from going beyond prerational fantasy into serious practice, grounded critical thinking and the possibility of touching the kind of transrational development that your friend might be having?

by and large 99.999% of the spiritual community are not having anywhere near the kinds of deep practice-based openings you are describing. nor shall they if they persist in the kind of prerational fantasy and exotic idealizartion i am describing. furthermore, without part of their practice being a willingness to inquire into and ultimately relinquish faith based myth of the given constructs, even the kinds of experiences you are describing will still be blocked from grounded non-narcissistic interpretatiion.

so the distinction is between a) observing the narcissistic ant-intellectual, relativist prerational pathology that exists ubiquitously in the spiritual community and naming it and suggesting medicine for it and b) the kinds of upper level theoretical discussions that people already immersed in serious practice and process for many years can make amongst themselves.

you say that rational grounding is “obviously important” - i agree 110%, but the point is that we could take a poll of most folks evebn on zaadz and there would be an overwhleming majority who felt that rational grounding was either relative, an obstacle to spiritual awareness or just kinda boring - “bring on the dancing alien channels please….” or the reincarnated ash-manifesting holy men.

i think that senior members and serious practitioners have a responsibility not to perpetuate that zeitgeist with their own distracting exotic identifications. the emphasis should be on the real work not the trappings.

in terms of a strict application of the myth of the given, i would assert that ideas like karma and reincarnation and enlightenment actually would fall by the wayside - i dont thhink that this kind of rational clear eyed analysis would limit entry into a while range of extraordinary states of consciousness and stages of development. in fact i think that serious practice is deepened, not limited, by suspending belief in any of those metaphysical canards.

i do not think that he socially constructed traditional beliefs  and psychologicallly consoling context around various practices  are  indispensable.

my sense is that if we are going to talk about some kind of meaningful definitions of unconditioned univeral experientially empirical truths, that they would have to exist independent of culture-bound and faith-based interpretive contexts.

now this is not to say that the beautiful baby of the sophisticated cartography and methodology of  eastern traditions should get thrown out along with the dirty bathwater of prerational convention and idiosyncratic belief, but the making of distinctiions and the breaking of the idealizing taboos around the dirt in the bathwater is essential.

imo green/orange secular humanism and it's cousin the rational gaze are a step up from blue/red traditionalist superstition of any stripe, and it is from that grounded foundation that the spiritually minded can turn to face the next level of trans rational development.


another distinction:

we are not talking here about people in ANY danger of becoming dry unspiritual rigid cold flatlanders!

rather we are talking about bringing modern rational and postmodern awareness to people who are already predisposed to be spiritual but who are caught in the early and at times pathological stages of that journey.

right now we have two big spiritual camps: regressive blue fundamentalist and regressive green/red new agers. neither are in any way ready to contact the trans rational. you cant skip the healthy rational stage. healthy green has integrated the best of the orange worldview - but unhealthy green is at war with it and finds exotic red magic very appealing. blue just thinks that the myth they are given = absolute moral truth.

the medicine for where our culture is at spiritually is healthy rational development - a recognition of the problems with prerationality, a willingness to embark on the difficult journey of integrating an adult  existential and post modern secular humanist relationship to reality with a curiosity about non superstitious post metaphysical post new age spirituality that is not a defense against the human condition.

i think there are few things that could be more spiritually evolving for the 99.999% i mentioned above than really dealing with the fear that is underneath the need to believe in the unacknowledged orthodoxy i have described. once we learn to tolerate the fear that drives our attachment to fantasy spirituality as an antidote for reality the prerational becomes less compelling and we can start to differentiate it from the trans rational. but this takes two key elements: 1) psycho-spiritual tools to make this transition and 2) healthy grounding in strng rationality.

sorry to get all manifesto on you. :O)

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Julian, it's sounds like a new crusade…

But I have a few objections:

”now as much as the eastern traditions may be older, more sophisticated and more experientially deep than the abrahamic traditions in very important ways, it is still important to acknowledge that they are not free from socio-cultural construction.”

Why do you oppose those traditions?
Who said they were free of socio-cultural construction?

”roman catholic nuns do not see visions of avalokiteshvara on their death beds, nor do tibetan monks have visitations from the virgin mary”. <— This example is given by Wilber. But I don't think it shows or proves anything. If a nun meditates on Avalokiteshvara all her life, or probably less, she has good chances of seeing that deity on her death bed. This example just shows how the mind can be moulded, but is not a proof of the fact that: ”the archetypes and interpretatiions of altered state psycho-spiritual experience are almost completely socially constructed and culturally conditioned.” To support this assertion, you'll need more convincing proofs than an hypothetical nun on her death bed.LOL

The experience is clothed in an archetype, the meaning by a word.


”many a fellow yogi has earnestly explained to me that india is a “buddha-field” - a place where the process of becoming enlightened is accelerated, because, well just because, you know - it's india man!.”
If some people believe that, I think it has a simple explanation: India is a country were you have more reminder of religion, so it accelerates the process, or it makes you accident prone. You become a good drinker if you take a little trip to Russia, believe me! As for their explanation to this phenomenon, well it will depend on your kosmic adress.

”but there is a substantial amount of unquestioned (and i think pre rational) metaphysical belief in the closet of even the most dedicated and mature yogi/meditator and while i think it is a more sophisticated (and more benign) version of what goes on in the broader and more superficial new age movement. - it's still a little odd.”

First, you get the message, and then you question it. This process takes time, and it's what is beeing done now. I wonder how long it took europeans celtic cultures to integrate the message of a middle-eastern man, Christ! A hell of a boomeritis it must have been. But who questions it now as part of our culture? Those cross-cultural influences have been tremendously dynamic for cultures. The biogenetic correlate is a good example of that: don't mix blood from a same family, but seek new horizons.

As for reincarnation, I send you to Radhakrishnan's Indian philosophy. The insight has been twisted for power, but in the same way anybody can twist his knowledge to assert his authority on another. It has nothing to do with the insight. Anyway, if you think about it, reincarnation's just been reincarnated into integral models and spiral dynamics. Zaadz is full of post with “I'm second tier, and look how first tier your post is”. Same shit, different name! But still, should we get rid of it? No more pre, trans? I think not!

”both a) the parroting of sanskrit (because it is the holy language you know - with oh so special sacred vibrations) as a veil of authority and the b) literalized pretention of the chakras as something to believe in instead of to interpret symbolically and approach experientially as a metaphor for the mind-body connection, seem to me so far beside the point as to create more confusion and distraction than actual transformational space.”

–> Any discipline will have it's language, which is embedded in LL Quadrant. A man's work is to see how it relates to his experience. Then it doesnt matter anymore how you call it. Oedipus complex, myth of the given, Chakra's! I think we should be fluent in this, more than to coin new words. Fluent in speaking many language.

As for yoga posture's names, in french you always use the sanskritt name and it's translation. No need for a new name. 
 
But on a more constructive side of it:

I sense that you want to free yourself from any LL determinants. But “trans” is not destruction, but acceptance and integration and a capacity to use freely the sub-levels. Otherwise you just fall in the myth of the given, but at a different stage!

The myth of the given is a trap waiting for us at each level.

Boomeritis is the sound of growth. It needs to be recognized, but not destructed. It is healthy development, not pathological. Post-modernism is important as it puts words on certain aspects of our growth.

Same for new age: It is very important, and although I have no special feeling for it, we should see the many values it has, integrate them, and for thoose who want, go further.

Patrick

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

i understand your objections patrick, but i think my answers to your questions are actually in the parts of the post you didnt reference in your reply…

do you tink there is such a thing as stage pathology? such a thing as the pathological shadow side of a stage? i appreciate your generous attitude about how growth proceeds and agree with it, but the thrust of my post has to do with interpreting how the myth of the given in wilber's new work relates to contemporary spirituality.

do you have anything to say about that?

i think actuallly we agree on many things, but you are objecting to my desire to make clear distinctions.

you say: ” The experience is clothed in an archetype, the meaning by a word.” my point exactly and the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, yes? so the literalizing of the archetype is a missing of the point, yes?

if you aggree with the above two stements off of your own, then is it a big jump to say that we have naively lietralized eastern archetypes as being pure windowns to the divine without taking into account the social-construction of those archetypes and ideas/beliefs?

do we not question the”middle-eastern man christ” in the west? gosh i hope we do!

hmmmm integrate the new age huh? let's integrate alien channels and astrology and crystal healing with transrational congnition, politics, and meditation - sounds like a fun mess! :O)

differentiating pre from trans is essential - i am saying nothing about destroying anything, but i will  say that the confusion of pre and trans results in a great deal of destruction, no?

crusade? no.

crusades are enacted by people failing too make the kinds of disticntions i am pointing out.

i would call this more an intelllectual excercise in distinction making and a pointing out where the work ilies in creating more health and groundedness in contemporary spirituality.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Julian,

I think I'm reacting against a certain tone of your writing. But as you say, I think we tend to agree, but not on the cure!

Stage pathology: Yes, of course, it exists, but now it depends on the meaning we give to this word! In the common sense it is something bad, to get rid off, something that shouldn't be here! And that's what I sense in some part of your post, against boomeritis and new age:”hmmmm integrate the new age huh? let's integrate alien channels and astrology and crystal healing with transrational congnition, politics, and meditation - sounds like a fun mess! :O)”. –> if you do not integrate that, what will you do? Eliminate it? Create shadow? Well, for me that's when it starts to really be pathological!
There is no choice but to integrate: transcend and include ! 

”but the thrust of my post has to do with interpreting how the myth of the given in wilber's new work relates to contemporary spirituality.
do you have anything to say about that?”

Yes: The myth of the given is for me a strong belief as to the nature of reality. Kind of a “solid” cognitive-affective pattern. It can exist in any quadrant, on any level, but it's name would change. Here we have an UL “mistake”, relating to zone#1. 

But it is not a pathology, but more a normal process. It is simple identification, which will be followed by detachment and inclusion. 

But, I repeat, we have to include the myh of the given in us, in order to transcend it. If we just want to eliminate it, will create more shadow.

Patrick




 

 

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

“I think I'm reacting against a certain tone of your writing. But as you say, I think we tend to agree, but not on the cure!”

Thanks for that comment, Patrick.  I think you have nailed it for me.  Julain has a lot of important points to make, and we all seem to agree on the data he is using to support his ultimate conclusion.  It's the conclusion he draws that seems to be at odds with some of our conclusions.  And it is said with what I feel is an inflated sense of authority that is rather off-putting.

Julian, how does it feel to have all those arrows in your back;-)

Actually, as contrary as your opinion seems to be (whether you believe it or not, it is an opinionated stance you seem to be taking), I want you to continue.  It is very helpful for me to read your arguments because it encourages me to look into the dusty and musty corners of my mind and see what I might want to get rid of.

A bit of a change of pace, as this was something that came to mind while reading an earlier post of Patrick's.  Regarding chakras, nadis, etc.  I gather that Julian concludes that they are not real and are just symbolic representations of the mind-body connection.  Maybe so.  I would like to just make a comment that I might have heard from my teacher but which intuitively makes sense anyway.   So much of our mental structures are out of reach of our conscious awareness.  As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, my belief, which I think is supported by some pretty advance practitioners, if not archetypal figures, is that all of this is a projection of the mind.  But, as it is so embedded in the unconscious, it's hard to know what's real and what's not.  So, short of end-all knowing, it has been empirically shown that these structures, chakras, nadis, etc. can be “used” to great end.  I have personally benefitted very much from investigating the potential of subtle-body structures that maybe five years ago I would have thought were nonsensical.  My experience and corroboration with others now tells me otherwise.

Keith

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

I really apreciate this thread.  I have been mulling over 'the myth of the givens', and the term 'preposterous gibberish' from the  book the End of Faith….and also thinking about 'synchro-destiny' as written about by Deepak Chopra, “loving what is” by Byron Katie…..

Bruce, I love your concise explanation of the myth of the givens, and of how we 'con-struct' the universe……it does feel like we need to pull this one apart until it is perfectly clear to all of us. 

I am thinking about that notion that when Columbus(or whoever it was) happened upon the shores of North America, that the aboriginal people could not see the ships, as they had no context for understanding them…..  This seems to me to be highly unlikely that they could not “see” them…white (sails) on blue sky……what would there be to not 'see'…They had eyes that registered colour, the requisite organ of perception, of course they would see the ships(or at least the white, and they would likely recognize a boat-like structure)!……it is quite another thing to comprehend 'what' is being seen, to put in a context, to know the implications.  At the same time, lacking comprehension,  there is the issue of 'paying attention' to what is coming in to the senses, registering it and allowing it to become food for thought or analysis….but regardless, there is a primal seeing, if the organ of perception is present and functions…..and there is an 'out there', there are 'givens' that come into the senses……… 

I sometimes think about the magic of our telecommunication age…how I can be in the wilderness, in a remote corner of the world, and now right where I am, there are waves coming to me that because I had a device(a remote control battery operated satellite phone/computer/wireless network) I am able to talk to you.  This blows me away, “the device”, some contraption made out of silicon and petrochemicals and copper and whatever, fashioned in such and such away….and I am able to send and receive messages anywhere in the world, to anyone with a similar receptive/transmitter……
And through this capability, I can act…. I can 'in form' you, and you can 'in form' me….you change my life, and I change yours….even in the act of reading or writing this……

The Innu people, before extensive contact with Europeans, had  amazing communication technologies….they had the Shaman, and the shaky tent, and they would invite animal spirits into the shaky tent and there they would be 'in formed' where to hunt, or  even how remote family members were managing in far-off camps……… They were a 'beige' level group practicing telepathy— without questioning it, absolutely taking it for granted, unconsciously even–  Telepathy,—another way of knowing………

So what is that other way of knowing?  And how do we acknowledge or hold 'this other way of knowing' without throwing out rational thought, the orange scientific paradigm, and without succumbing to the woooo-ooooo gibberish of  those people who would like to grab onto power by obscurring the truth, and locking it up in mysterious grottos to which groupies will flock and pay hommage. These people to whom I am referring are namely the perverted priests, gurus, practitioners of all sorts who 'get off ' on having a following.  Moreover, when one it caught up with any of these ridiculous egomaniacs, the only way to freedom is for any of us to 'know what I know'……and humbly be prepared to admit this….while at the same time remaining open 'to the mystery'…..(refer to the Life of Brian for a further examination of this…..”blessed are the cheesemakers” “What! I think he would be refering to all dairy workers in general.”)

I was recently invited to a sweat with a friend who has been initiated in the ceremony by a Plains Cree tribe out west.  I have known him for a long time, and been on a great paddling adventure with him……he is a country man, and I would want him on my survival team when the 'big one comes'…….the sweat lodge was lovely, caribou skins and spruce bows on the ground.  There were only three of us, and Max and Pien both sang and told stories, many in the Innu language.  During the third session of the sweat, I asked to sing a chant that I know…..Matthew Fox sang it once to me years ago in a workshop.  Max agreed…but later, after the sweat, he said that he wouldn't want me to sing it if more people had been there….something to the effect that it was 'too white'…….It is a simply chant:  “I walk with beauty before me, I walk with beauty behind me, I walk with beauty all around me, Your world is so beautiful O' God.” ….it is an interesting territory, this territory between my truth, my faulty perceptions, your truth, your faulty perceptions and what is really 'Given'—this magnificent, ever-evolving stew of energy that is trying to know itself through you and me and amazingly also through our faulty perceptions…..

I often think about Resonance…….and then about Dissonance…….how these layers are enfolded and expressed and ever-changed  and ever-changing in this dance.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

beautiful reflections jane!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Julian and Jane, I appreciated your posts and hope to respond in more detail soon.  I posted something on a parallel thread (on the TSK forum) today, and I wanted to provide a link to it so that some of the thoughts and questions I'm sharing there can feed into this discussion as well.

http://pods.zaadz.com/tsk/discussions/view/91004#92492

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

cool balder - will check it out. :O)

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi, Julian,

I'm not entirely clear where you are coming from, so I do not know how much the following remarks relate to or address your own positions.  Please regard the following as my own position statement…..

As a graduate from one of the “alternative colleges” that Wilber describes as a haven for Boomeritis and anti-intellectualism, I am very familiar with the unfortunate trend in modern spirituality to spurn intellectuality and rational inquiry, and I agree that there is a need to rehabilitate cognitive development in these circles (while also not neglecting or downplaying the strengths of the other modes of awareness that they emphasize).  I am not convinced, however, that the path to accomplishing this is by rejecting traditional spiritual vehicles, or stripping them down so much that they no longer are able to draw meaningfully on traditional concepts, languages, images, and so on.

Once, I did believe that was necessary, particularly when I was a student of Krishnamurti and had come to regard traditional religion as a complete failure in its project of human liberation or fulfillment.  I had found that rational argument could make short work of traditional myths, and penetrating analysis could reveal the narcissism, insecurity, power struggles, and image-hunger underneath the veneer of most institutionalized religions.

I regard your manifesto as Krishnamurtian in spirit.  As you probably know, he was extremely hard on traditional religion and was rather merciless with those who sought security and fulfillment within its power-structures and its elaborate promises – which he called “rubbish” and “childish nonsense.”

I believe his analysis of the fear-driven, image-based power dynamics of most spiritual seeking was right on target.  And perhaps his iconoclastic approach is just what the doctor ordered.  It was, for me, for quite a few years.  It allowed me to cut through many old attachments and projections.

Eventually, however, I came to find this approach too narrow and limited for me.  I found that it failed to recognize the depths of many of the teachings and practices preserved within traditional religion, and sometimes did not adequately distinguish between prerational and transrational uses of imagery, language, technique, and so on.  I think the “new atheists” (such as Sam Harris) are making a similar mistake.  When Sam says it is now our duty to make fun of traditional religion and make it embarrassing to follow it, because of its pre-rational elements and so on, I think he is going too far – as I think Krishnamurti went too far.

In your letter, you seem to indicate that people who do not move in the direction of secular humanism and throw away all the baggage of traditional religious language and imagery will not be capable of realizing deep, transformative, transrational insights or abiding state-changes (that are not discolored by narcissism).  I don't believe the “way” is so narrow, and have known a number of people who have experienced profound and meaningful transformations within the context of the practice of a traditional religion.  In this discussion, I have been mentioning one of my main practice traditions, TSK, and that is an important case in point.  I believe it is a profound and truly postmetaphysical vehicle of spiritual inquiry (which first emerged 30 years ago, the same year Wilber published Spectrum of Consciousness), and it was created by a practicing Buddhist lama who is fluent in traditional Vajrayana teachings, and whose training in this tradition prepared him to unfold this novel new vision.

I believe that a truly post-modern approach will, and should, encourage us to question everything – to let nothing be immune from clear-sighted inquiry and investigation, and let nothing hold us back from daring and creative speculation and innovation – and yet I have also found that such an opening, when it dawns, may also allow us to find new depths within our present structures…without requiring us to attack or undermine those vehicles that have nurtured us through different stages.

I am not saying that we should never leave traditional religion behind.  For any one of us, that may be perfectly appropriate at some point in our development.  But as a social program, as a mission which aims to deconstruct all traditional structures and replace them with rational secular spirituality, I am skeptical of its success … and, I admit, a little fearful of its potential for excess and harm.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

I continue to wake up in the mornings puzzling about all of this.

I remember once having a conversation with my sister, Jo.  At some point she said something to the effect, “Well, Jane the problem is, you can't see that most people can't see what you can see”.  This stopped me short.  It fits really well into integral math, and the myth of the givens.  I had been making the assumption that people could ‘see' things that, indeed, they could not ‘see'.  Following from this assumption, I was outraged at certain behaviours that were incongruent with knowing what I assumed “we” knew.  And following this, I was filled with anger and disappointment and frustration when I hit a brick wall in trying to discuss what obviously to me was going on….also discovering that even discussing the incongruencies wasl ‘forbidden territory', but Why!?

There are many places where 'forbidden territory pattern emerges: inter-personal dynamics, the environmental crisis, fundamentalist religious structures, politics, ………all sorts of situations where putting up a good front, protecting one's reputation, preserving ‘dignity and decorum' for all the outside world to see, is not MERELY a horrendous cover-up for the true state of affairs that is happening ‘behind closed doors'(the side of the equation that is not up for scrutiny, and accountability).  Much more than this cover-up, it is THIS spin-doctored story that many people SEE as ‘Reality'.  It is the only reality that they have ever known.  As if a mass collusion has been going on….as if the parade is just waiting for the kid to say “the emperor has no clothes on.”

There are people who do NOT see with their soul eyes.  I think Daniel Goldman and Malcolm Galdwell  with Emotional Intelligence and Blink are circling around this surprising blindspot.  It was such a relief for me to discover Nietzsche when I was young and later Alice Miller, ‘For Your Own Good', and others.  In effect, these people are writing about the generational damage to the organs of perception through which the 1^st person perspective ‘sees'.  Again I am talking about not our physical ‘eyes' but rather the ‘eyes' of our soul…..If we were to follow most of our spiritual traditions to their source, this damage started back at the garden, with our fall from grace, with our eating the apple, with the knowledge of good and evil, with our self-consciousness, with our shame, our duality….and in effect, this ‘damaging' was the beginning of this long journey we have been on ever since.

And it has been an amazing journey…..the human venture of consciousness becoming conscious of itself…In our soul blindness, we have brailled our way along, bumping into projections, hiding from shadows, creating one mess after another, including the charletains claiming the cure to all that ails us.  And more, by my estimation, our amazing spiritual traditions have both preserved the ‘code' to unlock the secrets of perfect sight and perpetuated the ‘damaging' that has kept us blinded…..oh, oh, oh–‘the heart of the divine lies in paradox'.

In any event, the soul eyes ‘see' dissonance, incongruency, disharmony.  They are the compulsive seekers of clarity, and they cannot rest in obscurity.  In a nutshell, we are here to give the eyes of the soul a fully embodied presence in this miraculous moment spinning through space.  To the extent that we cannot fully ‘see', our lives are the cosmic/earthlyworkshop restoring and rehabilitating the eyes of our soul to perfect sight….

So in the Myth of the Givens……

In my humble estimation, this is what IS Given:   (* denotes the givens)

1P-the first person perspective* is cloaked in a personal/cosmic history*(aka hence forth also known as  the mudpile*) that must be clarified by the very instruments of clarity*  (aka the eyes* of the soul) that have been both created and obscured by the very history they must clarify.  (Now try saying that 10 times really quickly!)

Now, not bereft of any power whatsoever, 1P has one amazing gift….the gift of ‘intention'*…..and with this one gift, 1P begins the journey through the mudpile, the differentiating, intoxicating, miraculous mudpile*.  To make it more complex, this is also a co-creative* journey where 1P transforms the mudpile as he/she travel through it ….and all this traveling, ho hum, exhausting really, continues until, eventually, 1P aligns that one single gift of intention with the Intention of  the “infinite P” aka Kosmos aka the big picture perspective- and then pa-ding! Alchemy. Elaboration. Magic happens!-this is synchro-destiny….this is ‘loving what is'….this is when the light goes on!  This is Enlightment.  This is consciousness knowing itself, (in the biblical way. ), intimately, closer than the bone….a drop of THIS radiance is unimaginable.  Yet, imagine, all of this adventure is taking place in the very ordinariness of our mundane little lives!….such pathos! Such drama! Such a bunch of sleepyheads with eyes shut tight!…..

So what is not to get about that!?

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Jane, I've been enjoying your reflections and “mullings.”  I recall the story that the American Indians couldn't see the Spaniards' boat when it first arrived, and like you, I'm pretty skeptical about that claim.  I can't rule it out altogether, however, because I think it is well-established that the “camera theory” of perception is naive, and that a great deal of what we see is selectively constructed out of the great influx of data that strikes the senses.  It may be that light waves from white sails and wooden hull did indeed strike the eyes of the natives, and yet that data was not integrated into their perceptual gestalt because it was so unfamiliar and unexpected.  Who knows?  But if this is the case – that we tend not to see what we don't expect – then one wonders how perception gets going at all.

Still – one of your points is that we must take it as “given” that there are truly objects out there which our senses detect (regardless of whether that information is integrated into conscious awareness).  That there IS an “out there” to be registered at all.  We just can't say what “out there” is like from its own side, if it even makes sense to attempt to do so.

Are we justified in taking the notion that we are all unique, individual entities, with bodies occupying a specific “volume” of space, located within a world populated by other objects and entities, all of which interact by “crossing” distances in (or broadcasting messages across) time and space?  I think that most of us do take these things for granted.  They are so obvious, so intrinsic to the fabric of our experience, that they are simply “given.”  If someone questions the notion that physical distance is real, we would generally respond with incredulity – or else we might acknowledge that physical distance may “evaporate” at some hidden, deeper or higher level of experience, but still insist that, for all practical purposes, physical distance is simply a given fact.

I was thinking about these things while walking across the office this morning, and suddenly had a startling reorientation of my experience.  I became aware of all of the “pieces” of experience that give the impression of “covering distance in space” – the motion of my legs, the walls receding past me, small objects becoming larger as they “neared” me, new (previously unseen) objects coming into view, etc. – and they all occupied my awareness for a moment prior to being “assembled” into the “experience” of crossing physical space.  For that moment, I touched the “con-structing” going on, or at least appeared to; the experience was briefly disorienting, and then playfully mysterious.  That little gap let me imagine that there might be other stories that could be told, other ways those parallel “pieces” of experience could be assembled and interpreted.

Perhaps I'm just behaving like a boy.  You hand him a stick, and he's bound to start poking stuff.  This “myth of the given” is such a stick, and I'm enjoying this poking….

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  Your story about your chant being “too white” made me laugh.  The first four lines are actually almost a direct translation from a traditional Navajo prayer.  Maybe it's just the addition of the last line that pushes it into the dreaded realm of whiteness….

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Balder, You still out there?! I know what you mean about poking this 'thing' with a stick…..Time and distance(space) are at least two dimensions of this 'thing'… ..and soon, as we proceed along this investigation,  we are going to be travelling at the speed of light, and the alpha and the omega will be rapidly approaching again, and dammit, I will feel rushed and claustrophobic yet again…and you are me, and I am you…and wait a minute, it will all seem like deja vu…..

But for now, I often have that startling feeling like you describe….like the whole world is really a neuronal map of experiences and in order for me to get from here to there, I have to have leg stretching activity, eye colour patterns, a few wafts of smells, some predictable sounds…and voila, there I have arrived…..  I have often wondered how blind people experience space, and spaciousness……. my room mate from medical school  had retinitis pigmentosa and was night blind and had tunnel vision.  She would get home by counting the street lights…. I remember also asking a blind person once how they dreamed without visions…or colours…. I would have liked to have spent more time asking about this.  I have also loved the descriptions of Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in the universe story of the primordial flaring forth, of the development of eyes, of the universe yearning to behold its own beauty……

Time and distance become eternity and infinity without each other.  The fact that we have consensual “we” time is quite a wonder in and of itself, and perhaps an artifact of some sort that comes from our perception of individual boundaries.  Time, it seems to me, is more likely an individual essence, something each of us manufactures as an activity in the brain.  We begin doing so at conception, and stop doing so at physical death…….

I am at work right now, and have to go off for a bit.  I love thinking about this stuff!  I love how you think about it too.
Jane

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

fun stuff jane! i love yuour writing style - so much of you comes through.

good observations too.

ummmmm in terms of 'following it back to the garden of eden…”  oops thats a socially constructed given myth too though, yea? that somehow we fell from grace - i think rather we have been growing toward grace - grace of more and more complete awareness of what is.

the grace of relinquishing one set of illusions for a new set of less inauccrate illusions for yet another new set of less distorted truths and so on…

the myth of the given is a principle that helps us to further decode the truth and slough off the delusions.

as you said - the traiditions have served to both communicate truth and perpetuate delusions. they communicate truth becuase of the universa, transcendent nature of those truths - but they perpetuate delusions becuase those truths are wrapped in culture-bound, socially-constructed concepts that need to be deconstructed, re-evaluated and de-fetishized.

this needs to happen not only to the western traiditions but to the eastern traditions too - if we are indeed to co-create a postmodern, post-metaphysical, transrational spiritual for the new century….

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Julian, Thanks for enjoying my musings!….I agree with you about the distinction about whether we are falling from grace or into grace…..and somehow, again, the heart of the divine lies in paradox!

The garden of eden is both a social construct and also a metaphor of a primordial state of consciousness before beginning the adventure of consciousness attempting to know itself.  It has been said by others, and I agree, that this adventure is the special task of the human….the task of  knowing and reflecting the glory of creation back upon itself.  Now that fact that we are now in such peril, clearly in a serious muddle, and about to blow apart the lab, well, er, that is cause for some serious concern……but anyway, this is the journey that we are on…..and it began with 'self consciousness' which went hand in hand with shaming, the emergence of duality, and indeed, duplicity too.  And, believe me, I am totally with you, Julian, in recognizing the need to deconstruct the duplicity and gibberish that has come down through the eastern and western traditions…..

Yep, I love this thread…. I think we are beginning to assemble a team of fearless de-constructors……we will soon be ready to enter into the matter-anti-matter thingamajiggy and solve the riddle of existence for once and for all….! Poking sticks Ready!  On your mark……

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

What delightful discussions are going on here. I miss you guys! I will try to catch up some more tomorrow when I have access to internet. It’s been a little over a week since my Dsl went down…
About Eden… I see it differently from year to year. You know, even the very early Christians called it a “fortunate fall” (yes, I know still negative). The truth is that the “knowledge of good and evil” or the evolution of consciousness is a mixed blessing. I think “Eden” is where the animals live, completely in the Now, in the Wild as the Romantics used to say.

So as we learn and grow, east of Eden, we gain more experience and more sadness as well as more insight and delight. We fleetingly experience the Now, more and more if we diligently practise. I think in the end the Now that we experience out of the “garden” is more exciting, more meaningful because our knowledge of good and evil provides a wider framework…

Love

Nicole

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

I'd like to answer question 4 of your original post, of how we can tell if something is pre or trans-rational.  I think if you're trans-rational, it would be obvious to you, especially after questioning the thought process.

Pre-rationality is without rationality.  It is illogical.  It does not follow any rational thought.  It is incapable of rationality, or just disregards it.

Rational thought follows two requirements that I have discovered.  (there may be more that I don't know of)  However, rational people are immersed in rationality and cannot see the functioning of rationality and think rationality are the gears turning in the machine.

A trans-rational person sees logic as a tool, and not as the gears turning in the machine.  For logic to work, you must: 1) frame the subject, and 2) decide on the rules, following an either-or analysis.  If you are trans-rational, you can see how people fall for the myth of the given in choosing what to include and what to exclude in their frame.  You'd also see how the rules that are applied are culturally biased.

Trans-rationality probably would have to transcend the limitations of rationality by transcending the 1) rigid frame, 2) the rules applied, and 3) transcending the either-or analysis with an “and” analysis, or with looking at it from both perspectives.  It's the (intellectual) uncovering of the myth that logic dictates how the world functions.  At best, you can say that logic correlates with the observable world.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

“5. what do we mean by “faith” and is faith necessary or useful in a contemporary transrrational spirituality?”

I'd like to muse with this one…  Since we all start at Beige and have to work our way through Purple, Red, Blue, Orange, Green, etc…, I think faith is necessary.  Why?  Because of our dysfunctional culture.  It may not be for another 1000, or perhaps 10,000 years before a human is born in a functional society.  Let me explain.

Almost everyone has unhealthy beige, purple and red remnants in them.  We all have shadows.  “Faith” is a tremendous tool to use to “replace” the faulty parenthood that many of us received.  I admit that I learned to distrust my parents at purple (and red, and blue, and on up).  Now, I use faith in Big Heart to repair myself and find my anchor in the unlimited compassion, and not in society or culture.  That's a big shift, and I don't think just sitting meditation can repair purple and red inadequacies.  It has to be actively pursued.  There's an unhealthy child in me that really needs this.  You might argue that tonglen can perhaps do this without faith.  But I think tonglen addresses higher stages and doesn't address the beige through red stages as well as a ritualistic prayer (verbal or non-verbal) with gestures could.

When I reached Yellow, I realized I had to do a whole lot of rescripting of my 1st tier stages.  I was totally f****ed up!  With AQAL, there's the interior and exterior that needs to be addressed.  The interior separation of self from everything else is never really quite done well in our culture.  In fact, our interior individual identity is smeared with exterior objects, which is why I personally think we are so attached to objects and attainment.  This faith-based repairing of the interior and clarifying of the small me really helps me in this journey to realize the Big Me.

Also, on a more personal note, I am more attracted to the people who have studied extensively in 2nd-person, faith-based religions.  You know, the monks an gurus who just exude patience and compassion and love and yet are humble beyond words.  I don't see that combination much in masters of 1st-person traditions.  Maybe I just want to be coddled and hand-fed by Spirit.  Maybe I just want to believe that small me matters.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

I too find those “second-person” masters more compassionate and caring on the whole… I think there’s a danger in trivializing all faith as unevolved and childish. There are unevolved and childish ways of being an atheist or an agnostic too… The bottom line for me is - has your spiritual path helped you become a more compassionate, loving and accepting person? Has it brought you deep wisdom? Humility? By their fruits you shall know them.

I know by my impatience and anger that I have a long way to go but hope that I’m at least moving in the right direction.

Love

Nicole

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi all,

First post on Zaadz.

I've been following this conversation for a while, and am finding it good and fun. For now I just wanted to mention the fun and fictional and thought-provoking SEP field:  :-)

 

“An SEP is something that we can't see, or don't see,  or  our brain  doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.  That's what SEP means. Somebody Else's Problem. The brain just edits  it  out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know  precisely  what  it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.”  ~ Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything

An SEP field is a generated energy field which affects perception. Entities within the field will be perceived by an outside observer as “Somebody Else's Problem”, and will therefore be effectively invisible unless the observer is specifically looking for the entity. This effect is greatly heightened if the entity within the field is already unexpected or out of place. The primary example of this was given in the third book Life, the Universe and Everything, when a spaceship built to look like an upside down bistro utilizes an SEP field to land unobserved in the middle of Lord's Cricket Ground. Another example occurs when the aforementioned ship's field is extended so that the characters fail to notice the fact that they cannot breathe or the fact that the asteroid that they are standing on does not have enough gravitational force to hold them down, and thus are able to breathe and stay grounded. It should be noted that an SEP field won't render an object invisible if it is expected to be there, and an SEP-cloaked object may be noticed out of the corner of the eye.

The SEP field requires much less energy than a normal invisibility field (a single torch battery can run it for over a hundred years) due to the natural propensity of people to see things as Somebody Else's Problem. This is very close to the idea suggested by Terry Pratchett (who has often been compared to Douglas Adams): People do not see whatever they are sure cannot be there.

A similar concept is shown on the BBC3 programme Torchwood when Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper rise out of the pavement in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff on Torchwood Three's ”invisible lift” and is completely ignored by the people around them due to what he describes as a 'perception field'.

Real life example

The idea of the SEP field has some grounding in the real life idea known as static filtering, in which people immediately disregard information contrary to what is expected. An example of malicious use of static filtering is the theory of subliminal messages in visual media. This theory is also put to practice in the film Fight Club; viewers are shown brief glimpses of a specific character as he suddenly appears and disappears, yet first-time viewers will generally disregard the flash unless they are told about its significance.

There exists a related phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. Essentially, when a person is paying close attention to a specific object or task, they are unlikely to remember anything else about the scene. This was reported on clearly by Daniel J Simons and Christopher F Chabris of Harvard University in their study “Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events” (Harvard University, 1999). This study discusses subjects who were told to carefully watch a televised basketball game and count the number of passes made or other similar tasks. Most of the subjects failed to notice when the scene changed in various ways, such as the ball being thrown off court (with the players continuing to mimic passes), or exchanging all the male players for women. In the most dramatic example, nearly half the viewers failed to notice a woman carrying an umbrella and a man in a gorilla suit walking across the screen in the middle of the video.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hey MichaelD

Welcome to IIzaadz!  Fascinating post, and great examples; it is an interesting topic indeed, how people filter out what they don't want to know or think about, for whatever reasons.   I remember a book I read a long time ago called How Real Is Real?  that talked about cognitive filtering and distortions (accidental or deliberate, as in the case of propaganda or misinformation).   At the time I found it mind-blowing and would love to read it again sometime.

I do think, however, that we can focus too much on the ambiguity of knowing, and lose touch with common sense interpretations, or come to some silly conclusion that everyone's worldview or reality tunnel is equally accurate, or that at any rate we have no way to determine at all whose version of events or reality is more accurate.

Here is an excerpt from How Real Is Real?

Noncontingency … disinformation.
from “How Real is Real?” by Paul Watzlawick.

• The Neurotic Horse.
  If a horse receives a mild electric shock from a metal plate of the floor of its stall every time a bell rings, it will very soon come to associate the bell with the imminent shock and lift its hoof to avoid it. Once this conditioned (learned) reflex has been established, the shock mechanism can be turned off, and the horse will continue to lift its hoof whenever the bell rings.

  And every time it does this, the “success” of the action, i.e., the 'nonoccurrence' of the shock, further convinces it that lifting its hoof is the “right” reaction. It never learns that the bell is no longer followed by a shock. For all practical purposes, it has acquired a neurotic symptom, persisting in an action that once was appropriate but no longer is. And, it need hardly be said, this kind of problem is by no means limited to animals.
  
  
  

• The Superstitious Rat.
  
  Superstition is usually considered a purely human affliction through which we hope to establish some ORDER in, and gain some CONTROL over, the capricious uncertainty of the world around us. But it can be fairly easily produced in animals, such as the laboratory rat (as well as pigeons. A rat is released from its cage into an area about three feet long with a food tray on the far side. Ten seconds after the rat's arrival, food is dropped into the tray. If the rat gets to the tray LESS than ten seconds after its release, it gets no food.

  Before long the rat, with its PRACTICAL mind manages “to put two and two together.” Since it takes the rat only two seconds to run directly to the food tray, the extra time has to be spent in a way that is basically alien to the rat's normal inclination to head straight for food. Under these circumstances the delay acquires a pseudocausal significance; whatever the rat does during these eight seconds, becomes, in the rat's eyes, the “necessary” action that “produces”, or is “rewarded” by, the appearance of food.

  These behavior patterns, of course, vary from rat to rat, which gives them a particularly capricious aspect: back-and-forth movements, a certain number of pirouettes to the right or the left, jumps (which the rat may have done purely accidentally at first), are faithfully repeated time after time. And every time the rat finds food in the tray, its belief is confirmed that this particular behavior is what produces the food.

  These types of behavior are the obvious equivalent of COMPULSIVE human superstitions, which are often based on the vague belief that they are required by some “divine experimenter.”
  
  
  

• The more complicated, the better.
  

  Professor Alex Bavelas, a noted expert in small-group interaction, has shown in several experiments that this kind of disinformation has a powerful influence on a human being's sense of reality.

  In one experiment, two subjects, A and B, are seated facing a projection screen. There is a partition between them so that they cannot see each other, and they are requested not to communicate. They are then shown medical slides of healthy and sick cells and told that they must learn to recognize which is which by trial and error. In front of each of them are two buttons marked “Healthy” and “Sick,” respectively, and two signal lights marked “Right” and “Wrong.” Every time a slide is projected they have to press one of the buttons, whereupon one of the two signal lights flashes on.

  “A” gets true feedback; that is, the lights tell him whether his guess was indeed right or wrong. His situation is one of simple discrimination, and in the course of the experiment, most “A” subjects learn to distinguish healthy from sick cells with a fair degree of correctness (i.e., about 80 percent of the time).

  “B's” situation is different.
  His feedback is based not on his own guesses, but on A's. Therefore it does not matter what he decides about a particular slide; he is told “right” if “A” guessed right, “wrong” if “A” guessed wrong. B does not know this; he has been led to believe there is an order, that he has to discover this order, and that he can do so by making guesses and finding out if he is right or wrong. But as he asks the “sphinx” he gets very confusing answers because he does not know that the sphinx is not talking to HIM.

  In other words, there is no way in which he can discover that the answers he gets are noncontingent – that is, have NOTHING to do with his questions – and that therefore he is not learning anything about his guesses. So he is searching for an ORDER where there is none that HE could discover.

  A and B are eventually asked to discuss what they have come to consider the rules for distinguishing between healthy and sick cells. “A”'s explanations are simple and concrete; “B”'s are of necessity subtle and complex – after all, he had to form his hypothesis on the basis of very tenuous and contradictory hunches.

  The amazing thing is that A does not simply shrug off B's explanations as unnecessarily complicated or even absurd, but is impressed by their sophisticated “brilliance.” “A” tends to feel inferior and vulnerable because of the pedestrian simplicity of his assumption, and the more complicated “B”'s “delusions”, the more likely they are to convince A.

  (This CONTAGIOUSNESS of DELUSIONS is only too well known outside the communication researcher's laboratory, and we shall later consider some glaring examples.)

  **
  Before they take a second, identical test (but with new slides), A and B are asked to guess who will now do better than in his first test. All B's and most As say that B will. In actual fact, B shows hardly any improvement, but comparatively speaking, seems to be doing better because A, who now shares at least some of B's obtuse ideas, performs significantly more POORLY than the first time.

  ***
  What Bavelas' ingenious experiment teaches us has far-reaching consequences: it shows that once a tentative explanation has taken hold of our minds, information to the contrary may produce not corrections but ELABORATIONS of the explanation.

  This means that the explanation becomes “self-sealing”; it is a conjecture that cannot be refuted. But as Popper has shown [Sir Karl Raimund Popper, “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, Basic Books, 1962], refutability is the condition sine qua non of scientific explanation. CONJECTURES of the kind we are considering here are thus pseudoscientific, superstitious, and, ultimately, in a very real sense, PSYCHOTIC.

  As we look at world history, we find that similarly “irrefutable” conjectures have been responsible for the worst atrocities. The Inquisition, ideas of racial superiority, the claim of totalitarian ideologies to have found the ultimate answer, immediately come to mind as examples.

• pages 47 to 51.

The above is a brief outline extracted from this recommended publication:

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Count the number of  f's in this passage…..

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Five.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

twenty seven

… I mean six!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

yep, six!

sneaky little buggers!

my first county only showed two, then I thought I'd hunted them all down with five…

i probably should count again to make sure there aren't seven!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Sneaky little buggers is right!  One of the emergency nurses gave that to me late one night, saying, “Jane you will get them all for sure.”  So knowing it was somehow a trick, and wanting, secretly, to impress everyone and enhance Jeanette's faith in me, I carefully  scanned the passage a couple of times looking at each word with my best attention.  Then vigilently and confidently, I declared “Three”.  “Oh,” she said looking disappointed, “You're just like the rest of us!”  “Yes,” I said after having my blindspots pointed out…. “And just think, the emergency health care of all of northern Labrador is resting on my shoulders-indeed, on our shoulders tonight! Be afraid.  Be very afraid.”  And we all said prayer under our breaths, laughed…..and continued, humbly, as best we could…..
Seth, Mr. Shmarty Pants, appears to be the one with it all figured out!  My new leader!
Poor Balder,–only “two”! then “five!”…… Nobody said being human wasn't humiliating sometimes! Take heart though, it is probably lonely being Seth, and Bruce you have many, many friends who see the world just like you do!  

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Seth can be my leader too!  And you're right, Jane: being human can be humiliating!  But encountering limits also invites awakening; it stirs the heart to new attentiveness.  Are these limits “given” or self-imposed?  How can we find out?  If limits bring knowledge, are they really limits, or just a new way knowledge is knocking on our door?

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

I only caught four of the little buggers at first, and I may have even settled for it as an answer if it wasn’t for Balder posting five.  That was my incentive to rescan until I caught the fifth, but with the fifth came the sixth.  I missed the top two of’s.

An excellent example by the way!!

Oh, and thanks for pointing out how lonely and friendless I am, that was suppose to be a secret!… ah well. ;)

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

I don’t know how to really tell you two this but my capacity for followers has already been maxed out at zero.

Have you ever heard a captain strategize a mutiny against his crew?  Yeah, well that’s me if I break my follower threshold… I’m sure you understand.

Trust me it’s possible!

So please, quit posting congruent perspectives to my own… Balder just posted another one below!!  *shaking head*

Happy New Year!!  :)

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

balder thanks for your above reply. this is a beautiful piece of diplomacy and nuanced distinction making, and i do take your points to heart.

i will look into the TSK stuff.

i will also point out very briefly that it is a tiny tiny percentage of spiritually minded people who are interested in transrational interpretations of the traditions and that harris et all are right on target about the incredible suffering and bloodhsed caused by ubiquitous prerational beliefs. getting a dialog going inn whcih more than 4% of the american populatiion ight question the literal existence of  the abrahamic god is GOOD THING. :O)

no country ever suffered from it's citizens being too reasonable.

do we see terrible consequences in the moderate secular humanist social democracies of western europe and scandinavia?

nope. we see existentialism, postmodernism, wonderful social programs, reason prized above faith, pacificism etc…horrible, i know!

the blues need to be coaxed toward orange rationality and humanism. the greens need to be coaxed out of their red regression toward yellow. that is the situation we are in with regard to the spiritual/reigious sphere.

what they both blue/red and green/red share in common is a naive belief in literalized myth of the kind that actuallly limits human evolution and preservation of genuine morality, life and liberty. both need a healthy dose of orange. so the suqetion is how do we do that? well i am intersted in encouraging the green/red folks to integrate rationality and move toward yellow. then we can articulate a spirituality that wont be the laughing stock of resonable people and that will give liberal humanist politics something to counter christian fundamentalist conservatism with. it also (as a i think sam harris is trying to do)  makes clear one fo the reasons that religious violence is such a powerful presence on our current landscape and starts to evolve more of the popultaion beyond those faith-based value structures.

as people taking on the task of mapping and advancing the edge of our evolution in consciousness (mmm i know - sounds inflated, huh?!) i think analysis of this stuff is essential.

but answer me this:
why do i so  often i run up against this taboo -

that any analysis of the situation and description of the pre/trans problem and the need for reason, critical thinking and logic as midwife and doula to adult spirituality gets called a manspirited condemnation of religion or a dangerous position?

on the other side of the BEAUTIFUL clarity of the  rational gaze combined with the  integrated cantauric bodymind lies transrational spirituality - and the aspects of religious archetype and metaphor that have the depth, power, beauty and goodness,  to make that transition will remain intact and even further blossomed to reveal truth and eliminate previous distortions.

i celebrate this possibility and say there is nothing to fear in debunking the old world superstitions - one does not lose spirituality - what is left becomes a foundation for a non-superstitious spirituality.

i want this message out there in the world: there is nothing to fear. meaning, depth, beauty, morality, growth, compassion will all still be there - they are the real jewels that remain after the glass baubles of preational fantasy are relinquished….they are the true qualities in their mature forms that remain after we see that the Unconscious made up all of this myth in it's extraordinary creative wisdom to guide us intuitively to the place of finally seeing that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon and that the moon referred to is YOU.

(uh oh sounds a little like enlightenement huh?!)

as to your friends (and i assume yourself) who are having marvelous transrational openings within the traditions - great! i even hear you saying though that there is an evolutionary threshold at whcih certain of the traditional conventions and beliefs of the tradition get surrendered - they cannot survive the very deepening consciousness that they have been nurtiring - and this is as it should be!

the questions we started with were about differentiating the metaphoric from the literal. making distinctions between pre and trans. asking how recognizing the myth of the given affects our relationship to spiritual practice.

i think these sorts of questions can be engaged on their own terms and have rather straightforward logical conclusions.

for example recognizing that archetypes are not literally real as socially consttructed and given through particular myths  (while for some a little depressing) does not in any way reduce their powerful metaphoric meaning or their ability to help us connect to our psyches and the natural world in meaningful ways - but it does correct a delusional perception, and that is part of what spiritual practice and philosophy should do, no?

unfortunatley i think our conditioned fondness for prerational beliefs makes us do very interesting backflips and contortions to try and make prerational, rational and transrational contradictions all have a place at the table…

part of what i have been getting at in this thread and the previous is that we humans  have a masssive tendency to get caught up in the ephemeral dream of exotic spiritual magic, messiahs, otherwordly realms and super special ultimate states.

from a rational perspective this is all nonsense.

period.

from an integrated ransrational perspective we start to ask - ” ah yes not literallly true - that would be nonsense - but i wonder what this stuff all means in psychological terms, in socio-political terms - what is this poetic language referring to?”

and so we come to joseph campbell. in listening to a lecture of him from the early 70's he talked about how he and his friends in college in the 20's thought that religion would be completely dead within the next 50 years. too bad he was wrong.

he then set about an incredible analysis that includes in his own way the myth of the given, using literary, sociological, anthropological, political, and psychological principles to deconstruct myths and decode their deeper metaphorical meaning!

for me his treasure chest of lectures and books has served as in incredible support in having a serious spiritual practice wiothout feeling at all loyal to any mythic literalism, while holding the beauty and communicative power of the metaphors on one hand and the socially constructed distorted manipulations in the other….

ok so i wasn't brief! :O)

thanks for the stimulation.

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

“…getting a dialog going in which more than 4% of the american populatiion might question the literal existence of  the abrahamic god is GOOD THING. :O)”

Yes it is.  However…..getting the 25% (guessing from recall on that) of post-modernists to reconsider their outright denial of it is also a good thing.  Not that it should be explained in the same mythic-literal sense, but might be explained short of denial and withhout dismissing it as delusional.  Just because it's not what the mythic believers say it is doesn't mean it is  altogether unreal.  The moon is not made of green cheese, but that doesn't mean there's no moon.  It's tough to use the Abrahamic god to make examples, but maybe a bit easier to use some other deities.

Now this example is probably going to sound implausible, but I trust the folks who relayed it to me, and I have a history with them that tells me unquestioningly that they are trans-rational, at least to a large extent.  Our teacher began having experiences last summer, such as visions of beings, experiences in the realm of saints (so to speak).  Experiences of descending energy, much like that which Aurobindo claimed (several of us experienced descending energy at a retreat last May).  This culminated in a peak experience of visitation by the Divine Mother.  This was not asked for, but as is his Path, my teacher just “surrendered all that he knew and Mother just appeared.”  Those are pretty close to the words he used when I asked him about it.  About a week later, he and his wife were having house guests that included two members of our sangha.  His wife is really not into the Path, and used to even be hostile to it.  But I think what I am about to explain might have changed her mind a bit.  This group was sitting around, the teacher and students talking about the Path, and wife sitting in sociably.  All who were there simulatenously reported a profound Presence in the room, and they all shared the same vision of the Divine Mother, including some kind of verbal communication that was apparently forgotten due to the incredible awe of experiencing such an unbelievable visitation.  I believe they saw something.  They do to and most if not all the members of our sangha who have talked about it find it implausible that this could have been conconcted by those four people in any way.  At the same time, this was not made out to be a big deal by the teacher. 

This type of experience has been reported throughout the ages.  So, why not Abraham?  Sure, it's easily misinterpreted, but so what?  The trick, I believe, is not in dismissing it but in explaining it trans-rationally.  There are rational explainations, supported by the writings or transcripted teachings of some 19th and 20th century sages.  And it doesn't involve anthropomorphic gods.  It doesn't require saying, “our patriarch is the only one who had a genuine experience and yours experienced the trickery of satan.”  There can be an integral explanation that includes what has been seen as mythic because of the divisiveness of the various religions.  See past the divisiveness and find connections and inclusiveness, and it might just start making trans-rational sense.

For me, I am not about to let someone elses faulty interpretation interfere with my own realization.  And, if I remain open to what may or may not be, I don't think I will be disappointed if I never reach a final conclusion, and it just might leave a little room to be compassionate towards those who might be mistaken in their mythic-literalist interpretations.  For me, that's a win-win.  I don't have to say I'm right and they're wrong.  But that's not necessarily the motivation.  I just don't like to be rigid in my positions.

Keith

P.S.  Having fun reading this thread in a kind of backwards fashion.  It somehow seems appropriate for the topic.  It was just hilarious that I used the “poking a stick” metaphor after it had already been used by Balder and Jane.  Fun! Fun!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

For more on how people's perceptions of reality can be distorted using rhetorical devices and the like, please see the article I just posted, Preparing Us for War with Iran.  Quite interesting from a theoretical perspective - but with potentially horrific consequences in the world of flesh and stone.

arthur

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

December 31st….
I am having so much fun swimming around in this thread that the morning is starting to go by….and I am neglecting my duties!….I am going off to the cabin, 26 miles down the lake for New Years….it looks blistering cold outside with a miasma of snow creeping and twirling around close to the ice….still we are going off in a few hours, and I have to make some muffins and baby quiches and bakes potatoes…….
I love Joseph Campbell too!  Not because he necessarily decoded every myth just so,  but because he knew what myths were…..he knew they were not only, or not even, or merely, preposterous gibberish, but something so much more powerful…..Learning to dance in metaphor is so much more than a cognitive function……When my mother says repeatedly, “the natural depth of each one of us is the whole of creation,” this statement is not merely a historical statement of fact(amazingly though it is ,and TRUE!), but much more than this!  It is a utterly intoxicating and miraculous statement of BEING… accessible not through mere cognition, but so much more, and closer than the bone….closer than the finger pointing to the moon!  One drop of this radiance is unimaginable.
I have been reading Rumi again, Unseen Rain…..my heart breaks a million times….and still, I must stop all of this!  Breathe in and breathe out…..I must put another log on the fire, and mix the muffins up….find my sleephead boys, my little neice and Scott, and Rosie….for God's sake,  we must seize the day –we have an adventure to live up to …tonight under the Northern Lights, the stars and the waxing moon trying to fill itself out, we will greet the new year…..and ridiculously, there will be Chinese firecrackers….My friend, Leannder, loves firecrackers…..as if somehow, this spectacular display of the universe spinning can be improved upon!
Happy New Year Every ONE….
love Jane

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

i really love the implications of the phenomenon of attention - like the common ones where you learn about something and then magically you keep hearing about it over and over…

i am beginning to think that attention is the key to our life experience… we know we pay attention to our breathing in meditation to come down from the chatter in our minds, but i think that everything has to do with attention - but what influences what? am i focussed in on how beautiful the sun is today, and so i am happy? or am i happy, so i remain aware of how beautiful the sun is today? or both? i don't know. but i'm enjoying how good i feel today!

any ideas?

love,

nicole

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

There is so much to respond to, I don't know where to begin!  But I like this befuddlement, because it comes from the richness that is here, not from confusion.

I've been thinking this morning about language and the myth of the given.  Several things prompted these reflections:  the distinctions we are attempting to draw between literal and metaphorical; the “linguistic turn” that inspired and fueled much of the postmodern revolution; the conversation between Julian and Ma Rig Pa on the Enlightenment thread, in which two languages are butting up against one another; the way language can “hide” presuppositions, e.g., givens; the “power” that convincing stories (perhaps because they are intimidating in their apparent complexity or subtlety) can have over observation, as Arthur's post demonstrates; et cetera.

I appreciate Jane's point that the gift that Campbell gave us was perhaps a deeper appreciation for the power and richness of myth and metaphorical language.  I think we are taking a step in the right direction by probing fearlessly into the “given myths” and “myths of givenness” that shape our worldviews, and yet I think we will unnecessarily inhibit ourselves if we assume that our task is to do away with myths altogether, or to reduce metaphor to a “sub-rational” status.  Lakoff and Johnson, in Philosophy in the Flesh, do a masterful job revealing how metaphor underlies and infuses even our most stringently “rational” propositions, pointing out that these metaphors are products, in part, of embodied perception.  What we take as “given” universal categories and ways of classifying experience, rationally, are at root, poetic evocations that lie close to the bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh.  Our rationality is one way our bodies dance in the world – that space projects space into space.  Transrational and prerational cognition are both embodied, participatory modes of knowing, but rationality is too – although its particular “move” is to attempt to stand apart, to lean against the wall and observe other dancers on the floor.  But if you look closely, you find that the language that emerges from this position is yet another way the body is dancing in space.   

Julian, you asked me an important question:  “but answer me this:
why do i so  often i run up against this taboo - that any analysis of the situation and description of the pre/trans problem and the need for reason, critical thinking and logic as midwife and doula to adult spirituality gets called a manspirited condemnation of religion or a dangerous position?”

I suspect – no, I am pretty certain – that I have blind spots here, but I will try to explain my reservations.  They do not come from disapproval of the desire to help individuals develop their capacity to reason or see clearly, or to help cut through attachments to superstitious and prerational beliefs; I support this “mission,” at least in certain contexts.  (I've spent a lot of time on fundamentalist Christian forums, doing just this).  And I agree with you, and Sam, that religion (esp. of Blue or Red varieties) has been at the root of a great deal of violence in the world.  But if you look at recent history, particularly in the case of Communist revolutions, you find that certain secular, materialist philosophies have also supported or inspired immense suffering and bloodshed.  It could be argued, of course, that the social “course” that various Communist leaders adopted was not really rational or humanistic, even though Marx and others may have been theorizing from a fairly developed rational perspective. 

Although I'm not a very informed student of the history of Communism, I believe you could argue that much of the bloodshed and atrocity that has flowed from it has been the result of the appropriation of rational humanist arguments by less developed individuals, for less enlightened ends.  And that is one reason why I am cautious about “starting up” a social movement which universally condemns traditional religion as prerational and socially destructive or inhibiting of human evolution, simply because such language can provide philosophical justification for some pretty heinous ends.

Personally, I see Harris and the other new atheists as Orange thinkers, who are rather “flatland” in their approach, particularly in their grasp of spirituality.  I do think they make some good points that need to be taken on board, but I think their arguments need to be tempered by a more Integral perspective, which can recognize the relative importance of establishing healthy centers of Red, Blue, Orange, and Green in society.  In your letters, you have been emphasizing the need to move Blue into Orange, and Green/Red into Yellow.  But we should also emphasize that there is “room” for a healthy Blue, as a means to temper and “ground” Red's impulses; and for a healthy Green, to sensitize Orange's universalism and rationality to the dangers of cultural imperialism.

When I hear the language of non-Western traditions being dismissed as obfuscating “jargon,” the Green in me stirs and I am alert to the dangers of a humanistic cultural imperialism, which privileges its mode of thought, its presuppositions, its rational structures, its distinctions, etc, over others, and which places itself reflexively in the “adult” position in any cross-cultural, cross-linguistic encounter.

I fully support the attempt to foster clear-sightedness and to move anyone who is ready towards fuller, more nuanced, more integral perspectives, but I do not think there is only one way to do this, or believe that development necessarily entails moving through the same worldviews that have unfolded in the West.  There is a danger of unnecessarily limiting our potential, and of engaging in a form of cultural imperialism, I believe, if we assume that the stages of development as outlined by Spiral Dynamics are “given” and therefore necessary for all human beings.  There may be other ways of developing that do not privilege the same sets of metaphors, the same distinctions, the same basic “model” of the universe, and yet which still allow individuals to develop rational and post-rational modes of cognition.

I am not saying that all worldviews are equally valid, of course.  I am just expressing my belief that we need to be alert to our own “myths of givenness” when we pronounce a particular developmental course for all humanity.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

love it balder!

wanted to respond quickly to three points:

1) the murderous totalitarian regimes have had much, much more in common (both in mood and consequence) with religious regimes than with secular humanism - and this is masivelly big understatement. in fact they had a religiosity in their incredible zeal and faith in their wildly unreasonable beliefs!

no society has ever suffered from it's citizens or leaders being too reasonable.

non religious insanity should be looked at with the same suspicion as religious insanity.

the communists, the nazis and the fascists were all suffering from a variation on the same sense of overblown identification with a literalized archetype. this poisonous narcissistic inflation is not that far removed from say the spanish inquisition - though the surface language of the faith is different.

sure some of them were opposed to religion (and for some good reasons) but NOT in reasonable ways.

2) i am not condemning anyone. i am pointing out the pathology of blue/red and regressive green. i am suggesting that a conversation that encourages more than 4% of americans to consider questioning the literal existence of the brahamic god is good. i am saying that good work should be done to give these two groups an alternative for when they are ready to pop and that us greenies can beneift from a next level of centauric existential healthy orange integration and red relinquishment if we really wanna go yellow.

i thhink perhaps it is part of the green misperception that says it is somehow better not to criticize peoples precious beliefs (as this would be a kind of horrible violence) than to be honest about the actual physical blood and guts violence that these beliefs make possible!

you see the irony i am sure…

at the heart of my question is the phenomenon of people being somehwat unwilling to see the  logical violent conclusions of unreasonable beliefs that do not line up with reality - and so the violence gets projected on to people who are pointing out the problem……funny.

3) yes this is a green button for you i think. it ican be elitist in-group jargon for americans and europeans to use tibetan and indian terms that have an implied spiritual authority to them. it's why i hardly ever use sanskrit - i think it is pretentious. when the fancy sounding name means grab yer big toe with two fingers and i create the mystifying effect that the spirituality is in these special sounds the point gets missed. to an indian the words just mean grab yer big toe with two fingers, yeah?

i am NOWHERE saying that english is higher - not at all. i dont think that.

i am also not saying that if something is in another language it is prerational. i do not think that either.

i am saying that the fascination with the exotic that makes sanskrit or tibetan higher and that therefore westerners familair with the terminology is part of the trap of the myth of the given and the idealization of the east.

in fact i think the eastern paths have some extraordinary guidelines and maps to authentic (but partial) transrational consciousness that a contemporary integral spirituality would then flesh out with the beautiful western gifts that eastern societies are not as strong in..

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi, Julian,

I'm also digging this mutual “push” we're giving each other to explore our positions, our givens, and our aspirations.

I'll respond briefly to your three points, since I don't want to get too far off the main topic – although these things are related.

1)  I agree that there was definitely a “religious” (mythic membership) quality to the various totalitarian movements of the 20th century.  I may not have communicated it well, but this is what I was trying to say:  What we have witnessed is essentially large swaths of Red and Blue folks getting ahold of a new ideology and pushing it with the same energy as old religious ideals, even though this ideology “wore” many of the trappings of secular, materialist, atheistic humanism.  I expect the same thing can happen again, and so I am a bit wary of the rhetoric of folks like Harris – even though I agree with a number of his arguments, and in fact have made them myself in numerous conversations with Evangelicals over the years.  Having studied the mystical traditions of a number of world religions in some depth, it appears to me that he is glossing over the depths that lie at the heart of these paths.  And he also appears to be opposed to the Integral ideal of encouraging healthy cultures for each vMeme, since he thinks Blue should be mocked mercilessly until it is as embarrassing in Western society to be a mythic membership Chritian as it is to be a member of the KKK.

2)  I agree with you, also, that the pathologies of Blue and Red need to be addressed, and see no problem at all with pointing out how certain tendencies in these belief systems (which are likely products of concrete operational thinking, but which may be co-opted by higher levels of cognition to serve perhaps less developed emotional needs) can, and historically have, led to a great deal of injustice and violence.  In fact, as I've stated previously, I've been engaged in a great deal of this sort of dialogue over the past six or seven years.  So, I don't think it is wrong to criticize others' religious beliefs, or to challenge people to think critically.  To the extent that we have any disagreement, it may simply be in the extent to which we think this is appropriate.

3)  Lastly, I agree with you as well that foreign terms can readily feed into a sort of cult of mystification, and they often serve such a purpose for people.  Where terms can be translated into comparable English words, I think this can be helpful and will facilitate direct communication (and avoid injecting uncritical doses of “authority” into spiritual discourse).  But many traditions often have a very rich set of terms which I think have their own value, and I see no problem with using this vocabulary in appropriate contexts – especially when you are striving for the kind of precision and fine distinction-drawing that we both value.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

i hope you are not far because this is just marvelously done balder. thank you.

yeah i agree unreservedly.

 i had to pause fora second and wonder if you were quoting back in a very mirroring way my position here when you said: ” (which are likely products of concrete operational thinking, but which may be co-opted by higher levels of cognition to serve perhaps less developed emotional needs)” - or if this is an analysis  we just happen to share?

i would point out also that i think harris is a) very familiar with wilber, b) a pretty serious meditator and c) someone who has done at least a little psychedlic adventuring - so i dont think he is merely a cold rational atheist - in fact i often hear him making a case for atheist spirituality -  something i am planning a video blog about…

glad to know your patient and extraordinarily clear mind.

happy new year
~julian

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Hi, Julian, thank you.  I wasn't intentionally mirroring you when I wrote that statement – that is an understanding that I've arrived at after dialoguing for a number of years with quite intelligent Christian fundamentalists.  And I'm not even sure that the reasons can always be traced back to weak or inhibited emotional lines, either.  It can be quite subtle and complex, why we choose the paths we do.

Where I was consciously mirroring you (although I agree), is when I wrote: “and avoid injecting uncritical doses of 'authority' into spiritual discourse.”

Best wishes, and Happy New Year!

Balder

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

go it.

yeah i have several blog posts in a series about piaget, concrete operations, formal operations and the relationship to pre and trans rational spirituality as an additional overlay to the discussion of spiral dynamics ideas and the problem of trauma and how it causes us to regress to previous structures and/or inhibts growth both cognitively and socially and spiritually to greater and beautiful depths….

i haven't talked to anyone else who automatically makes those connections - cool!

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Allrighty then.  I just got into this thread though I've been thinking (damn it!..why can't I stop doing that!) about it for some time…probably since first reading IS this summer, but a lot recently since the interaction on this forum has heated up.

Some brief comments, with the note that I haven't at all had the time to read what I am sure are very thoughful posts in this thread.  I am feeling thoughtful myself, but not very ambitious, and the thought of reading it all thoughtfully seems like more thinking than I think is necessary, and might be too thought provoking and disruptive to the following line of thinking.

Here goes…

1. It's all myth.  Maybe that's why (as Balder and perhaps others have previously noted) that almost any epistemology will require some givens to prop it up.  I practice geo-structural engineering (ahem, notice my degrees of belief?), and it strikes me that structures, whether concrete (operational or those of sand and cement with steel reinforcements) or abstract, require “building blocks,” so to speak.  Epistomologies require linguistic structures to communicate, obviously, and whatever conceptual structures that they find as their basis, and on and on.  The epistomology doesn't make the language, but the language is a given, imported to the mind-site by Intersubjective Trucking.  Just like concrete is made at the plant and trucked to the site.  And the cement is made by the supplier, who gets it from the miner, who gets it from….gasp….the Creator (the Myth of myths!).

To me, the mythic nature of all structures of consciousness (isn't that a Wilber book?) is most evident in the practice of self-inquiry, where all thought (aka structures of the mind) can be traced back to the I-thought.  That thought, itself, is not even the Self.  The Self is (supposedly….mythically, I suppose, from this perspective) that which exists beyond all structure, beyond being given, for it would be given by whom and to whom, beyond even existenceand such that it doesn't even exist in the sense that we are used to understanding.  Turning this all on it's head, through the practice of self-inquiry, the Self is (hear-say/heresy warning) reveled to be that which is beyond givenness, beyond myth…perhaps trans-mythic.

2. If there is a trans-mythic “Reality,” I think there might be great usefulness in relying on certain repeating mythical patterns.   By repeating, it seems as if there is a  fractal Christ represented by all those mythic virgin births (the most recently reported, though occurring long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, being Anekin Skywalker).  I can't help but notice the tendency for “chosen ones” or avatars to come from…..nothing.  Sound familiar?  Myth seems to spring out of some trans-mythic un-given.

3. And, that being said, this is just another myth.  But being that I attended Mass with my family yesterday (who would do such a thing!) and saw a delightfully entertaining and inspiring movie last night full of Christian symbolism, I'll use some to describe this myth.  It all comes through the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).  In the Mass, they say, and I say “they” because I'm not a Catholic…I don't believe their mythic interpretations;-), that all was created through Him, meaning Christ.  Could that be the Self?  Is it a myth that I refer to myself as a self, though not a Self?  So this myth is a fractal extension of the un-given.  It all is.  It is all mythic, all given.  I take no credit.  I have been given everything I have and ever will have.  And I am not ashamed at all.

4. Most of all, I have somehow, miraculously, been given a capacity to love.  And I do.  I love you all.  I didn't create that love.  It's just there.  Where?  I don't know, but I am thankful.

With a deep and most humble bow to my mythic friends,

Keith

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

Dear Keith,

Thinking is truly addictive lol so there is probably no help for you, you will likely think for the rest of your life, with short breaks… :)

I have got to read IS! I'm getting so frustrated with people referring to it all the time without really knowing what's in it.

I am in an interesting process this week of questioning an important part of my spiritual life, so the landscape of my world may be changing radically… as I discover what each new day brings, I am grateful for all my zaadz friends, and this delightful pod where I learn so much from you all.

Namaste,

Nicole

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

i agree nicole there is no escape from thinking.

personally my sense is that the duality between consciousness and thinking is imprecise and counterproductive.

thinking itself has never been the problem, whatever certain misguided and partial meditation teachers might say.

keith - really fun post. ummmmm yes The Creator is a myth, but your engineering principles are not and the trucks and cement are not and piaget's stages are not and whatever you are building is not.  i am sure you agree that these things are not on the same level and shouldnt be conflated.

as to the fractal christ - beautiful archetypal transrational-esque interpretation of what for the churchgoers is according to wilber a literal mythic prerational belief.

ah yes and the mystery of love - so powerful.

the danger comes in starting to confuse levels of reality and thinking that certain things are proof of certain other things that they do not prove, y'know?

acknowledging that we will never be free from the myth of the given does not = saying we should stop stepping back to percieve it.

and it is methinks a tad lazy to end up at the “oh well everything is a myth anyway so you have to believe in something”, i think this is in direct opposition to the what the idea is pointing out ,and to inquiry itself.

is everything a myth?

 nope.

myths have very particular definable features.

this fact is lost on many.

so the first step imo is to start making distinctions.

this is not a relativist position, it is in the interest of getting closer to truth that the myth of the given is so useful.

the myth of the given is a great debunking tool. ken wilber's integral theory relies in part on great debunking tools to get at deeper truth.

somehow in this thread, you may have noticed people taking offense to my debunking as if somehow  this was my creation.

not so. i am merely brainstorinmg with people about how to effectively and fearlessly (and logically/intelligently i might add) apply this revelatory tool.

welcome to the discussion. where do those points take you?

:O)

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

hey anyone wanna take a stab at defining “post-metaphysics?”

mmm what do we think wilber means by thius term and how is it a step forward for integral theory and contemporary spirituality?

anyone got any text/video to quote that might be helpful?

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

here is some more Ken:
” This is where the transrational stages of development have so much to offer this discussion.  In the disclosure known as satori, for example, it becomes clear that the subject and the object are two sides of the same thing, that inside and outside are two aspects of One Taste.  How to relate them is not the problem, according to the clear consensus of the many individuals who have tapped into this wave of development. The problem, rather is that this genuinely nondual solution is not something that can be fully grasped at the rational level. In fact, simply stating, in a rational fashion, that subject and object are nondual leads to all sorts of intractable problems and paradoxes.  Besides, if this nondualism could be genuinely  grasped in rational terms, the the great materialist and dualist philosophters(many of whom are acknowledged geniuses) would have figured this out long ago, and the mind-body problem would not be much of a problem. ….
“No the reason that both sides of the argument have generally agreed that the mind-body problem is irresolvable,is not that they aren't smart enough to figure it out, but that it is only solved in postrational stages of develoment, stages which are generally suspect, ignored, or actively denied by most rational researchers…..” Integral Psychology….

'

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

lovely quote jane.

this one is about transrational nondual awareness though.

here is the pre/trans fallacy. - an invaluable companion to your quote.

and here is something actually on the subject:

“Integral Post-Metaphysics–and its corollary, integral methodological pluralism–is important, I believe, for many reasons. First and foremost, no system (spiritual or otherwise) that does not come to terms with modern Kantian and postmodern Heideggerian thought can hope to survive with any intellectual respectability (agree with them or disagree with them, they have to be addressed)–and that means all spirituality must be post-metaphysical in some sense. Second, as Einsteinian physics applied to objects moving slower than the speed of light collapses back into Newtonian physics, so an Integral Post-Metaphysics can generate all the essentials of premodern spiritual and metaphysical systems but without their now-discredited ontological baggage.”

“In Excerpt C, we focused the urgent necessity to create an Integral Post-Metaphysics, which possesses the explanatory power of the great metaphysical systems but without their ontological baggage (which cannot be sustained in modern and postmodern awareness—not philosophically, not critically, not phenomenologically, not scientifically). Instead of attacking the paucity of the modern and postmodern worldviews—which is the standard move by spiritual and new-paradigm advocates—it is perhaps more adept to reformulate and reconstruct the premodern interpretations of Spirit in light of modern and postmodern developments, such that the enduring fundamentals of the premodern, modern, and postmodern forms of Spirit's own display can all be honored by trimming their absolutisms and acknowledging their true but partial natures (which is surely what Spirit does as it moves through its own manifestations in the premodern, modern, and postmodern world: just who did you think was authoring all that?).

      Although the premodern experiences of Spirit—by the great shamans, saints, and sages—were as authentic as authentic can get, the interpretations they gave those experiences were of necessity clothed in the fabric of their own time. And that fabric, in light of Spirit's own subsequent displays, is now a bit worn and threadbare. The premodern interpretative frameworks all tended to be to be mythic, metaphysical, substance-oriented, and postulated a pantheon of pre-existing ontological structures (whether in the form of a Great Chain of Being or the form of a Great Web of Life)—which, ironically, is an interpretive framework that amounted to a type of higher, spiritual, transpersonal myth of the given—exactly the epistemology so effectively deconstructed by postmodernism—so that the typical new-paradigm approaches exalting such frameworks are actually advancing an epistemological prejudice no longer capable of generating respect.”

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

OK, Julian.  This is in good fun but also addressing a serious concern of mine about your assumed authority on these matters.  What makes you so sure?  People, and I mean smart and “adept” people (not that I am one of those, but I do respect trans-rationality when I see it…I think), have been concluding differently than you for thousands of years.  I guess we have you to thank for setting us all straight;-)  OK, that might be a bit unfair, but offered with a little tongue-in-cheek.

It seems you are relying on rationality a bit too much as the expense of trans-rationality.  Not that I am an authoritiy either, but it seems that the view you espouse isn't even at green altitude.  Maybe the problem is that I'm using the word myth where it might not be appropriate.  In that case, forget about myth and just focus on the givens.  It's all given, mythic or not.  I think that can be rationally supported.  The Big-Bang was given in that none of us caused it.  The uncaused cause.  It can't be overcome….unless, you allow for what you deem myth and what I see as the only rational, perhaps trans-rational explanation of what was there “before the Big Bang.”

“The original face.”  “Before Abraham was, I am.”  Is that the Self?  Is the Self the only un-given?  If so, is it then the only non-myth? If myth is equated with anything that is not pre-existent but assumed to be so (all those givens that are not pre-existent but rely on something else to prop them up….bootstrapping into existence).

Don't you want to see if there is something behind door number three?  Why dismiss it so readily?  What has set you so against the possibility of a Truth beyond what you might be aware of?  Doesn't that seem to be a bit rash?  The implications are profound…perhaps most profound in that to outright deny some Greater Truth, which you seem convinced is only archetypal, just might be the only thing holding you back from experiencing That, or at least the wonder that comes from pondering the possibility.  Why not explore the room behind that door with some of us rather than standing gaurd?

With utmost respect and admiration for your sincerity of belief. (and apologies if I am poking a sharp stick in your eye)

Keith

Re: The Myth of the Given and Post-metaphysics

i do not feel poked at all keith, but  appreciate your caution, good humor and annoyance.

not sure what you are reacting to in my post.

i will look through and then get back to your questions.

who said i was denying any truths?

it sounds suspiciously like you want me to accept certain truths becuase really wise spiritual people from a long time ago said them.

do you see that this is accepting a myth as given instead of deconttrcting it to see where it came from and if it still applies?

 this is what wilber is talking about. that arrogant bastard, i know! :O)

are you objecting to me wanting to make a distinction between myth and reality?

i am just trying to be more accurate about the terms. it may seem pedantic, and ffeel free to shooot me down if you have definitions that seem technically better, but i think it helps us get clear on what we are talking about, which i seem to be in a group of one in thinking would be good.. :O)

the integration and light of awareness of modernity and rationality on premdodernity and prerationality allows the postmodern and transrational to emerge. until now for most people these have been at odds with people either in the camp (this is pretrans again, have you read the essay?) of all irrrational things are spiritual, or all irrational things are nonsense. until we start to make bettter distinctions the pretrans fallacy persists. and yes, philosophers, theologians and religious figures and spiritual teachers throughout the ages have missed this.

it is new theory and it is not mine. i am just interpreting it. blame that damn wilber if you like. blame the postmodernists, existentialists, agnostic buddhists, transpersonalists, i am just sharing my interpretation of their insight.

if you are asking if i am being so rash as to assume that we all know better than the authors of the ancient scriptures - i think the answer is yes.

this is not a personal argument in which others are deemed inept - it is a discussion of theory in wich certain technical terms help us toimake sense of certain complex problems and systems…but we have to aggree on what they mean first, yea? i am happy to hear your definitions.

do i think moses knew less than you or i about integral theory and therefore reality?

do i think the  buddha knew less than the transpersonal psychologists about the psyche and altered states of consciousness?

do i think the historical figure jesus probably knew less about sacred sexuality than margo anand?

do i think that postmodern thinkers applying the myth of the given have a more accurate real world perspective on the socially constructed belief in karma, reincarnation and the caste system  than swami vivkenanda?

do i think that ken wilber knows how to drive a jeep better than the buddha? (direct quote from a shambala sun interview - when asked what he thought he knew better than the buddha - and why this voluminous work was necessary - wilber said “how to drive a jeep.:)

did martin luther king junior understand something new about postconventional morality that the christian tradition he came from had probably not seen before?

do i think that the new atheists, postmodernists, spiral dynamics and integral folks are birthing a new spiritual perspective that will perforce slough off a lot of the old world prerational stuff that has been so problematic and in the process pronounce as wrong or inadequate or partial certain previous perspectives?

isnt that the name of the game?

the answer is yes to all of the above.

the myth of the given and post-metaphysics. going beyond the belief in “given” maps of reality to maps that have some basis is research and evidence that are not reliant on metaphysics.

for me this is the atheism/agnosticism/existentialism that is the threshold of genuine transrationaliity and mature spirituality.

do you have another definition of those terms you would like to explore?

how do you understand the myth of the given?

what is your definitiion of post-metaphysics?

is ad hominem attack the last refuge of those who can't back up their points and are being challenged in their emotive beliefs?

:O)