Harbal wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2024 11:55 amWhy do you regard what you call the metaphysical as being more than the product of your own imagination? We all see things metaphysically to some extent; maybe on a trivial level, and maybe what seems to us a profound level, but it only amounts to a personal way of looking at things. What one person perceives as a glaring and important metaphysical truth, might well be imperceptible to the rest of humanity.
It is certainly not a bad question. I will make some effort to explain my perspective.
First, and this is I suppose personal and subjective, I cannot conceive of *being* (existence, the fact that things exist, that existence exists) in any other terms except as miraculous -- though the words I'd choose to describe what I mean are not altogether adequate. It could in my case be as a result of past, formative experiences that I cannot deny or negate that I see *the entire manifestation* in this light. That things exist, that there is such a thing as *being* -- certainly when compared to whatever we think is its opposite -- presents to me an unsolvable mystery. One can only stand before it without ever being able to rationally comprehend it. So, I suppose that in this regard I have a mystic's frame of mind or basic orientation. I say *mystic* because I do not see any description of being offered by science and physics as really saying anything at all, nor *explaining*, existence, being, awareness, consciousness, etc.
Secondly, I regard *imagination* in a very different way than is typical. Our imagining faculty, our ability to conceive, our predilection to imagine, is in fact one of our chief and human characteristic. And the imagining mind is what enables me to conceive of the manifest world as (as I say) miraculous. Arising out of something inconceivable in the face of which our rational, explaining capabilities can say little or nothing. The *reason* for our existence, the reason that we exist -- these are questions that the scientific and physics-oriented mind can say nothing about. But what part of the mind and the self can deal in these terms? That part of the mind that
imagines.
What you do, Harbal, and what we moderns do, because we have been trained to do so, is to regard imagined conceptualizations just as you necessarily describe them: as unreal, and as invented. Again I mean conceptualizations dealt with, perceived, held in the conceiving mind, and not something fabricated -- or let's say
hallucinated. This is what, and for example what Sculptor's condemnatory view amounts to: to see things in any ways that do not conform to the modern scientistic model, which model is an imposition on our perception and our conceiving imagination, is a form of mental illness.
Now, if I refer to *imagined conceptualizations* I do not mean to say that I negate what I refer to as the supernatural or the metaphysical as having *real existence*. However, what is supernatural to the natural, and to naturalism, is by its nature composed of something not of a physical, quantifiable nature. But my view is that so much of what we actually deal in and what makes us human beings, and especially when it comes to meaning & value, is in truth of a supernatural and metaphysical nature. And it seems to me that what *that* is cannot be said to be unreal since, in fact, it is more real in effect than those things -- processes, events -- that we describe as natural.
We are in a stage in the world where there is an on-going war between differing frames of mind and core orientations. I will be the first to admit that *religious conceptions* are rife with problems that are hard to resolve. That is why I refer to *pictures* that we hold in our imagining capability. We rely on pictures yet the pictures are often outmoded and we update them with difficulty. Yet these *pictures* are also vessels that contain that which we understand to be *meaning*. So I am supposing that our perception must become agile and far-sighted so that we are capable of grasping, appreciating and also applying the *meaning* that is presented through the complexity of symbolic pictures.
Additionally, I recommend a critical examination and analysis of this *frame of mind* that Sculptor (he is just one example) seems to believe is the right and good one, and the one that brings *progress* and advancement. On one hand I believe that the scientific revolution enabled man to become extremely more competent at handling the tangible facts of the material world but I am less certain that the emphasis placed on sheer reasoning alone is now or will be in any sense sufficient to arrive at a proper stance in this world and in life.
And so again I refer to a battle taking place between naturalistic perspectives, allied as they are or tools as they are for the advancement of materialistic governing powers which dominate our world now, and a
supernaturalistic perspective and orientation which conceives of, and protects, a very different sort of orientation and praxis. The former mode is turning the individual into a component of a machine, and indeed it is the *machine* (which includes computers) that is on the verge they say of taking over. This naturalistic mode denies what I refer to as
supernaturalistic -- in fact in that sense it hates all that is defined or presented as being of a supernaturalistic nature. Hence, naturally, the denial of God or a supreme authority and, in my lingo, those realms of the metaphysical and the supernatural.
What one person perceives as a glaring and important metaphysical truth, might well be imperceptible to the rest of humanity.
First, and I think this is fair to say, there is no human being and no human culture that is not intimately immersed in what I refer to as metaphysical thought. And there are *likenesses* between one given mode or expression of metaphysical thought and others. But to think on such levels does indeed require a grounding in language and conceptual thought. So, indeed, education and the process of being introduced to conceptual models cannot be avoided. But are these *invented* or *discovered*? My emphasis is on discovery or uncovering what is latent. But latent
where? Certainly in the human but that when what is conceived by man is understood to be something that arose together with the entire manifestation (of reality) itself.
We seem to have a capability in our modernity to negate and to dismiss what is
most determining in our human world.
I have presented this bit from Blake before because it is poignant and illustrative of where
I stand:
This life's five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
A machine eye really does *see*, doesn't it? We can send our *eyes* to Mars and see in so many ways like our own eyes see. We can devise *eyes* that see more and better than our human eyes. And yet Blake alludes to something that can only be
seen by men. Apparently it is seeing on
another level. 
