Philosophy Now Forum

Gurdjieff was a dancing master among other things. I think he was referring to thought, emotion and movement. Movement and the body seem to get a bit overlooked in philosophy.

Bullwinkle

Yes I think that is the case and also Marcel believed the same and he speaks of the body in his philosophy also. But isn't motion and action of the will?

Hi Lusia


I think Heschel was speaking to a man's personal acquired "vision of the good", that is only gradually revealed to or through his mind by the ongoing process of self reflection at ever deepening levels of understanding.

Bullwinkle, I don't know if you have made this connection but my understanding of "The Little Prince" is all about Man's search and also his non search for Being. Antoine de Saint Exupéry was a deep thinker and perhaps all of his books may have been part of his search for Being, I don't know. But please read the following quote with this in mind and see what you think.





"The desert is beautiful," the little prince added.


And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...


"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a

well..."


I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart...


"Yes," I said to the little prince. "The house, the stars, the desert-- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!"


"I am glad," he said, "that you agree with my fox."

HI Bullwinkle. do you think Heschel is on the right track ?


Radical Amazement

REASON AND WONDER

The greatest hindrance to knowledge is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental cliches. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is, therefore, a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.

Standing eye to eye with being as being, we realize that we are able to look at the world with two faculties-with reason and with wonder. Through the first we try to explain or to adapt the world to our concepts, through the second we seek to adapt our minds to the world.

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge. Doubt comes in the wake of knowledge as a state of vacillation be­tween two contrary or contradictory views; as a state in which a belief we had embraced begins to totter. It challenges the mind's accounts about reality and calls for an examination and verification of that which is deposited in the mind. In other words, the business of doubt is one of auditing the mind's accounts about reality rather than a concern with real­ity itself; it deals with the content of perception rather than with perception itself.

Doubt is not applied to that which we have an immediate awareness of. We do not doubt that we exist or that we see, we merely question whether we know what we see or whether that which we see is a true reflection of what exists in reality. Thus, it is after perception has been crystallized in a concep­tion that doubt springs up.

Doubt, then, is an interdepartmental activity of the mind.
First we see, next we judge and form an opinion and there­after we doubt. In other words, to doubt is to question that which we have accepted as possibly true a moment ago. Doubt is an act of appeal, a proceeding by which a logical judgment is brought from the memory to the critical faculty of the mind for re-examination. Accordingly, we must first judge and cling to a belief in our judgment before we are able to doubt. But if we must know in order to question, if we must entertain a belief in order to cast doubt upon it, then doubt cannot be the beginning of knowledge.

"Wonder goes beyond knowledge. We do not doubt that we doubt, but we are amazed at our ability to doubt, amazed at our ability to wonder. He who is sluggish will berate doubt; he who is blind will berate wonder. Doubt may come to an end, wonder lasts forever. Wonder is a state of mind in which we do not look at reality through the latticework of our memorized knowledge; in which nothing is taken for granted. Spiritually we cannot live by merely reiterating borrowed or inherited knowledge. Inquire of your soul what does it know, what does it take for granted. It will tell you only no-thing is taken for granted; each thing is a surprise, being is unbeliev­able. We are amazed at seeing anything at all; amazed not only at particular values and things but at the unexpectedness of being as such, at the fact that there is being at all.



PHILOSOPHY BEGINS IN WONDER

A philosophy that begins with radical doubt ends in radical despair. It was the principle of dubito ut intelligam that pre­pared the soil for modern gospels of despair. "Philosophy begins in wonder" (Plato, Theatetus I.55D) , in a state of mind which we should like to call thaumatism (from thaumazein - to doubt) as distinguished from skepticism.

Even before we conceptualize what we perceive, we are amazed beyond words, beyond doubts. We may doubt any­thing, except that we are struck with amazement. When in doubt, we raise questions; when in wonder, we do not even know how to ask a question. Doubts may be resolved, radical amazement can never be erased. There is no answer in the world to man's radical wonder. Under the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.

Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of man. While any act of perception or cognition has as its ob­ject a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.

Bullwinkle

I have been thinking, what exactly is it that we are attempting to accomplish or discover in our search for being? I think the following may somewhat express it. We are at some level and mostly an unconscious level I suspect, desiring or trying to see the unseeable, to know the unknowable, not visually, not ntellectually but experientially.
I believe this is what all men who have had any success in this venture have found. It is not an easy task.

I would like to hear your thoughts on it.

Jack

Yes but Gurdjieff would give the will control over all – thought, feeling and movement. The analogy is a hansom cab with the horses as the emotions, the driver as the intellect and the cab as the body. There is a passenger who you might call the will. Gurdjieff reckons that most people have a drunk driver, a dilapidated cab, out of control horses and nobody in the passenger seat.


Is this different from Plato’s idea of the good? Heidegger seems to interpret Plato’s idea of the good as ‘suited to’ or some such, rather than there being any idea of morality in the term.


I can’t remember now but I have found my own copy and will get back to you.


I prefer the term understanding, which I’m told goes back to the Elizabethan theatre. Apparently those who stood in the pit around the stage were said to ‘under-stand’ the play. I can go with ‘knowledge’ though. Isn’t Heschel talking here about what children have and which it is all too easy to lose as an adult. Isn’t this why Jesus wanted people to come to him as little children?


I like Heidegger’s take on this. The ‘view’ as a forking between having-present and making-present. The making-present would be reason projecting our expectation beyond what we have-present. The tension between the 2 is necessary but it brings in the potential to mis-take what is had-present. Untruth enters in place of truth. I suspect that as we get older life can become more routine and making-present begins to dominate having-present and it is in having-present that wonder is found.

Re-awakening the wonder of childhood may be about learning to waver in the gap between the made-present and the had-present to give the latter a little more room to show itself as what it is and not as what you expect.


No philosophy of radical doubt can be true to its programme. All doubt relies on a suite of things that are not doubted and thus undercuts its radicalism.


No it is not an easy task! I can’t remember exactly what you meant by ‘unconscious’. We are surrounded by ‘being’. ‘Being’ is not what is seen but what is seen by. I am quite consciously trying to quicken my wonder and to enter into relationships with beings where they and I are increasingly unhidden. I am trying to remove the distortion and deconceal both them and I. I seek to know, in the sense of to ‘be’ unhidden with, what I can have-present to me. What I seek to know is all around me but as yet unknown in its essence because this process of deconcealment is not sufficiently advanced. Through knowing beings and being in relationship to them I should come to know myself.

That is what I am seeking. As you say it is experiential.

I have some questions for you. This is an experiential process and not always easy to talk meaningfully about. What do you seek? How do you seek it? Is there a process or discipline that you use to seek? Have you made progress – are you closer to your goal? How do you know? What is the role of this thread for you? Is this thread making progress?

Alright a lot of questions!

Bullwinkle

Christianity hasn't changed much then

Suzuki said that the whole meaning and purpose of Zen was no other then to make the Unconscious, Conscious. And he makes it clear that it is not the psychological unconscious . It is soul, spirit, being that he speaks to. It is to remember that which was forgotten at the very beginning. It is to answer the question "Who is it that looks out through these eyes, listens with these ears and feels with these hands?


"When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart... "

I am of the belief that the highest level of philosophy or any other discipline whose main concern is the well being of man will have it's main focus on being. It does not take a genius to realize that being is of supreme importance for man. This is not the case with any other creature. I also know that this does not negate other concerns whitch man may also have. Even so we have to acknowledge that our existence has to be our supreme focus. What does it matter if we are right on all of the other problems that we are so concerned with if we forget ourselves? We somehow have to realize that the greatest lovers of mankind Socrates, Buddha and Jesus cannot be ignored without great peril to our being.


"I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it; perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart..."

Hi Bullwinkle
I appreciate your questions and I want to address them in a roundabout way over time.

Part 1

About ten years ago my first born son and I were having a conversation about dreaming and how real a dream is while we are under its spell. I brought up the point that the reason for this being the case is because in sleep the unconscious is awake or to the forefront while the conscious sleeps and when awake it is just the opposite. He then revealed to me that he had experienced exceptions to what I had just stated. He said that at times he had been conscious or aware of the fact that he was dreaming while he was asleep. I have alway had a hard time understanding how this could be true but I believe him because I trust his word.

Since that time I have come to understand that the above story is much akin to an unperceived reality in our conscious life as well. I attribute most of my new found awareness to Suzuki who I consider to be a truly kindred spirit to all men irregardless of whether they know it or not. This new awareness, I have to say with regret is still only in the embryo stage. I will attempt to explain what I understand to be the truth of this searched for awareness.

In our everyday wakeful state we all intellectually know that consciousness is at the forefront of our mind while the unconscious is hidden in the background and at the same time informing consciousness. This is the way that we ordinarily understand the conscious and unconscious. However there is a much deeper understanding of these terms that has gone mostly ignored by most men because of an innate ignorance that we are all saddled with. This deeper understanding is what Suzuki desires to communicate to his readers, first of all intellectually and second of all hopefully leading on to an experiential understanding.

Jack

[/quote]

Alan Watts - On Nothingness


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrMVous0Ac

bullwinkle

Have you ever had the feeling or perception that the farther you walk down the road looking for the true light, the further you go away from it?

I am by nature a free wheeler and I am most myself when I can free wheel with out a whole lot of structure or restricting rules.

I would like to give you a real life example. When I was much younger I use to love playing basketball at the neighborhood court and I loved it. But later in high school I attempted to play and I found it to be to mechanical or structured and I finally quit.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the structure of question and answer is very hard for me to respond to unless it is broken up in smaller bites to which I can give my full attention.

Nothing wrong with that.


It depends what you mean. I think that there is a lot of truth in the saying that the last step on the road to enlightment is to give up the desire for enlightment. I have found that the asking of certain questions hides their answers. The only way to move beyond these questions and away from their negative answer is not to ask them, to let them dissolve. In some ways this is a bit like a Kuhnian paradigm shift (see General topic by coberst).

In short I think that you can try too hard.

One of my thoughts behind my questions was that if what we are talking about has any value then we need to bring it in to the everyday lives we live. I need to take the unhiddenness and the relationship to being into work with me and through my life. What I wanted to do was to try and find a way of talking about that process that needs to happen in our lives. I wondered what purpose the thread had for you and if it was making progress because you post a lot of quotes. These are interesting but they aren't your own words and I wonder how YOU explore this.

Bullwinkle