Gaia: Integral Post-metaphysical Spirituality - Open Forum - Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://meta-gnosis.gaia.com — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:23:54 GMT

Hey Greg, let me know when your schedule is a bit less manic so we can continue.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:22:19 GMT

Hello Infimitas,

Last gasp here before taking a bit of a hiatus from the discussion boards (the "hairy beast" of reality is at the door with some pressing obligations!). But I'll try to keep in touch with the discussions.

As for you Mr. Nickeson, I don't want to appear to take my toys and run off with the last word, so if you have any response to my last post I will try to interject something (in)appropriate and hopefully entertaining--- since I find you so very entertaining, in addition to provocative.

Infimitas: But behind all that, there is no essential self. Apart from my body
(and I remain agnostic about whether we have subtle bodies as well as
our physical), my conditioning, learning, history, etc., there is
nothing… no essential “I” or self. This, I understand, is not totally
dissimimilar to the Buddhist anatman, and it has some things in common with the theories of Hume and Dennett.

Yes, and this is also consistent with Derrida and deconstruction. Are you sure you're not a deconstructionist?

Infimitas: I realise the distinction between fictions and illusions is not absolute, but in my experience it's a useful rehetorical device.

Yes, and in deconstruction the distinction between fact and fiction is also de-absolutized. In the "displacement" of this binary everything becomes a kind of fiction and the binary fact/fiction converts to a different "field" whereby "fact" no longer has the status of "brute fact" (i.e., self-evident truth) but rather the status of "provisional truth." Provisional truth always has an uncertain degree of "fiction" to it because it is never assumed to be the "whole truth."

Infimitas: I must say I'm more than a little suspiscous of the idea of ever-sliding truth, but I need to learn more about Derrida before I attempt a critique. Is this connected to the idea of the transendant referant?

Yes. Think of it this way. Suppose something happens. Call it an "event." Then suppose that this event cannot be "witnessed" or "experienced" except through some "point of view." Call every "point of view" an interpretation. We know from relativity theory that everything is in motion and that mere motion affects the way in which any event will be experienced in space-time. There is, within space-time, no God's-eye-view that would count as an "objective" description or experience of the event. When we add other things besides motion to the experience of the event then we have a very complex interpretation or "point of view." The "truth of an event" slides insofar as no two points of view are the "same." In this sense, truth as a God's-eye-view is an illusion (or fiction) we construct with our imaginations.

Nevertheless, you may believe in a realm beyond space-time that can be accessed or experienced by humans and call that realm the experience of "pure consciousness" or absolute transcendence or ultimate enlightenment or whatever, and there is no one who could prove you wrong. This kind of subjective experience is unfalsifiable from within the rules of "communication." I can't tell you that you did not have that experience (or feeling). And yet you have no demonstrable proof that you did have what may rightly be called an experience beyond space-time.

This is one reason religion has always been able to elude its potential demolition by science. It's a stalemate. But science has the upper hand to the extent that any sort of falsifiable and demonstrable (read: communicable) evidence is made a criterion for belief.

And in courts of law this kind of evidence is precisely what is required for judgment. To get a handle on the importance of these matters for human community ask yourself whether, if you had been accused of some crime (say witchcraft), you would want to be judged by a judge who is bound by sophisticated rules of evidence and demonstration or by a judge who bases his judgment on "revelation." If found guilty, what recourse would you have? If this isn't the kind of community you want, ask youself how important it is to have a spirituality based on the experience of ultimate transcendence and ultimate revelation (both of which are metaphysically rooted in versions of monism).

Greg

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://meta-gnosis.gaia.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:18:06 GMT

Hi Greg,

What I don't get is why it [Power vs. Force] helped lead you to the theory “that we as inidividuals are illusions. ... "

It didn't. Not exactly. It helped create a thought experiment for me that, while interesting, didn't directly affect me. But that thought experiment helped put me in a frame of mind that led me to consider other, more powerful forms of reasoning. I havn't shared what those other things are, and they arn't without contraversy, but they are at least more credible than kinesiology.

For the record, my psychology training is what led me to the conclusions that the idea of selves is inconsistent. (This is a big topic though, and it's hard for me to say how this happened in neat, step-by-step stages.) That doesn't mean it isn't useful to talk about "I," "me" or "myself" in normal language, but the terms don't refer to some sort of essence, which is what most people mean by it.

Illusions vs. what?

Fictions. The reason I use the term "illusion" as I do is that if I say "selves are illusions" without qualification, many people take it to mean that I don't think people exist. So let me be clear about this: I believe hat bodies exist, and societies and families exist, that psychodynamic imprinting and cultural conditioning occurs, that there are subjective experiences, hopes, fears, desires, etc. All those are, in my view totally, 100% real -- they exist. But behind all that, there is no essential self. Apart from my body (and I remain agnostic about whether we have subtle bodies as well as our physical), my conditioning, learning, history, etc., there is nothing... no essential "I" or self. This, I understand, is not totally dissimimilar to the Buddhist anatman, and it has some things in common with the theories of Hume and Dennett.

I realise the distinnction between fictions and illusions is not absolute, but in my experience it's a useful rehetorical device. Anothger example is that when people get together in large crowds, they can form shapes that look somewhat like real objects from the air, say by helicopter. A "car" in that sense is an illusion in that there is something real there (a crowd of people), but it's not a real car. On the other hand, the wizard Gandalf (not the words "Gandalf," but the person) is a fiction.

I must say I'm more than a little suspiscous of the idea of ever-sliding truth, but I need to learn more about Derrida before I attempt a critique. Is this connected to the idea of the transendant referant?

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:09:31 GMT

Hi, S (and M!),

I have two brief questions in response to your recent letter.

One, you argue that meaning is merely the product of choice. Maybe you don't intend this as strongly as it sounds, but taking it in its strong sense: Choice itself involves the perception of meaning, on some level, otherwise what is choice dealing in? You can't simply add meaning on as an arbitrary product at the end of a choice act. Without meaning as the context for choice, there is no choice at all.

Two, if M objects to the apparent absolutism of Greg's claim that there is always meaning, on the grounds that it is absolutist, how can she let you slide with your endorsement of nihilism, which itself is an absolutist position? Or is she not letting you slide, but giving you a hard time down there in the splendid Southern sun?

Warm wishes,

Balder

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:15:52 GMT

Hello Infimitas,

To sum up the review of Power and Force by one of its readers on Amazon.com: "If you have a degree in math, physics, engineering or something similar, this book can be pretty entertaining. It is fun to pick apart,but as a source of truth it is worthless."

After reading portions of it on the Amazon site I'd have to agree. To base a method of discerning "Truth" on something like kinesiology (muscle-testing) makes as much sense as basing it on dousing or pendulum crystal swinging. Books like this are one reason the internet is a great thing. Like 9/11 conspiracy theories the information to debunk them can be laid out and instantly accessible to everyone (with a computer). But it seems like you did a pretty good job of debunking it yourself.

What I don't get is why it helped lead you to the theory "that we as inidividuals are illusions. (Bearing in mind my definition of illusion as something whose true nature is other than what it seems)."

Illusions vs. what?

For "illusion vs. reality" (or Truth) see part of my response to Nickeson below. It's not so much illusion vs. reality as illusion vs. what we don't yet know (and "what we don't yet know," like time, keeps moving, keeps pace out in front of us). So it's more like illusion vs. illusion. So what's the difference between illusion (left side) and illusion (right side)? They're different yet not the same. How so? This is: not one, not two.

So all you need to do to get to "not one, not two" is to understand "what it seems"/"true nature" as "what it seems"/"what we don't yet know" (which is always out in front of us). In other words, temporalize what you idealize to get to "not one, not two." But to want to do that you've got to not want to idealize. But saying why you should not want to idealize could be a book-length project. So, all for now,

Greg

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:15:30 GMT

Hello Infimitas,

To sum up the review of Power and Force by one of its readers on Amazon.com: "If you have a degree in math, physics, engineering or something similar, this book can be pretty entertaining. It is fun to pick apart,but as a source of truth it is worthless."

After reading portions of it on the Amazon site I'd have to agree. To base a method of discerning "Truth" on something like kinesiology (muscle-testing) makes as much sense as basing it on dousing or pendulum crystal swinging. Books like this are one reason the internet is a great thing. Like 9/11 conspiracy theories the information to debunk them can be laid out and instantly accessible to everyone (with a computer). But it seems like you did a pretty good job of debunking it yourself.

What I don't get is why it helped lead you to the theory "that we as inidividuals are illusions. (Bearing in mind my definition of illusion as something whose true nature is other than what it seems)."

Illusions vs. what?

For "illusion vs. reality" (or Truth) see part of my response to Nickeson below. It's not so much illusion vs. reality as illusion vs. what we don't yet know (and "what we don't yet know," like time, keeps moving, keeps pace out in front of us). So it's more like illusion vs. illusion. So what's the difference between illusion (left side) and illusion (right side)? They're different yet the same. How so? This is: not one, not two.

So all you need to do to get to "not one, not two" is to understand "what it seems"/"true nature" as "what it seems"/"what we don't yet know" (which is always out in front of us). In other words, temporalize what you idealize to get to "not one, not two." But to want to do that you've got to not want to idealize. But saying why you should not want to idealize could be a book-length project. So, all for now,

Greg

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:45:17 GMT

Nickeson: “everything has the status of illusion…” which is almost, though not quite, an “everything is…” kind of statement.

Yes, "almost, though not quite." Admonishing people to see everything "as" illusion is not the same as asserting everything "is" illusion. It's analogous to exhorting people to see truth as always provisional, always open to revision and thereby never "possessed." Reminds me of Nietzsche at the opening of Beyond Good and Evil: "Supposing truth is a woman--- what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women?"

Like a woman, truth can be flirted with and guessed about but not possessed. We have to wait and see; we can't fully predict a woman. So the oppositional tension appearance/truth or illusion/reality converts to present (presencing)/yet to come. And also partial/whole, where "the whole" is always more than we can see right now. This kind of view, then, is not so much tautological as propositional (as in the nature of "proposing"--- but not a proposal of "marriage" so much as a "dance"--- "may I have this dance?"). And the proposal is one of "let's not be possessive, let's be tentative and flexible and stay on our toes." When we latch on to a provisional truth or a "decision" or way of proceeding Deleuze (following Nietzsche) suggests it's like a throw of the dice at a gaming table. We're betting on an outcome, but we can't predict it. You pay your money and you roll the dice.

Nickeson: To adequately cognize the failure of language one has to move outside of its frame of reference. To use language to arrive at that cognition will meet the same fate as trying to reach the other end of some given distance by continually cutting that distance in half. Thus in the pursuit of stripping away meaning one has to jettison the practice and the symbolic action of language. (Maybe you can make clear how “symbolic action” is any different than a “silent cry,” or maybe a round of shadow boxing or anything else that manifests as a poof.)

Language is an "announced failure" from the git-go because it cannot guarantee even basic communication. But when it comes to "symbolic action," which would you prefer, symbolic victims or real victims? Sticks and stones may break your bones or worse and (contrary to the nursery rhyme) words can hurt you, but words will never kill you. When it comes to human relations and human conflict we need to resort to and stay with words; the alternative is guns--- and that might have been something we could all endure (however stupidly) in the past but no longer. The nuclear age has made words much more important (and they were already important!) than ever before. In this sense, words are much more than a "silent cry." They are all we have between us and guns. People really need to learn to use them, despite their shortcomings. They may not be enough to prevent victimage and violence of all manner but they (along with the "languages" of music, art, and sport) are the best bet.

Nickeson: do I actually detect a faint odor of Structuralism about it? If that is the case and you say that meaning is a product of Derrida's “differance” then I too will have to seek help from one of my favorite dead Frenchmen (Camus) and contend that functionally meaning is only a product of choice…as in finding the “better illusion”–it seems to me I read something somewhere about how finding the better illusion is what makes life interesting. Choice rules.

Yes, choice rules, but not freedom, as Sartre and Camus maintained. Because of their radical attachment to "freedom" both figured that the fundamental project of human existence was "absurd" (in a technical sense of the term) because ultimate choice is made in blindness. This "blindness" is the case because the array of possibilities for choice we see at any moment in time constitutes only a partial field of possible choices; the field is limited by culture, learning, and many other things. A choice made in partial blindness is not free. It is constrained by the choices you are able to see. The deconstructionist critique of existentialism is that we have choice but it is choice by default. We choose but we don't really see exactly what we're doing. But that doesn't make choice absurd. It just makes it interesting. Contrary to the existentialist view this is ideal because were it any other way we would be nothing but automotons. Thus my suggested attitude:

4) see agency as appearance

Caveat: We act in partial blindness but that doesn't mean we always deserve to escape the consequences of our actions.

Nickeson: Nihilism has no value or morality of its own, it is only a word and how can a word possess anything at all?

No, it can't "possess" anything. But possession (as per above) is not the game.

Nickeson: One hears or reads daily the hopeful dictum that “words have power” but rarely encounters the viable correlate that says that power is only granted by the listener or the reader as a matter of one’s choice.

Yes, but like traded commodities words take on a certain exchange value in the marketplace depending on how they're valued and how many people value them. They can move the world if we trust in each other through them. And there exists some evidence in the historical record to show this can happen. The American Constitution, though flawed and open to multiple interpretations, has launched a human project that still shows signs of positive benefit for life. Words put together in certain ways can "do" a lot to make things happen and foster the "better illusion."

Nickeson: (I could say however there is an abiding belief in some undefined something that is implicit in this board's existence and perpetuation. I am content to assume this is a belief in the need of our species to be amused during the time spent between meals, so I will let it go at that and hope no one takes offense.)

I can express it this way: I believe in two things (at least):

words and civilization (non-violent human community).

Nickeson: Here is where we find the meaning in difference if not differance; from my side of your door R is the beautiful vamp I will always love to take dancing in the streets.

Here you've got me. The way you put it is more consistent with my own views than the way I put it. Though, in truth, the "hairy beast" thing was only a joke I got from an old prof (the infamous Macomber).

Greg

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://kabiri.gaia.com — Sun, 04 May 2008 12:51:28 GMT

Greg,

As a preface I need to return to your previous post and the words "everything has the status of illusion..." which is almost, though not quite, an "everything is..." kind of statement. The phrase "everything is" too often seems to destroy the functionality of that which follows it; or if "everything is an illusion" than nothing is. "Everything is" transports us away to Tautology Cosmos. (And as you once wrote that we all must—at least by implication—have cosmologies and thus all have ontologies, please tell me we can all have tautologies too.)

Greg: ...Fox News purports to bring us a “fair and balanced” rendering of the world as “it is.”

Nickeson: ...any good journalist...

It should be clear that we were not writing about the same thing. I was not writing about the pack hacks that put the Fox product on the waves, but the one or two journalists per ten-thousand whose curiosity and discernment have taken them too far down the looking glass tunnel for their own good and who will emerge to say things like "everything is an illusion" until they realize that such language does little more than mildly amuse and thus they are freed to go on to catch tastier fish to fry. I'm sure what can be said of journalists can be said of scholars. They both ply the same kind of trade--use other people's words as impetus to arrange a selection of additional words on a page in the hope that those words will catch the attention of a third party as a likely way to occupy the time the third party has to while away between meals. The chance those words will have a greater authentic effect on the life of any third party reader is so remote as to warrant no consideration. We can dream that the good scholars, like the good journalists, will go on, as Mark Twain wrote, to find "honest" work elsewhere.

On this exchange:
--Nickeson: Only practice works; the simple practice of letting go, stripping everything away to the point of insanity and then some, never stop stripping away.

--I'm with you here. Words too, though— they're also “practice” : Kenneth Burke: “language as symbolic action.”

I need to write that what I was trying to get at obliquely was the sense that one cannot use language (words) to adequately describe the failure of language. One can argue that thought is a language act though I am not sure how effective such an argument will be in the long run, but we can be functionally certain that cognition doesn't have to be. To adequately cognize the failure of language one has to move outside of its frame of reference. To use language to arrive at that cognition will meet the same fate as trying to reach the other end of some given distance by continually cutting that distance in half. Thus in the pursuit of stripping away meaning one has to jettison the practice and the symbolic action of language. (Maybe you can make clear how "symbolic action" is any different than a "silent cry," or maybe a round of shadow boxing or anything else that manifests as a poof.)

Greg: there’s always meaning (no exit), but no stable meaning

M: (sitting on my lap and reading the exchange over my shoulder) That isn't right. That sounds like some kind of universal absolute. How can he say that?

Am I not reading the following correctly—

(Greg:) As a good deconstructionist you should know that no one salvages meaning or cobbles it together (that's the job of
“differance”); like new-born babies, meaning just happens every day no matter what we do;

or do I actually detect a faint odor of Structuralism about it? If that is the case and you say that meaning is a product of Derrida's "differance" then I too will have to seek help from one of my favorite dead Frenchmen (Camus) and contend that functionally meaning is only a product of choice...as in finding the "better illusion"--it seems to me I read something somewhere about how finding the better illusion is what makes life interesting. Choice rules.

Greg: Even nihilism is a value and a morality all its own,

See, here we go again with the failure of language. Nihilism has no value or morality of its own, it is only a word and how can a word possess anything at all? Can nihilism show me a bill of sale for the meaning it is supposed to possess? I know that's an absurdity, but one that I hope puts the point squarely into the middle of a philosophic, or scholarly or journalistic language game that is void of any value or meaning except that which is a miniscule element in one’s fleeting experience of the minisculely perceived moment. One hears or reads daily the hopeful dictum that “words have power” but rarely encounters the viable correlate that says that power is only granted by the listener or the reader as a matter of one’s choice.

Greg: “Righteous propriety” is only possible where the “true believer” resides. See any true believers around here? I see nomads, vagabonds, and even a high plains drifter, but no true believers.

I agree with your assessment of this board's demographics. If I did not its likely you would never have seen me here. (I could say however there is an abiding belief in some undefined something that is implicit in this board's existence and perpetuation. I am content to assume this is a belief in the need of our species to be amused during the time spent between meals, so I will let it go at that and hope no one takes offense.)

Greg: You see, there's this big hairy thing pushing on the other side of my door. I don't quite know what it is but I have a name for it: reality.

Here is where we find the meaning in difference if not differance; from my side of your door R is the beautiful vamp I will always love to take dancing in the streets.

S.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://meta-gnosis.gaia.com — Sun, 04 May 2008 00:07:06 GMT

Hi Greg,

So now we need to be clear. If there is any sense in which the “absolute” as the “one” can be understood as something “pure,” that is, an essence separate, unique, and uncontaminated by any other essence, then it belongs to a category of “traditional” absolutes and traditional notions of “the real” as the “ideal.” If the whole of what is can be reduced to this “one” essence, then we have a version of monism.

But if the “whole” constitutes a “holistic system” in which dual elements exist co-dependently with essences sufficiently different that one cannot be reduced to the other and neither can exist apart from the other, then that notion of “whole” and “parts” merits differentiation from monism.

Dare I discuss value with two deconstructionists on board? Now I'm getting worried...

Seeing as we are down to the fine details, let me share an experience I had. I'm not even trying to suggest my reasoning is consistent here, just trying to help you understand why it is I lean towards nonduality as an unqualifiable absolute, which you think is too close to monism.

A while ago I read a book called Power vs. Force, which claimed that there was genuine value in the universe and that, what's more, this value could be objectively quantified, both in a numerical way or as true/false, or high/low, good/bad dichotomy. Their method was a form of muscle kinesiology, which is certainly not immune to criticism, but I tried to put my doubts on hold, at least while reading the book.

One claim was that any statement could either be determined true or false with this method. That is to say, any statement can be graded objectively. This troubled me, and still does. However, despite some concerns, it was more or less intelligible. As an example, the statement, "Hitler invaded Poland in 1066" comes out false false. This happens even if the statement is written on paper and hidden inside an envelope, so that the people doing the testing could not see it.

If that was not hard enough to believe, however, it got worse. Various genres of music were then graded for value. I don't remember the list, but as I recall, classical music scored higher than heavy metal. That was just too much. One problem is that "heavy mnetal" is not well-defined. I'm sure that some would classify Nirvana as heavy metal, whereas to others (myself included) that comes close to blasphemy. Even more problematic is that, I assume, this kind of value is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

Nevertheless, as a mental exercise, I tried to reconcile these ideas with a view of the universe that was consistent. One thing I like to do is take ideas that seem ridiculous to me, then pretend I support then and try to come up with sound arguments in their favour. In this case, it was very difficult though. I realised that the only way I could do it was to posit a singular mind "behind" the universe, for whom all value applied. That also required that, from an ultimate persapective, we as inidividuals are illusions. (Bearing in mind my definition of illusion as something whose true nature is other than what it seems, not as total fictions.)

I never totally accepted kinesiology, but it did at least make me start to wonder whether this sort of metaphysics had any other supporting data. And over the years, while I havn't found any sort of evidence that could settle the matter outright, I have at least read of research consistent with, and suggestive of, a similar nondual metaphysics. Recently, I have tried to reconcile the idea of intrinsic value and telos in a way that does not need to posit a deity that is dualisticly seperate and transendant from the universe.

Now go forth and wreak deconstructive havoc :)

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:09:20 GMT

Nickeson!--- He's back! And radical as ever! Let the fireworks begin!

Let's see, shall we start here?:

Nickeson: Greg, Good work, but I have to say that by the time they are half your age any good journalist should know these…

1) see truth as appearance
2) see any particular hierarchy as appearance
3) see communication as appearance
4) see agency as appearance
5) see consensus as appearance

to be “not the truth” (of course), but a really good way to bet.

Would it were so. The current leader among television "journalists" (if we can call them that) Fox News purports to bring us a "fair and balanced" rendering of the world as "it is." Welcome to the "no spin zone." Journalists succeed well in offering up "illusion" but they seem to have no idea that they have no alternative but to do so. The problem is they offer up their illusions by primary recourse to video footage instead of offering "reasons" for their illusions.

Nickeson: Adding that last paragraph to your post was not only self-contradictory, but self-annihilating. Language fails to do anything really except entertain.

Yes, the journalists have that down pretty well. News is now entertainment. No, not quite. What is entertaining or of the spectacle is now "news."

Nickeson: Only practice works; the simple practice of letting go, stripping everything away to the point of insanity and then some, never stop stripping away.

I'm with you here. Words too, though--- they're also "practice" : Kenneth Burke: "language as symbolic action."

Nickeson: “From M—Wholeness: no limits, no meaning. Make a note of it”

Yes, but slight modification: Wholeness: there's always limits (no exit), but no stable limits; there's always meaning (no exit), but no stable meaning

Nickeson: I see absolutely no problem with nihilism and often wonder why it gets such a bad rap from those whose mission is to salvage meaning or cobble it together or whatever it is they do at every opportunity and proclaim its absolute necessity and moral grandeur.

As a good deconstructionist you should know that no one salvages meaning or cobbles it together (that's the job of "differance"); like new-born babies, meaning just happens every day no matter what we do; our job is to get creative in dealing with it, since it isn't going away. "Necessity"--- yes. "Moral grandeur"--- no. No one here is proclaiming that. Morality (value) by default, by necessity?--- yes. Pay your money, take your choice (no exit). Even nihilism is a value and a morality all its own, as Nietzsche thoroughly argued.

Nickeson: Too often I find these folks' excessive sense of righteous propriety is only overshadowed by their cowardice.

"Righteous propriety" is only possible where the "true believer" resides. See any true believers around here? I see nomads, vagabonds, and even a high plains drifter, but no true believers. As for cowardice, you bet. You see, there's this big hairy thing pushing on the other side of my door. I don't quite know what it is but I have a name for it: reality.

Nickeson: This of course all in the spirit of May Day fun…power to us all.

Ditto.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://holotrope.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:51:20 GMT

Hi Bruce. Playing Go Fish with your son, that's great! I don't mind at all if you copy my post to another thread.

Hi Kela, your comments to Bruce (Balder) clarify for me where you were coming from in the post you wrote that I responded to.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:37:27 GMT

Hi, Kela,

I did not take your comments as an attack on me, and I was making my PS comments to you in a playful tone, but I can tell that that didn't come through. I agree this is an important topic, and my perspective on it is not as black and white as you are suggesting or fearing, so I am going to create a separate thread and I will respond to you there (rather than taking Greg's Synergist Manifesto discussion in a direction he may not intend).

Right now, my son is begging me to play Go Fish! with him, so that has temporary priority! But I'll be back later tonight or tomorrow to set up a new thread and respond to you. If Jim doesn't mind, I may copy his post over to it too.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S. I have created a new thread out of several of these recent posts, and I have posted my reply to you here.

Re: Transformation vs. Translation

http://holotrope.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:57:05 GMT

Hi Kela. I can't tell who and what comment you're responding to, but in any case I want to comment on some of what you said.

Transformation vs. Translation

I have never been entirely clear on this distinction, but maybe that is because I have never totially bought into it.

The only place I've heard anyone speaking of "translation vs. transformation" is in Ken Wilber's writings, particularly in an essay titled "A Spirituality That Transforms." That essay first appeared in the Fall/Winter 1997 issue of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, and in the magazine it begins with the heading "Translation vs. Transformation." While I think Wilber's rhetoric in the essay is overblown, I think he makes some good points, one of which is that there is a difference between what he calls "translation" and "transformation."

He basically defines "translation" as a new way of thinking about the world (with a "new belief or new language or new paradigm"). From what he says in the essay I infer that by "translation" he intends to refer to ways of meaning making that precede and may prevent death-of-meaning existential crises. In this light, what he apparently means by "transformation" is a change that can only come about after such an existential crisis.

To me, the concept of “transformation” appears to be an a priori category in transpersonal psychology, an unexamined presupposition.

In the transpersonal psych textbook Psychotherapy and Spirit, Brant Cortright lists a number of "transformative possibilities," including purification, new learning over old, working through defenses, self-actualization, openness to feelings, lowering of armoring, and authenticity. Is this what you have in mind?

To me it implies a some kind of ontological change happening in an individual, like a larva literally turning into a butterfly. As such, it also seems to invoke certain magical conceptions. This was in part what I was referring to in another post vis a vis meditation and magic. I will eventually address this issue in greater detail in the End of Enlightenment thread.

I've little doubt that some in the transpersonal psych field may speak of transformation in such terms, but to me the term "transformation" as it is used in the field does not imply an ontological change but change that is psychological, characteriological, behavioral, emotional, and somatic (e.g., in a Reichian sense).

I figure that once we jetison the metaphysical and magical flotsam associated with meditation as a “transformative praxis,” all we are really left is “translation.” As such, I don't see why mere translation cannot function as a form of “transformation.”

Given how I understand the terms "translation" and "transformation," it would make no sense to say that translation can function as a form of transformation. It would be like saying that if President Bush started speaking in Oprah-Chopra language with a great deal of what our old friend Karen might call "emotional enthusiasm," this is something that would make Reich in one of his saner moments (assuming he had any), say, here is a man who has truly changed, truly come alive, truly become real.

The question “what is your transformative praxis?” seems to me to bring a certain bias with it. Like “what is your meditative discipline,” it implies that only a certain form of “praxis” will qualify as legitimate. And indeed, this is how I see the dichotomy between “transformation” and “translation”: as a rhetorical means of dismissing certain forms of “practice” as false. “Talking school vs practising school” and “Guru vs Pundit ” would be examples of this at work.

I'm with you on the first two sentences here, but because we are apparently using the terms "translation" and "transformation" in different ways, the rest of what you say doesn't line up with my use of those terms.

Today I read something Owen Flanagan wrote about Buddhist meditation or "phenomenology" (Flanagan identifies himself as a Buddhist and a meditator, but he has some significant philosophical differences with Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama and Alan Wallace). He poses three "closely related questions of epistemic importance regarding phenomenology."

(1) Does phenomenology reveal what mind and its states are like universally?
(2) What checks phenomenology other than more phenomenology?
(3) Does phenomenology reveal anything more, any thing other, than how mind seems first-personally?

Asking questions like "What is your meditative practice?" seem to suggest that only with the right practice (and the right number of hours on the cushion, etc.), is one epistemically qualified in certain ways.

For example, in an article at Frank Visser's Integral Word site titled "The Challenge of Writing about Sri Aurobindo's Integral Psychology," Don Salmon and Jan Maslow write:

According to Alan [Wallace], one of the basic requirements for reliable exercise of what we call ‘paranormal" abilities is precisely the ability to maintain this awareness - unbroken - for at least several hours.

The awareness in question is what many today generically refer to as "nondual awareness."

Suppose Flanagan or Stephen Batchelor or I were to say that we've met the requirement and have had first-person experiences of what seemed like paranormal abilities, but we do not consider this evidence of anything other than the fact that it is possible to have amazing inner experiences when doing sitting meditation. Wallace et al could simply say that this is evidence that we haven't really met the requirement.

I think it's better to avoid appeals to meditation and meditative experience.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://kelamuni.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:15:04 GMT

Hi Balder,

I had no idea my titles were causes so many problems. I will refrain from adding titles to my posts. :)

I'm glad, though, that I was able to elicit a response from you with respect the question of "praxis," as I think it is an important issue that just seems to be simmering away beneath the surface.

I am not out to protect the butts of scholars or defend scholarship as a "praxis." But the charge that I am attempting to do so (shades of Lightmind) by questioning the holy cow of meditation suggests to me that I have accurately described the rigidness of the rhetorical opposition between the "guru" and the "pundit," "talking school and practising school," or however one wishes to characterize the situation.

What I have in mind is not scholars per se, but other forms of "praxis" that are not "meditatio-centric." To an extent, Pierre Hadot has addressed the issue in his book Philosophy as a Way of Life. In antiquity, the bios theoretikos -- the way of the stoics, skeptics, cynics, and epicureans -- was seen as a legitimate "path," an authentic manner of comporting oneself in life. Christianity, of course, changed all of that. After Christianity appeared all that other stuff became "mere philosophy," and philosophy as an authentic "way" was suddenly excluded.

In another post, you seem to suggest that what is at issue here is some kind of choice between "Buddhism" and "postmodernism." But what I have been attempting to show is that it is not so much a matter of a tension between these two as the question of a tension within Buddhism itself, the tension between the "meditators" and the "analysts," the "yogins" and the "enquirers." To me, to suggest that Buddhism should be defined as, and limited to, the meditative stream alone is inadequate insofar as it marks off and excludes an important stream within the Buddhist tradition. The voice of this stream is then effectively silenced.

It seems to me that the question of praxis is being defined by a number of pre-determined ideas as to what counts as "praxis." I simply don't understand why we should be dictated to by Ken Wilber as to what counts as "authentic" praxis. I certainly do not regard him as an authority on such matters. His ideas about "meditation," "transformation/translation," "pre/trans," and "praxis" remain very influential and they figure in the background where conversations about such things are concerned, and often in an unquestioned manner.

I'm sorry if you have taken any of my charges personally, that is, as an attack on you. But it is not you I am putting to the test, but rather Ken's ideas.

cheers,

kela

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://brucealderman.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:44:02 GMT

Hi, Kela, just a moderator's note here. I'm loving your contributions, but would like to request you to put your subheadings for your posts in the body of the post rather than in the title bar, since the continually changing titles muddies the flow of discussion, making it hard to keep track of what thread is being commented to. There's something kind of pomo about erasing the thread starter's tracks and thereby killing the author, but I think things will be clearer if we don't erase or override the titles of threads.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S. With regard to your last post: Spoken like a true scholar! Down with praxis! Ain't no practice beyond my practice, which is language.

I do think the sharp division between transformation and translation is problematic, but I think it is equally problematic to engage in a linguistic reduction.

Transformation vs. Translation

http://kelamuni.gaia.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:35:41 GMT

I have never been entirely clear on this distinction, but maybe that is because I have never totially bought into it. To me, the concept of "transformation" appears to be an a priori category in transpersonal psychology, an unexamined presupposition.

To me it implies a some kind of ontological change happening in an individual, like a larva literally turning into a butterfly. As such, it also seems to invoke certain magical conceptions. This was in part what I was referring to in another post vis a vis meditation and magic. I will eventually address this issue in greater detail in the End of Enlightenment thread.

I figure that once we jetison the metaphysical and magical flotsam associated with meditation as a "transformative praxis," all we are really left is "translation." As such, I don't see why mere translation cannot function as a form of "transformation."

The question "what is your transformative praxis?" seems to me to bring a certain bias with it. Like "what is your meditative discipline," it implies that only a certain form of "praxis" will qualify as legitimate. And indeed, this is how I see the dichotomy between "transformation" and "translation": as a rhetorical means of dismissing certain forms of "practice" as false. "Talking school vs practising school" and "Guru vs Pundit " would be examples of this at work.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://kabiri.gaia.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:43:05 GMT

Greg,
Good work, but I have to say that by the time they are half your age any good journalist should know these...

1) see truth as appearance
2) see any particular hierarchy as appearance
3) see communication as appearance
4) see agency as appearance
5) see consensus as appearance

to be "not the truth" (of course), but a really good way to bet. I'm glad to see you are getting close to initiation as a true cognicenti, but to your one step forward you are taking two steps back when you attempt to gild these five lilies with modifiers like "know," "real," "illusion," or even worse trying to find language that make them somehow important for and an enhancement to life. Adding that last paragraph to your post was not only self-contradictory, but self-annihilating. Language fails to do anything really except entertain. Only practice works; the simple practice of letting go, stripping everything away to the point of insanity and then some, never stop stripping away. I'm going to quote myself from Integral Liberties blog:

"M has been reading Bhagavan Das and thinking back. The two of us are easing toward sleep, her head, my shoulder conjoined. She wonders why he or anyone else wants things to have meaning when meanings just enforce limits.

"From M—Wholeness: no limits, no meaning. Make a note of it"

I see absolutely no problem with nihilism and often wonder why it gets such a bad rap from those whose mission is to salvage meaning or cobble it together or whatever it is they do at every opportunity and proclaim its absolute necessity and moral grandeur. Too often I find these folks' excessive sense of righteous propriety is only overshadowed by their cowardice.

This of course all in the spirit of May Day fun...power to us all.

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:26:58 GMT

Speaking of "arriving where we started," I return to the post that started this thread as a way of further exploration of the subject of "praxis." I think the "not one, not two" cosmology supports a particular view of the "real" as dependent origination, or the interdependence of all oppositional tensions. This leads us to a "displacement" of the way in which oppositional relations are traditionally (in both the east and the west, in my opinion) understood. The traditional understanding structures these oppositions in a way that is hierarchically fixed (leading to versions of "transcendentalism") and fundamentally discrete (leading to versions of "essentialism"). When this structuring is displaced by the "not one, not two" structuring, a set of provisional attitudes arises corresponding to a new "field" of understanding for the fundamental opposition of "true/false" or "reality/appearance." Beginning with language (a good place to begin) here are some of these "attitudes":

1) Since the use of language to name the "real" may be regarded as provisional, interpretive and thereby also strategic (by default), language-using may be assumed to be synonymous with rhetoric (as the art of persuasive as opposed to coercive demonstration)

2) Rhetoric assumes the form of hierarchy in the making of distinctions, but these distinctions should never be assumed to be necessary, natural, or fixed.

3) Rhetoric assumes the guise of communication, but communication should never be assumed to have taken place.

4) Communication assumes the form of the agent (in intentionality), but subjects should never be strictly identified as autonomous agents (which is not to say that in all cases they should escape being socially treated as agents).

5) Community, as the rhetorical situation, assumes the form of various types of consensus, but these forms of consensus should never be taken as self-evident.

To simplify further:

Operational attitudes (predispositions for action):

1) see truth as appearance
2) see any particular hierarchy as appearance
3) see communication as appearance
4) see agency as appearance
5) see consensus as appearance

We only "know" the "real" as appearance, as the trace, as what appears to be the case. In this sense everything has the status of "illusion" and we are in constant search for the "better" illusion. Figuring out what counts as "better" and why is what makes life ever interesting and challenging and provides us with the telos, the reason for living.

Greg

Re: Synergist Spirituality Manifesto (Beginning draft)

http://deztron.gaia.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:38:06 GMT

Kela: As Nagarjuna put it in another work, the Yuktisastika, “The thorough comprehension of samsaric existence (bhava) itself is called nirvana.”

I like the direction of Nagarjuna's thinking here. It reminds me of T. S. Eliot's famous passage from "Little Gidding":

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

i.e., arrive in "this world"--- which is where we've been all along and where we started and "know" it for the first time, i.e., understand its samsaric way, its emptiness of ideal substance and essence; thus, the "end of our exploring" in one sense and in another sense the renewal of ceaseless exploration of "this world" (now experienced as "nirvana")

Of course, there is a lot contained in Nagarjuna's expression "thorough comprehension." If we posit that the "comprehension" can ever be complete, then we merge into the definitions of "enlightenment" that correspond with much tradition and mysticism and even, in my view, the Wilberian notion of enlightenment (insofar as it posits a "completeness" corresponding to a given moment or era in time).

I think it's more consistent with notions of dependent origination and the "conditioned unconditioned" to assume that we are always on the road, that every sense of "enlightenment" is provisional and tentative and open to continued exploration. And this "attitude" may well be part of what Nagarjuna means by "thorough comprehension of samsaric existence"--- that samsaric existence is never entirely "determined" or "conditioned" and thus open and always exposed, as Edward has suggested via Derrida, to the future and its potential for radical unpredictability.

Greg

William Ames on Madhyamika

http://kelamuni.gaia.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:34:30 GMT

"For the Madhyamika, the understanding of emptiness does not lead to a refusal to deal with conventional reality... but to nonattachment. Buddhapalita says, " For us, engaging in conventional activities without attachment to "existence" and "nonexistence" [makes release possible.]"

From "Buddhapalita on Madhyamika," Journal of Indian Philosophy 14 (1986).

"To sum up according to Nagarjuna, liberation does not come about through escaping from or suppressing ignorance and error, but through a profound comprehension of their true nature, which is lack of inherent nature. As Nagarjuna put it in another work, the Yuktisastika, "The thorough comprehension of samsaric existence (bhava) itself is called nirvana."

From "The Soteriological Purpose of Nagarjuna's Philosophy," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, vol. 11.

What Ames is attempting to articulate here is the idea that the apprehension or "cognition" of emptiness is not the apprehension of some supra-worldly reality. It is the this-worldly understanding of the interdependence of all things, an understanding that facilitates our letting go.