Lacewing
Nick, do you think there is any delusion for those who claim to speak of absolutes and who claim to use non-dualistic reason?
Of course. Escapist imagination is just a misuse or this attribute
Aren't the concepts of beauty and justice, HUMAN concepts?
Setting imagination aside, what reasoning do you have for assigning human concepts beyond the human realm?
Are you familiar with Plato's divided line analogy?. Basically beauty for example exists as an idea, a form above the divided line while we interpret consequences of the form as beauty from below the line.
https://aquileana.wordpress.com/2015/11 ... %E2%AD%90/
According to Plato, Beauty was an idea or Form of which beautiful things were consequence.
Beauty by comparison begins in the domain of intelligible objects, since there is a Form of beauty. The most important question is: what do all of these beautiful things have in common?. To know that is to know Beauty.
The Theory of Forms maintains that two distinct levels of reality exist: the visible world of sights and sounds that we inhabit and the intelligible world of Forms that stands above the visible world and gives it being. For example, Plato maintains that in addition to being able to identify a beautiful person or a beautiful painting, we also have a general conception of Beauty itself, and we are able to identify the beauty in a person or a painting only because we have this conception of Beauty in the abstract. In other words, the beautiful things we can see are beautiful only because they participate in the more general Form of Beauty. This Form of Beauty is itself invisible, eternal, and unchanging, unlike the things in the visible world that can grow old and lose their beauty.
Plato’s account in the Symposium connects beauty to a response of love and desire, but locate beauty itself in the realm of the Forms, and the beauty of particular objects in their participation in the Form.
Beauty’s distinctive pedagogical effects show why Plato talks about its goodness and good consequences, sometimes even its identity with “the good” (Laws 841c; Philebus 66a–b; Republic, 401c; Symposium 201c, 205e).
Common sense reveals to me that there is no natural cause for the experience of beauty. It isn't a result of accidental evolution so must be an inner awareness of a reality beyond the limits of our senses. Beauty then exists as a perfect form in the intelligible world and also as a subjective human interpretation in the visible realm.
And you claim to know what this is, and why it is necessary, and how to do it, and who has it and who doesn't, yes? But you claim that none of this is your creation.
The Eastern conception of our third eye is an ancient conception not created by me. Is there any truth in it? Imagine an equilateral triangle. The base represents dualistic reason. Affirmation met by denial is argued along the base of the triangle. The extremes of yes and no are expressed by the limits of the base.
However we have the human potential to consciously experience the apex of the triangle and reconcile the dualistic division from a higher conscious perspective
Einstein describes how it is done:
1948
"One never goes wrong following his feeling. I don’t mean emotions, I mean feeling, for feeling and intuition are one.” Albert Einstein, in Einstein and the Poet – In Search of the Cosmic Man by William Hermanns (Branden Press, 1983, p. 95. – conversation on September 14, 1948)
Metropolitan Anthony says something similar to Jacob Needleman in his book "Lost Christianity:"
Metropolitan Anthony," I began, "five years ago when I visited you I attended services which you yourself conducted and I remarked to you how struck I was by the absence of emotion in your voice. Today, in the same way where it was not you but the choir, I was struck by the same thing, the almost complete lack of emotion in the voices of the singers."
Yes he said, "this is quite true, it has taken years for that, but they are finally beginning to understand...."
"What do you mean?" I asked. I knew what he meant but I wanted to hear him speak about this - this most unexpected aspect of the Christianity I never knew, and perhaps very few modern people ever knew. I put the question further: "The average person hearing this service - and of course the average Westerner having to stand up for several hours it took - might not be able to distinguish it from the mechanical routine that has become so predominant in the performance of the Christian liturgy in the West. He might come wanting to be lifted, inspired,moved to joy or sadness - and this the churches in the West are trying to produce because many leaders of the Church are turning away from the mechanical, the routine.."
He gently waved aside what I was saying and I stopped in mid sentence. "There was a pause, then he said: "No. Emotion must be destroyed."
He stopped, reflected, and started again, speaking in his husky Russian accent: "We have to get rid of emotions....in order to reach.....feeling."
Again he paused, looking at me, weighing the effect his words were having. I said nothing. but inside I was alive with expectancy. I waited.
Very tentatively, I nodded my head.
He continued: "You ask about the liturgy in the West and in the East. it is precisely the same issue. the sermons, the Holy Days - you don't why one comes after the other. or why this one now and the other one later. Even if you read everything about it you still wouldn't know, believe me.
"And yet . . . there is a profound logic in them, in the sequence of the Holy Days. And this sequence leads people somewhere - without their knowing it intellectually. Actually, it is impossible for anyone to understand the sequence of rituals and Holy Days intellectually. it is not meant for that. It is meant for something else, something higher.
For this you have to be in a state of prayer, otherwise it passes you by-"
"What is prayer?" I asked.
He did not seem to mind my interrupting with this question. Quite the contrary. "In a state of prayer one is vulnerable." He emphasized the last word and then waited until he was sure I had not taken it in an ordinary way.
"In prayer one is vulnerable, not enthusiastic. and then these rituals have such force. they hit you like a locomotive. You must be not enthusiastic, nor rejecting - but only open. This is the whole idea of asceticism: to become open."
Intuition is a higher form of intellect than dualistic reason. It is higher emotional reason which requires the experience of "feelings" and freedom from acquired lower habitual and negative emotions. Intuition reveals reality above the divided line natural for the intelligible world. It is what makes Plato's anamnesis or remembrance possible.
I am sticking with the context of our discussion, and the reasons why I've asked certain questions is because of what you, yourself, have said about your own approach and view. You can't just keep blowing off my responses as only issues for "dualistic thinkers". If you take such human approaches, please clarify how you think you are transcending the pitfalls I pointed out (with you in mind BTW). I think you are trying to kid me along with yourself... and I'm not falling for it. You express a great deal of dualistic thinking about dualistic thinking(!)... and even more than most people I see (sorry Nick!). Everything you say shows your quality (or lack) of transcending anything.
Dualisitic reason is sufficient for daily life in Plato's cave. Some people through philosophy and religion become concerned if this is all there is. They feel that there is more and begin to become attracted to something greater than identifiction with life in Plato's cave. This invites the third dimension of thought to show the psychological path leading to the conscious experience of human meaning as opposed to acquired cave meanings.
It is dishonest and/or delusional to pretend not to be a dualistic-thinking human, just because you WANT to rise above it. You are imagining and imposing human ideas onto some concept of being beyond or above being human. It is arrogant and disrespectful to talk to others as if you see an imaginary ultimate state that they do not see. You're not helping anybody by doing that; you're using it to elevate yourself and condemn those who continue to be human (which you are yourself!!), right?
Of course I am dualistic in daily life. Sometimes I experience my daily life from a higher perspective made possible by being shown the door that those like Einstein and Simone Weil have experienced that leads to a human conscious perspective. This doesn't make me special. I have just become aware of a human potential that the world and its identification with cave life rejects. I know what Metropolitan Anthony meant but you would probably reject it.
N
ick_A wrote: ↑Mon Sep 24, 2018 8:28 pm
You may call it an acquired need of her [Simone's] personality but I see it as a calling from the essence of her being. Can you agree that both are possible?
Is there really any difference? We all call out from "the essence of our being" in many ways. Why do you seek to glorify some particular notion of it?
I would really like to know: Why do you seek to distinguish between what is and is not spirit? Why do you think there's some sort of inappropriate separation within oneness/wholeness?
Socrates — 'Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.'
You don't seem to distinguish the inner man and the qualities we are born with and the outer man which is our learned personality. I agree with Socrates that they are not the same.
Spirit is spirit but consciousness is relative. Conscious evolution begins with the assertion that it is possible. Can animal Man can become a conscious being? Anyone can make simple experiments to prove to themselves that their quality of consciousness varies. If it does, what are its limits. Those who are concerned make efforts to have the conscious experience of themselves. They strive to "know thyself."