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The Soul & God "I believe that the soul is the deepest part of us. I believe it is the part that God wants us to be. I believe that our souls are not born fully developed and that this world, as Keats put it, is "the vale of soul-making." I think that this is largely a cognitive process, that the ego can try to cognate in harmony with the soul and with what William James called "the unseen order of things." Or it could just ignore it, which is probably what most people do. - M. Scott Peck ------ That's an interesting way of talking about the soul and its relation to the Ego. Granted, there is a philosophical way of talking about the soul as well (e.g. spiritual form of the body), but let's try to focus on the experiential. - What is the experience of the soul to you? - What is the relation between the soul and the Ego self? - Is your experience of soul the same as your experience of God? - Other questions and observations. | |||
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Origen was the first Christian theologian and philosopher. He was also influenced by Judaism and Greek philosophy. He left the door open for the preexistence of the soul and reincarnation. He was universalist and believed that it might take more than one lifetime for a soul to be saved. I am trying to keep an open mind, as I am pretty well steeped in orthodoxy, but I wonder sometimes. When I see how far I have to go, I begin to look for the "Get out of hell free" card.  mm | ||||
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Leaving philosophy and theology out of it, and utilizing the other side of my brain, I really have come to appreciate the psalms and can see why monks have relied on the psalter so much for spiritual formation. Bernard of Clairvaux recommended focus on the HUMANITY of Christ for his novitiates. Alot of soul material in this, and one can see that human emotions are not as unique as an egocentric (sick) person may experience them. Comforting to know that everyone goes through this.  caritas <*))))>< mm | ||||
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We know the experience of the ego very well as our everyday conscious self. In my understanding, the ego is not a false self, but is the conscious agent of the soul. Its role is to negotiate existence in the outer world and do so in harmony with the needs and aspirations of the soul. When it gets too caught up in the world and worldly values (pleasure, power, status, etc.), it can lose its sensitivity to the deeper, inner currents of life that attempt to influence it -- even harden itself to them. Then the soul becomes sick; the ego experiences anxiety, meaninglessness and hopelessness, and often tries to resolve these through addictive activities. So you might say that anxiety, meaninglessness and hopelessness are experiences of the soul and its cries for proper nourishment. That's on the negative side. On the positive, there are impulses for creative expression, intuitions of God and meaning, striving for happiness and wholeness, and so forth. If this all sounds like the Self in Jung's psychology, well maybe that's because what Jung was describing is the deeper, inner face of the soul. | ||||
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I believe that soul "stuff" issues from the spirit which is the ultimate link to God. It also could be that, instead of existing within the body, the body is animated within the soul, which is why materialism and hedonism are so blinkered. As for the soul's experience, it's growth is manifested in practicalities - righteousness, good behaviour, self-control - and in the intensification of joy and love. I agree that the ego is the conscious agent of the soul, Phil, and without having much knowledge of Jung or psychology in general, would consider the possiblity that the expansion of consciousness, in line with the Holy Spirit, bypasses the ego and awakens a deeper agent of the soul, one which the old Prophets would be aware of, giving rise to ecstasies, bliss etc, which are wonderful manifestations of the soul's creative energy. Difficult to function at that level all the time, however, and more difficult still to attain the ultimate ecstasy of union with God, where the agent of consciousness would be our spirit awakened by the Holy Spirit. The expansion of consciousness to a level beyond ego is certainly possible without the Holy Spirit but opens up possiblities for immoral behaviour, another aspect of soul sickness. Of course, the experience of rapture need not necessarily arise through Christian contemplation. A heightening of creative energy within the soul, mirroring God's creative energy, mimicing it, borrrowing from it, need not necessarily be a direct experience of God. But He's there, somewhere, within us, whether we are aware of it or not. | ||||
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Soul is the essence of our being. It supposed to be manifested through our physical body by our True self which sometimes is called Ego or the inner face of the soul. Unfortunately Soul's real face is darkened by false self and soul struggled to be free from this prison. People all over the world tried to be free from the reality of false self without understanding its character. To understand the objective reality of false self we have to face it, observe it sincerlly and lastly God will show us the exit from the prison. Only then can we understand the deep meaning of religion. Only then can we understand who Christ is in the context of Christianity. | ||||
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Good reflections! When I wrote my book on kundalini, I included a schematic of how Ego, unconscious, dynamic ground (kundalini) and Holy Spirit interact on the Christian spiritual journey. It's not a philosophical model, but one that attempts to map the experience, albeit crudely. Click here to check it out, if interested. I don't really think we ever lose the Ego, but I do think our experience of it changes as we shed the false self and live more out of the true self, as Grace noted. That's sort of what I'm showing in that schematic. This is similar to the Scriptural idea expressed by Stephen--that Pscyhe becomes transformed by Pneuma so that the Ego becomes the agent of the Spirit. So what would it mean, then, to say that one is a "lost soul," or that one's soul can be damned? I think much of what we shared above sheds light on these questions, but let's see where the discussion takes us. | ||||
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I'm reminded of the terminology St Paul uses to describe the elements of our being warring with the soul - "the flesh", "the old man", "the body of death". I suppose these incorporate aspects of a malnourished ego, giving rise to greed, envy, lust, inappropriate desires and appetites, patterns of destructive behaviour and consequent despair/anxiety etc. Paul points to the cross of Christ as a source of healing for the soul, describing how, by faith, one is able to identify with Christ in death, crucifying the elements at war with the soul, then rising again to a new life and a mind transformed. The old man is dead. To me, a lost or damned soul is one who has not gone to the cross to begin this process of rebirth. The soul either journeys through death to life, or through death to hell, an afterlife where the horrific spiritual equivalent of an individual's fleshly longings and transgressions are amplified, kind of like Dante's poeticised account in "Inferno". I'm interested in the point at which the ego becomes aware of the soul's needs - conviction, desperation - and how religious groups guide young adults into paths of potential soul growth at a time when immaturity and lack of self awareness, amongst other things, can open up potentialy hazardous life paths which present delusions of spirituality - drug culture, the music scene, cults, the new age and the occult. | ||||
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What about the development of empathic qualities being indicative of a fully grown soul eg. the prophets of the O.T. especially Jeremiah, weeping for Jerusalem, Christ himself longing to gather her children under the wing of a mother hen, and, ultimately, his identification with the sufferings of mankind on the cross. | ||||
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Asher, after reading this and the way you described each, I'm wondering if that couldn't be applied to almost any life form--especially the higher animals. These seem to be very general and passive qualities of existence. What would you say distinguishes the human experience of soul from that of any other animal, especially since you seem to have such a negative view of the intellect and didn't even mention the will? Is it a matter of intensity or consciousness for the human? | ||||
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| <Asher> |
______________ What would you say distinguishes the human experience of soul from that of any other animal, especially since you seem to have such a negative view of the intellect and didn't even mention the will? Is it a matter of intensity or consciousness for the human? ___________________ Phil, I incorporate "will" in the intentional prayer/affirmation. But it is not a ascetical will, rather a quiet cooperation with Grace. Intellect: I have never seen it as that important to my relationship with God, to be honest. What is important is intuition. Intellect can be useful in cutting through emotional clouds and reasoning can help in clarifying things. But reasoning can also put you in a box and be a means of self protection--to avoid losing control etc. These are obvious and probably need not even be mentioned. Intuition acts through the intellect, so that is the only true function I can see for the intellect. Intellect is important in service, communication. I have nothing against activity/communication, but feel without rooting oneself in the ground of being, one is simply working in self energy. Not "wrong", just I see the need to find ground before I can serve or be truly active in the world. Luckily, I have two years to simply pursue higher education, complete a Masters degree. So this time will help me figure out my relationship to the world and a role in it. In terms of the difference between human and animals. Well, it surely is the will, and the ability to align that will to God. What I seem to understand is that an active will often disturbs the process of grace and inteferes, causing unnecessary problems, whereas a passive will, that gently calls on Grace seems the more effective, in my case. Sometimes, one requires an active will, to penetrate through resistance, but lately I don't have this active will. Animals are enlightened beings I think, as are plants. Huuuu | ||
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| <Asher> |
Honestly, I have to think this over re: animals and humans. It is a difficult question. | ||
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re: Intellect: I have never seen it as that important to my relationship with God, to be honest. What is important is intuition. [jb snipped] Intuition acts through the intellect, so that is the only true function I can see for the intellect. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Intuition is, to me, one of the most wonderful gifts from God to humankind. I touched upon how breakthroughs in science come about in another thread today. C.S. Peirce discussed intuition in relationship to abduction, deduction and induction. There is an essential pragmatism and a definite empiricism that then ground our intuition in such rational reflections that must return, repeatedly, to concrete experience for correction. Even then, all metaphysics and philosophical systems are fatally flawed and, as even Whitehead noted, our task is to select from among them whichever we discern to have the least fatal errors. It is no small wonder so many positively eschew metaphysics as a meaningful project! The way I have always described the situation is in terms of godelian constraints (don't worry about exactly what those are, although a SPlace search will turn 'em up a few times, I'd suppose), more precisely looking for that system which seems to be the least pregnant with paradox, least likely to deliver multiple births in that regard -- whether the paradox of infinity, the paradox of existence, causal joint paradoxes and so on and so forth. When it comes to paradox, our intuitions serve us well. No one can prove through deductive logic the notion that 1) the universe is intelligible over against a radical nihilism 2) my human mind is intelligent over against a radical skepticism 3) other human minds even exist over against solipsism or prove that the principles of 4) noncontradiction, 5) excluded middle and 6) identity are true. These are unjustified axioms, by which I mean not rationally demonstrable. But they have existential warrant from trained intuitions and the school of hard knocks. Pragmatically, we couldn't do anything without them, really. Empirically, the very empirical would collapse along with the rational and intuitive. So, hooray for intuition, especially Maritain's intuition of being and the way Peirce conceives of it in relationship to logic. However, once one proceeds solely with intuition beyond those first half dozen or more prephilosophical presuppositions, peril lies ahead. We start spinning our metaphysical plates in the great philosophical circus and, just as we rush to keep one spinning across the hermeneutical stage, the epistemological plates behind us come crashing to the floor in no too few pieces. Busier than an one-armed paper hanger, then, the metaphysician starts to encounter novel paradoxes that get introduced into her system of thought, this coming as the inevitable cost of trying to dissolve other paradoxes. It is kind of like, whenever one closes a hermeneutical paradoxical window, God opens a new paradoxical door.  Paradoxes are not all truly insoluble. They can be classed as veridical, falsidical, conditional, antinomial and so forth, some dissolving more readily than others. But, make no mistake, they reveal, at bottom, the limits of deductive logic. However, we don't despair but proceed with what Peirce calls a contrite fallibilism, growing our knowledge and training our intuition, bit by bit. Whatever is going on with our subliminal intellectual faculties is not hocu pocus but is very much derivative of what has already taken place in our conscious cognitive states. There are big problems with intuition as certain paradoxes reveal. For starters, even the deductive logic they grow out of has severe limitations, intrinsic limitations. Additionally, so much of reality turns out to be thoroughly counterintuitive, for instance, not suggesting itself, through common sense, to descriptions of Non-Euclidean geometry, to such phenomena as nonlocality and superluminality, to quantum indeterminacy, and on and on and on. How does one thus train and check one's intuitions? px, jb | ||||
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| <Asher> |
____________________________________________ There are big problems with intuition as certain paradoxes reveal. For starters, even the deductive logic they grow out of has severe limitations, intrinsic limitations. Additionally, so much of reality turns out to be thoroughly counterintuitive, for instance, not suggesting itself, through common sense, to descriptions of Non-Euclidean geometry, to such phenomena as nonlocality and superluminality, to quantum indeterminacy, and on and on and on. How does one thus train and check one's intuitions? _______________________________________________ I am not qualified to answer this, but thought I may add some reflections in order to incite further discussion, especially in regards to the ongoing discussions relating to "conditioned" vs. "unconditioned mind." How does one check ones intuitions and test them when so much of reality is, as you say, "counter intuitive." Intuition must be tested and questioned just like logical thought, to see if it lives up to facts. How can it be made practical? Well is seems that it would have to be tested in the laboratory of life. One intuition I'm familar with is poetic; I know nothing about scientific intuitions. One will see correspondences in nature, language, thought, ideas, sound. And with them comes a certain rhythm that one hears in a subtle ear. Language comes after. Many poets seem to experience this intuition of sound (subtle hearing). The Romantic writers (Shelley, Keats Blake el al.) were very attuned to this although they questioned it constantly. Keat's would write at the end of an Ode "Do I wake or sleep?" Shelley would do the same. Much of Wordworth's writing utilizes memory as a mediator to intuitive insights, but later in his life he questioned it and he hence lost his poetic gift later because he doubted it. These are my opinions, of course, but a close study of these poet's will prove their penetration into the illumined Mind and also their doubts about it. Blake was pretty faithful and rarely doubted it, but Blake lived in a middle region, I think, a sort of mystical world. I honestly don't consider his poetry as intuitive. He lives in a region between the dream and the spiritual: a supernatural realm. Shelley on the other hand writes intuitive poetry. Very juvenile poetry from an critic's perspective (at least his early attempts) but even than one who is receptive will feel immersed in a matrix of sound and wonder, the sounds go on and on. He has tapped into an "echoless" place, what the Hindu's call "the soundless sound", that doesn't require two objects to resonate, the sound of one hand clapping etc. This is what I get from Shelley, although critics like Arnold call him "an ineffectual angel, beating his wings in a meaningless void." This is modern view of poetry. A view that has its strengths, bringing a tapasya to writing, a pruning of extraneous pathos, sentimentality, and yet an intellectual rigour that denies the lyrical (and often intuitive) expression and supresses the emotions. TS Elliot was very much closed to the emotional dimension of being and distrusted it. This has polluted our poetry and also added interesting elements, metaphysical, abstract etc. But how can one test these things? In poetry, it is not a matter of testing. In life, perhaps one can test them. Here's one. Mom has a dream of his son in the garage smoking. Mom wakes up and goes downstairs and finds son in garage. This could be something else though, I'm not even sure I would call it intuition, perhaps more impulse. Intuition when it is guided by Grace is another matter, some will write poetry, some will create new architectual forms, others will love their God, to paraphrase SatPrem. This opening can be tested and seems more trust worthy than other forms of mind, so by deduction... Intuition--how can you test it, good question  ) | ||
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| <Asher> |
Quote: _______________________________________ There is an essential pragmatism and a definite empiricism that then ground our intuition in such rational reflections that must return, repeatedly, to concrete experience for correction. ________________________________________ Hey, can you explain this? | ||
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| <Asher> |
The idea that langauge can take you to a place of "the soundless sound" seems to contradict Derrida's ideas on language. JB, is there any philosopher you know who has a theory on language that accounts for its ability to put one is a place beyond sound? I'm not thinking of the Vedic theory, but any Western model. The zen Koan works exactly in this fashion, to resolve the paradox of language in an intuitive insight, but where is the Western model of this theory? | ||
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Intuition must be tested and questioned just like logical thought, to see if it lives up to facts. How can it be made practical? Well is seems that it would have to be tested in the laboratory of life.  | ||||
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| <Asher> |
On Intuition: Sri Aurobindo _____________________________________________ The Intuition is the first plane in which there is a real opening to the full possibility of realisation - it is through it that one goes farther - first to overmind and then to supermind. * * * Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function. * * * Mental intuitive knowledge catches directly some aspect of the truth but without any completeness or certitude and the intuition is easily mixed with ordinary mental stuff that may be erroneous; in application it may easily be a half-truth or be so misinterpreted and misapplied as to become an error. Also, the mind easily imitates the intuition in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between a true or a false intuition. That is the reason why men of intellect distrust the mental intuition and say that it cannot be accepted or followed unless it is tested and confirmed by the intellect. What comes from the overmind intuition has a light, a certitude, an effective force of Truth in it that the mental intuition at its best even has not. * * * There are mental, vital, subtle physical intuitions as well as intuitions from the higher and the illumined Mind. * * * It [the identification of buddhi with vij��na and intuition] is the error that came with the excessive intellectualism of the philosophers and commentators. I don't think buddhi includes intuition as something separate in kind from intellect - the intellectualists considered intuition to be only a rapid process of intellectual thought - and they still think that. In the Taittiriya Upanishad the sense of vij��na is very clear - its essence is ritam, the spiritual Truth; but afterwards the identification with buddhi became general. * * * I do not suppose they mean expressly intuition; they regard buddhi as the means of knowledge, so they include all knowledge in it, and as the vij��namaya kosha is the Knowledge sheath, they think it must mean buddhi. Obviously it doesn't. The description you have quoted evidently means something much higher than buddhi. It is the satyam ritam brihat of the Upanishad - the truth-consciousness of the Veda. _______________________________________________ | ||
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Who wants to agree with Derrida?  Not sure I understand the question, but I'll try to analyze and deconstruct it Derrida, Rorty, Wittgenstein and others associated with the linguistic turn and analytical philosophy and deconstruction and postmodernism --- though in highly nuanced ways that are not really appreciated enough -- in my view, provide Western philosophy with a good hygiene. Their critique, imo, should be taken seriously and not casually cast aside with facile claims that it somehow amounts to nihilism or hopeless relativism. The history of philosophy is just one of critique critiquing critique --- realism vs idealism, rationalism vs empiricism, kantian vs humean vs aristotelean vs platonic --- when, all of a sudden the pragmatists and phenomenologists and analytical folks come along, pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. Problem is that some radical deconstructionists think there is no Emperor either. He's there --- just naked as a jaybird.As we move from, first, there is a mountain , to, then, there is no mountain ... the movement is not supposed to end there but, rather, with then there is. What is happening to the Western paradigm, then, via deconstruction, is that the essence of the mountain, so to speak, what it is, recedes into the background as the esse or existence proceeds into the foreground of awareness, so to speak, that it is. All being thus shares in this thatness and, in that regard, there is no mountain and all existence is undifferentiated unity. Duality, the constructive, has given itself over to nonduality, through the deconstructive. This is followed by the reconstructive, which does not really mark an unqualified return to duality or a continual dwelling in nondual awareness. The mountain returns as existence in the limited mode of being this mountain but POSITIVELY CHARGED with the utter fullness of existence, of thatness. In fact, all essences get charged with the utter fullness of existence against the background of not being ... better stop effabling here about the ineffable ... other than fallen flowers never go back to the old branches. Wittgenstein did folks a favor, if only they'd come to grasp what he meant by: it is not how things are but that things are which is the mystical, not too far from Heidegger's why is there something rather than nothing, which seems to be less in vogue, nowadays, than why is there something rather than something ELSE ? The trick, in my view, is not to stop with radical deconstruction or radical postmodernism but to answer the postmodern critique with reconstruction, which is to say with a constructive postmodernism , which is why I like Peirce's pragmatism and semiotic realism, as he is the definitive anti-Wittgenstein. This pragmatism should not be mistaken for the other varieties that eschew metaphysics or that embrace nominalism or moral antirealism. Even though the basic axioms of our logical systems are not rationally demonstrable (principle of noncontradiction and such), and even if one answers the postmodern critique with a fallibilistic and nonfoundational epistemology, we have pragmatically chosen our axioms --- through experience and rational reflection (abductive, inductive and deductive) on experience (empirically) with what works (pragmatically) in this, as you say, laboratory of life. These are trained intuitions that we move forward with. When they bubble up to our cortex from subliminal consciousness, they are merely returning home, albeit from finishing school. I pretty much laid out the western model for intuition, I believe, in the affective ego thread. There are as many ways to solve paradoxes as there are paradoxes, especially depending on what type they are -- veridical, falsidical, conditional, antinomial, etc (What these are doesn't matter as much as understanding that paradox originates from many sources, not all from language games and plays on words.) We know from metamathematics that the axioms of any formal logic system cannot be proven within their own systems. That's one reason each metaphysic is fatally flawed. But let's overlook that and keep it simple. I think it would be fair enough to say that a koan differs from an ordinary paradox in that an ordinary paradox is designed to be solved through formal logic like a math problem, where the solution lies in the problem itself if you have accepted certain axioms. A koan is designed differently. The ordinary paradox can be analyzed via formal rules of logic, looking for a) fallacies or for b) equivocally defined and poorly predicated terms or for c) untrue premises, the various combination of flaws determing whether or not the argument is valid, and if valid, also sound. The solution, therefore, if it is soluble in the first place and not totally constrained by the limitations of logic itself, is philosophical or essentialistic. It involves a speculative judgment. For a koan, we must use practical judgment or experience to resolve the problem, however and from wherever it has confronted us, whether through some logical dead end or some moral dilemma. It involves an existential judgment, not a thinking through but instead a living through the solution. A resolved or dissolved paradox reveals what we can know. A resolved or dissolved koan reveals what we must do. As far as a Western model to the theory whereby language/paradox is used to facilitate intuitive insight, such as a koan bridging two levels of reality, sometimes having both an esoteric and exoteric meaning, a nondualistic and dualistic rendering? Hmmmmmm Try looking at this thread , especially where Dionysian mysticism is discussed. What one might enjoy and appreciate the most could come from a Googleling of "Western erotericism" where the language games of the neoplatonic tradition largely figures in. This would include Eckhart and Dionysius. It would also include the Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau and, even though these folks' experiences were clearly influenced by the Eastern traditions, both they and many others, primarily from the literary community (including our favorite poets and romanticists) were also influenced by distinctly Western influences that positively, ahem, I mean negatively, oh whatever, resonated with apophatic approaches, though some clearly integrated both analogical and dialectical imaginations, affirming for instance, natural theoogy while eschewing revealed theology --- sounds familiar, eh? Also, there is the Kabbalah. Phil, we need to devise an FAQ or something insofar as I haven't come up with anything new in two years but keep referring back to old threads and posts, deja vu like I encourage everyone to use the "search" function here to read many of the oldies but goodies threads. pax, jb | ||||
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Theological Realism & the Linguistic (re)Turn Medieval Theological Realism: Its Neoplatonic Anticipation of the Linguistic Turn Ever heard of E-Prime? It is a language that does not use any verb form of to be whatsoever. It is intended to put one in a place, existentially, that conventional language won't take you. Also, the humean notion that existence should not be taken as a predicate of being makes for a very koan-like meditation that has turned into an entire philosophical system that parallels much of Buddhism with its skepticism and anti-realism. I have countered, elsewhere, any facile notion that Buddhism is, necessarily, through and through anti-realist. One dynamic that is going on, often it seems, is that a breakthrough into nondual awareness truly helps one to see the difference between the finger and the moon it points to. The temptation is to set dualism and concepts aside and to thereby think one has avoided such confusion. But both dual awareness and nondual awareness are nothing but maps of reality, the former mapping reality with the self included transitively, the latter leaving the self out of the map-making. So, many who have enjoyed and appreciated their role as nondual cartographers have gotten rid of both the finger and their dualistic map, proudly looking at their nondualistic map and erroneously thinking it is reality, when they have only really traded one map and finger for a new map and a different finger. That nondualistic map must be used in conjunction with the dualistic map in order to navigate reality and both fingers then point toward the Coincidentia Oppositorum where My discursive reasoning faculties shut down after the words "point toward the Coincidentia Oppositorum where" -- but it has come to me now. What I was going to say was nada, nada, nada and yada, yada, yada. Feel better now  | ||||
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I can go along with all that. Only, note that in your saying, "Intuition acts through the intellect, so that is the only true function I can see for the intellect," you are conceding a major role to the intellect. That's what I allude to when I speak of intellectual formation as providing a kind of infrastructure to support what we might call, here, intuitive receptivity. IOW, there is no such thing as a pure intuition divorced from intellectual assumptions. I would also say that these assumptions influence the receptivity of the will. Keeping that in mind, you can see how devastating to the psyche a teaching that devalues the intellect can be. Actually, what happens is that these teachings become intellectual assumptions shaping intuition as well, only in a very different way. And in the context of Christian spirituality, one must discern whether such an anti-intellectual approach moves one to receive what Christ has come to give us or not. Another related point is that kataphatic spirituality affirms the reality of presence-to-presence interaction not only through the faculty of intuition, but through our other human faculties as well. It may be that kataphatic spirituality signifies a transformation of the faculties with the goal of enabling intuitive, spirit-to-spirit relationship, but that should not detract from the authentic encounters with God that are taking place in kataphatic practices for many--probably the majority--of people, many of whom will spend their lives being formed thus. | ||||
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| <Asher> |
Quote: _______________________________________ Keeping that in mind, you can see how devastating to the psyche a teaching that devalues the intellect can be. Actually, what happens is that these teachings become intellectual assumptions shaping intuition as well, only in a very different way. __________________________________________ Ok, this makes complete sense. I'm extending it to enlightenment paradigms which DO offer suprastucture, even if it is "under erasure."All genuine suprastructure has this fluid nature and the capacity of resolving itself, or dissolving itself. Ramakrishna's (as an example) approach of bhakta provides infrastructure that energetically as well as intuitively replicates itself in people who are his disiples. So his discouragement of philosophy, logic, reading, and most discussion (apart from discussions on God) would make sense only in the context of his path/suprastructure. So I'm completely in agreement with this: _______________________________________________ That's what I allude to when I speak of intellectual formation as providing a kind of infrastructure to support what we might call, here, intuitive receptivity. _______________________________________________ | ||
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