[ March 13, 2003, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: johnboy ]

My super-intuitive radar suspects that you edited out �Brad, keep following this line of reasoning and to Hades with a handbasket you will surely go.�

My super-judgmentalism does have a hard time finding truth in ambiguity or duality. �Letting go� and exploring the depths of The Mystery is something not done with words but which later will takes words to describe to some extent. Thus this explains my sometimes not understanding a single word of what you�re saying and may be testament to the fact that you have at least climbed the foothills of that tall mountain. (I�ll leave out the possibility that there are more, shall we say, neuronal reasons.)

Still, Catholicism teaches that any good theodicy must remain immersed in mystery and we thus return to the Pope's assertion that God doesn't owe us an explanantion, that is to say He needn't justify Herself to us.

I�m just so egalitarian that, dammit, I think I DESERVE an explanation.

re: My super-judgmentalism does have a hard time finding truth in ambiguity or duality.

There is such a thing as inherent ambiguity and systematic paradox but allow me to clarify that the neo-Platonic triad which distinguishes between statements that are 1) analogical or metaphorical or kataphatic (what ultimate reality is like) versus those that are 2) anagogical or apophatic (what reality is not like) versus those that are 3) unitive --- reality is neither like this nor not like this (reminiscent of Pauli's adminition: That's not right! That's not even wrong!) is just a phenomenology of consciousness. This does not involve theologians and metaphysicians playing sleight of hand tricks on you etymologically speaking. This is not creative ambiguity. This is, rather, a phenomenology of consciousness, a recognition of how human awareness operates.

I am going to "reprint" something from another Kundalini thread:

Mystical experiences, whether philosophical/metaphysical, mystical or natural mysticism will have neurophysiological correlates (and maybe recursively some "causes") which manifest in an empirically measurable fashion, phenomenologically (or as epiphenomena) and, always, there will be inexplicable and anomalous experiences, too (but those will be the exception and not the rule). Some phenomena we have observed in spiritual emergence dynamics are those brain states associated with unitive experiences and the neuronal pathways and the glucose metabolic activity associated with Jungian functions. The panentheistic implications are that natural human growth and transformative processes can be impinged on by grace and by our cooperation with grace and that we can even predispose our natural faculties to better cooperate with supernatural graces, but the mediating principles are always an encounter with Christ, which remains immersed in mystery and occulted, in principle.

Anything which comes through our sense faculties and through our perceptual filters is mediated . The shutting down of these faculties and discursive brain activities brings a mystical awareness, a unitive experience that is unmediated by our normal faculties of conscious awareness, and though we have sometimes distinguished this as a direct and unmediated numinous experience, actually, it remains an indirect and mediated experience of awareness, just apophatic instead of kataphatic, conjunctive instead of disjunctive, holistic instead of causal, impersonal instead of personal, existential instead of theological, natural and not necessarily supernatural.

From Brainard, I gathered:

1) the importance in Dionysian mysticism of Proclus' triad of mone (remaining, rest), proodos (proceeding, emanation) and epistrophe (rverting, return). This can be used to affirm a creatio ex nihilo with the unknown God ( mone differentiation ) overflowing into differentiation in his effects ( proodos ) and regaining identity by reversion ( epistrophe ).

2) This triad thus accounts for a cosmology, which preserves metaphysical dualism (the cosmos being ultimate proodos) in a polarity with one pole being a source or a creative agency and the other polar reality being that which receives (something Aquinas could affirm but not Luther).

3) This triad is preserved everywhere, even in prayer - apophasis, kataphasis and a mediating principle (I like to call the liminal threshold, where radical construction, deconstruction, reconstruction may occur).

4) While God originates being, His relationship with us remains mediated. It is not direct. Dionysius maintains the metaphysical dualistic divide.

5) Insofar as mystical awareness is concerned, both the disjunctive and conjunctive roles of awareness are nondual to begin with for the East. For Christianity, the dualistic divide presents an apparent problem, which Dionysius overcomes by showing us how to realize that which is beyond ontology and metaphysics (specifically beyond a Christian dualistic metaphysics). He places the Godhead in a realm beyond being (beyond being as either essence or substance) and union, therefore, did not mean a union of substances or entities of one with another , rather the ground of union radically transcended substances and entities.

6) Brainard cites McGinn's comparision of Dionysian logic, he says, in a way reminiscent of Nagarjuna's use of four-cornered logic: a) God is x [true, metaphorically] b) God is not-x [true, anagogically] c) God is neither x nor not-x [true, unitively]. This is a lapse of conventional logic. This is a "technique" for speaking about the ineffable that parallels our brain's use of formal/logical causation and efficient causation , using conjunctive awareness (God as logical cause) and disjunctive awareness ( can't get back to God through an infinite regression of efficient causes, reminiscent of the sorite paradox ). It also parallels D'Aquili and Newberg's description of holistic and causal operators in the brain.

Dionysius preserves dualism through kataphatic affirmations ( markedly different from Advaita-Vedanta Hinduism and Madhyamika Buddhism ) and collapses the dualism with an apophasis (that also preserves the dualism), which, in its own way, increases descriptive accuracy of the Godhead through negations.

7) The metaphysical coherency of Christian metaphysics (the dualistic paradigm) is thus threatened by the very possibility of a "mystical awareness of God", even when the awareness is posited outside of the metaphysical framework. God's involvement may be intimate but it remains mysterious. Brainard clearly states: No metaphysical paradigm seems able to maintain its logical consistency if pushed too far. DARN!
8) Dionysius does not view the Cosmos one-dimensionally (like the Adavaita-Vedanta's cosmos) but two-dimensionally. Dionysius preserves relationality. One doesn't proceed up the great chain of being, in other words, progressing to the highest order of existence. There is no promotion of the individual in the conventional metaphysics up the hierarchy of the great chain of being (no identity with Brahman). In the other dimension, one finds and unites with God through perfection of oneself within the framework of one's own place within the cosmic structure (or might we say, with that ontological density appropriated to one's created form?).

9) What Brainard finally concludes is that no discursively coherent metaphysics is foundationally complete (neither Buddhism, Hindu or Christianity) and they all should push for a rationally consistent orthodoxy. They can only achieve a coherent basis for mystical realities by occulting certain apparently primordial features of our cosmos. No metaphysical orthodoxy seems to account adequately for mystical ultimacy. So, take a rest and we'll solve all of this next year.

The important convergence for Hindu, Buddhist and Christian paradigms is that ultimacy lies beyond. Where dual and nondual paradigms diverge is in where they locate foundational mystery . [Hence, I like to think we're all a tad nonfoundational ).

I think that, in the final analysis, the difference in location of foundational mystery results in pantheism versus panentheism. Either approach, however, still relies on a fugue of pattern and paradox.
10) All of this has a bearing on the modeling power each paradigm has for kundalini energy. Once again, the Thomistic philosophy and metaphysics are found to be congruent with yet another perspective, this one, a pre-modern Dionysian mysticism. The technique of describing the ineffable mystical experience (metaphorical, anagogical, unitive), the paradigm which uses a triad of mone, poodos, epistrophe, and the prayer movements of apophasis, kataphasis and liminality, are all consonant with the Aristotelean model of causation (efficient, formal, material, final and so forth). The occulting of primordial cosmic features by this pre-modern mystagogy is congruent with the occulting by modern cosmologies, bounded as we are by quantum uncertainty, immersed as we are in indeterminacy and limited as we are, on the other extremes (vis a vis our place on the great chain of being) by the constancy of the speed of light.

There is a lapse in consistency when mystical theologians resort to making distinctions between logical/formal causes (in the anagogical realm) and efficient causes (in the metaphorical realm), but it is the same lapse modern cosmologists, particle physicists and biologists experience when pointing to a tacit dimension, a realm of formal causation, as a ploy to gain explanatory adequacy for superluminality, apparent implicate order, nonlocality, morphic resonance and such, even synchronicity. Maybe there are some hints of final causation in some renditions of anthropic principles (telic vs nontelic evolution)?

11) So, again, if we a) combine a Thomistic philosophy and metaphysics, b) maintain both an epistemological and ontological dualism, c) follow a Sanjuanist theology of contemplation as our norm, illuminated by a Dionysian mysticism, d) utilize both Jungian-derived typologies and Jungian-described psychic energy dynamics as informed by cutting edge neurophysiological research, THEN we might leverage our modeling power in describing kundalini within a Christian framework and, at the same time advance our dialogue with the Eastern traditions , especially using the hermeneutical tools described by Samuel Brainard in Reality and Mystical Experience.

12) Brainard's hermeneutical tools well fit a postmodern reconstruction paradigm and a philosophical approach of critical realism. Critical realism helps us answer both the postmodern critique (whether due to the relativizing of Heidigger, Wittgenstein and Derrida) and the Humean critique of the rationalists, but it also might suggest at least a parity in modeling power with anything Nagarjuna or his cohorts might offer when explicating kundalini, for instance. Our ontological undecidability need not lead to epistemic despair but only to epistemological humility, which needn't lead to nihilsm but rather can lead to holism.

END OF EXCERPTING

The real trick would be for me (us) to develop analogies to demonstrate each of these steps so others can better understand it. I'd be welling to invest the time if anyone finds this too opaque and would be interested. And, Brad, I know you were kidding about the handbasket deal but let me reiterate for others that, for me, at least, we're not discussing people's salvation or the destiny of their souls, but rather are searching for modeling power to understand reality.

re: Still, Catholicism teaches that any good theodicy must remain immersed in mystery and we thus return to the Pope's assertion that God doesn't owe us an explanantion, that is to say He needn't justify Herself to us.

I�m just so egalitarian that, dammit, I think I DESERVE an explanation.
+++ +++ +++

Look, I devised this little explanation. Tell me what you think. Click here for johnboy's explanation!

As for your egalitarianism, that is the whole premise of the Incarnation, that God didn't have to justify Herself to us but did so anyway!

pax, amor et bonum,
jb

p.s. Yes, I CAN read your mind!

p.s. Yes, I CAN read your mind!

I believe that, to a certain extent, is true but without the use of telepathy. The question I have is whether you are seeing one or two tiers back from the stated or - GASP! - even further back than I am even aware of. 'Course, you knew I was thinking that.

[Edited because I'm still confused at times about further and farther. I propose we do away with this unnecessary complexity and just use "firther" (which can also double as "My mink coat is firther than your rabbit one.")]

[This is the second edit of which I am aware. Damn dangling prepositions.]

re: My super-judgmentalism does have a hard time finding truth in ambiguity or duality.

SHORT ANSWER:

There is such a thing as inherent ambiguity and systematic paradox. That's why we ALL have trouble finding truth, period. Some folks just imagine they aren't having such trouble. This is a failure of imagination.

Some Hindu Perspectives 3: Ancient Hindu Cosmology and Modern from today's MetaNexus

This is a "technique" for speaking about the ineffable that parallels our brain's use of formal/logical causation and efficient causation , using conjunctive awareness (God as logical cause) and disjunctive awareness ( can't get back to God through an infinite regression of efficient causes, reminiscent of the sorite paradox ). It also parallels D'Aquili and Newberg's description of holistic and causal operators in the brain.

I suppose that's one reason that humor so interests me. In fits and burst it is a way to get outside normal formal/logical causation (as you put it) and enter into something not bound by logic. Humor seems to be something, like God, that does not lend itself to an infinite regression of efficient causes (which is why it never does much good to explain a joke).

Anything which comes through our sense faculties and through our perceptual filters is mediated . The shutting down of these faculties and discursive brain activities brings a mystical awareness�

Certainly through my Buddhist studies I learned a great deal (in theory) about perception. It's much like the fish who has been in a fishbowl all his life suddenly being shown a picture, from the outside, of his glass bowl sitting on a small table in the library. And from this understanding I must admit that I've never thought of meditative or any other altered mind state as being closer to the truth. I've always just seen it as "driving under the influence of a-cause-hol". (That almost works.) For whatever reason my brain, instead of finding states between meditative and normal, is more apt to find the states of either normal (if ya can call it such, nyuck, nyuck) and creative. Different strokes, I guess.

As for the rest of your fine post, please assure me that I will be getting course credit. In the words of Mr. Gumby, "My brain hurts."

Humor seems to be something, like God, that does not lend itself to an infinite regression of efficient causes (which is why it never does much good to explain a joke).

As they say, if you want a person to laugh, you don't order them to laugh. You tell them a joke.

With God, all of the metaphysical speculation in the world vis a vis natural theology, such as what we have been doing here, only brings one to what theologians call the preambles of faith, the preambulae fidei. Even the classical "proofs" of God's existence are considered, not proofs per se, but rather, inferences that are reasonable but empirically indemonstrable, in principle. So, as St. Augustine insisted, no one can be coerced or should be coerced to believe. And furthermore, as with a joke, you don't teach them metaphysics, you tell them a story, which is the approach Jesus took.

The ultimate Peanuts Comic Strip had Charlie brown inquiring of Snoopy, perched atop his doghouse with typewriter: "What are you doing?"

Snoopy replied: "Writing a book."
Charlie Brown: "On what?"
Snoopy: "Theology"
Charlie Brown: "What's the title?"
Snoopy:"Has It Ever Occured to You That You Might Be Wrong?"

Good story, huh?

pax,
jb

Good story, huh?

Yes, indeed. I've always gotten my life wisdom from comics:

That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria! � Calvin & Hobbes (and following)

You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help.

I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing.

I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information

"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?"
"I'm not sure that man needs the help."

Hobbes : "Do you think there's a God?
Calvin : "Well somebody's out to get me!"

Calvin: I'm a genius, but I'm a misunderstood genius.
Hobbes: What's misunderstood about you?
Calvin: Nobody thinks I'm a genius.

"I'm not going to solve my math homework. Look at these unsolved problems. Here's a number in mortal combat with another. One of them is going to get subtracted. But why? What will be left of him? If I answered these, it would kill the suspense. It would resolve the conflict and turn intriguing possibilities into boring old facts."
"I never really thought about the literary possibilities of math."
"I prefer to savor the mystery."

This is me in third grade.

From the Mystery of Matter: For Maritain our inability to know the precise position and velocity of a particle stemmed from the disturbances our measurements create. It is not the place of physics to elevate this fact into a philosophical conclusion that speaks of the indeterminacy of nature itself, but this is the kind of self-discipline that comes hard to physicists.

I'm glad to hear the other side of this. It's exactly what I immediately thought upon learning about this stuff. But it was soon drummed out of me by the forceful and repeated admonitions from the experts who said "It makes no sense to talk about where a particle is since it can't be known." It's amazing to see such intelligent people make such fundamentally mistakes (it gives one hope!). I remember this coming to a head when Einstein used the curvature of space as the model for gravity and yet he and others (can't remember the details right now) also gave completely different models as explanations. Both could not be right and yet both explained it reasonably well. Something was rotten in Copenhagen.

Philosophy indeed should be put back on its pedestal.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure. Reinhold Niebuhr

I have at least a small measure of faith in my philosophical and metaphysical speculations, but I am not so sure you should invest much more energy in them anyway.

From Today's MetaNexus -- Great Stuff

Some Hindu Perspectives 4: Duality and Multiplicity in Consciousness, Mathematics, Physics and Almost Everything Else From: Mark MacDowell

quote:

Issues of duality, non-duality and multiplicity are central to any serious discussion of the relationship between science and religion. Non-western thinkers have long been aware of the dual nature of consciousness, i.e. consciousness with respect to objects and objectless consciousness. Objectless consciousness eludes talk for the simple reason that objectless consciousness is 'languageless' consciousness. One 'does' or experiences objectless consciousness. One does not (cannot) talk about it. Language is constructed on the framework of duality (logic). It lives and breathes multiplicity. Without multiplicity there is no language and there are no concepts. Western thinkers have produced thousands upon thousands of volumes talking about the former (consciousness with respect to objects)

quote:

The possibility of non-local causation, contrary to the theory of relativity, has entered quantum physics through the observed violations of Bell's inequalities and associated Einstein-Podolsky paradoxes.

The Aspect Experiments of the "1980s" suggest that when matter and anti-matter are separated, there is an instantaneous communication of information between particles and anti-particles. This could not be the case in a four dimensional space where cause and effect propagate at the speed of light. This problem can be addressed by assigning a semi-rigid Mobius topology to matter and anti-matter. This shape also allows for both Dirac and Feynman analyses in four dimensions and additionally predicts a warp in local space-time due to the twisted and dual nature of the topology.

Copyright notice: Columns may be forwarded, quoted, or republished in full with attribution to the author of the column and "Metanexus: The Online Forum on Religion and Science <http://www.metanexus.net>". Republication for commercial purposes in print or electronic format requires the permission of the author. Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by William Grassie.

Language is constructed on the framework of duality (logic). It lives and breathes multiplicity. Without multiplicity there is no language and there are no concepts.

Next time I�m at a loss for words I�ll just say my silence was not a sign of stupidity but a sign of non-multiplicity-ous-ness.

But I get your point. One thing koans are supposed to do is nudge us indirectly into realizing some things that just can�t be put into words. HA! Should I ever receive enlightenment I will consider it a personal challenge to describe the supposedly indescribable. [Famous last words.] Seriously�I have found there to be a real deficit in even good oblique descriptions of non-dual thinking or being. Alas, it seem only the non-motor-mouthed can receive enlightenment (ohh�I just found the Way!).

Thomas Keating on apophatic/kataphatic contemplation -

a misleading distinction suggesting opposition between the two, in fact, a proper preparation of the faculties (kataphatic practice) leads to apophatic contemplation, which in turn is sustained through appropriate kataphatic practices.

*** Thomas Keating; Open Heart, Open Mind.

This could be paraphrased to articulate the proper relationship between dual and nondual consciousness. One need not buy into the facile notion that he who speaks doesn't know and he who knows doesn't speak. He who speaks writes the Summa Theologica and he who knows calls it so much straw.

We might therefore be able to avoid any distinction suggesting opposition between dualistic and nondualistic awareness, in fact, a proper preparation of the faculties (dualistic consciousess) leads to nondualistic consciousness, which in turn is sustained through appropriate dualistic practices.

Alas, this is merely the overarching Catholic both-and paradigm, coming into play, not just in metaphysics, not just in theology, but also in the phenomenology of consciousness.

We could be wrong. As they say: It works "for me".

pax,
jb

We might therefore be able to avoid any distinction suggesting opposition between dualistic and nondualistic awareness,�

Agreed.

�in fact, a proper preparation of the faculties (dualistic consciousess) leads to nondualistic consciousness, which in turn is sustained through appropriate dualistic practices.

I realize there is no way to put into words the taste of cinnamon. About all one can do is describe the taste of cinnamon by referring to the taste of something else and, of course, this something else also has no words to describe it without reference to still another thing. But in this process of nuanced analogy we can reach, if not an apt description of cinnamon, then at least an agreement that it can not be described in principle, and that's whether cinnamon actually tastes more or less the same to each of us or not. And of course, it might be quite pointless to describe nondualistic consciousness for the same reasons, whether it is vastly different for other people or not. And whether it is or not, it seems to me that we should be able to describe nondualistic consciousness at least as well as we can a spice. That is, maybe not very well at all. But the point I would make is that words aren't all as dualistic as we'd like to think they are. Even though many words seem to have objects, are they not objectless in practice? They are, at least to me, as ethereal as nondualistic consciousness and therefore a worthy vehicle for its description if only because what else could describe the indescribable but that which we use every day to describe not really much at all!

Well said. I could waft the rolls in your oven from here!