Being-time

"Much of our difficulty in understanding time is due to the unwise use of spatial metaphors--in fact, the objectification of time requires such spatial metaphors--but in this case a spatial comparison is helpful. We normally understand objects such as cups to be 'in' space, which implies that in themselves they must have a self-existence distinct from space. However, not much reflection is necessary to realize that the cup itself is irremediably spatial. All its parts must have some thickness, and without the various spatial relations among the bottom, sides, and handle, the cup would not be a cup. One way to express this is to say that the cup is not "in" space but itself is space: the cup is 'what space is doing in that place,' so to speak. The same is true for the temporality of the cup. The cup is not a nontemporal self-existing object that just happens to be 'in' time, for its being is irremediably temporal. The point of this is to destroy the thought-constructed dualism between things and time. When we wish to express this, we must describe one one in terms of the other, by saying either that objects are temporal (in which case they are not objects as we usually conceive of them) or, conversely, that time is objects--that is, that time manifests itself in the appearances we call objects. We find beautiful expressions of this in Dōgen. 'The time we call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers. The flowers, in turn, express the time called spring. This is not existence within time; existence itself is time.' This is the meaning of his term 'being-time' (uji):

'Being-time' means that time is being; i.e., 'Time is existence, existence is time.' The shape of a Buddha-statue is time. . . . Every thing, every being in this entire world is time. . . . Do not think of time as merely flying by; do not only study the fleeting aspect of time. If time is really flying away, there would be a separation between time and ourselves. If you think that time is just a passing phenomenon, you will never understand being-time."

From David Loy's Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (1998)

This whole discussion is fascinating--I particularly like the Dōgen stuff.

Calasso

Interviewer: What is happiness for you, as a writer and creator?

Roberto Calasso: Happiness? I try not to speak of it. I feel it should belong
subterraneously to life. It doesn't want to be talked about too much,
I think.

(Paris Review, Fall 2012)

Nothing noths

"Nozick’s own hypotheses were certainly strange. One was that the primal nothingness might have been so annihilating that it annihilated itself, thus producing being. This echoes a much-mocked line of Heidegger’s: “nothing noths” (“Das Nichts nichtet”)."

'Why Does the World Exist?' by Jim Holt; New York Times, August 2, 2012.

Pain

"The fear of pain is the greatest inhibitor of growth."

--Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969)

Internalization

"The task of all our knowing is to enable us to incarnate all that we tend only to believe is outside and independent of us."

--Bubba Free John

I was thinking about this quote in terms of what we were talking about the other day--the observation that conflict which appears external, playing out with the people around us, is often mirrored by the same conflict within ourselves. I don't think all conflicts with others can be accurately described as only and truly internal, but I do think that this idea helps clarify a lot of interpersonal strife (by returning to and recognizing the intrapersonal).

This relationship takes on many guises, one of which is the process of projection. The mechanism whereby we cast out a conflict, tension, or ambiguity within the psyche onto the external world, especially other people, is learned pretty early in childhood. It has its purpose--to protect the sanity and coherence of the fledgling ego as it gradually develops in a relatively stressful world. But it is a sign of maturity, I think, when the ego is strong enough to recognize and face its intrapersonal or intrapsychic dynamics that are reflected in its conflicts with other people.

Although Bubba Free John is speaking in a spiritual context--namely, the conviction held by the mystics that one can even "incarnate" (or, rather, realize or recognize) God within oneself--I find the principle also applicable to more "grounded" realms of human experience. Take the perception of beauty--if I find a particular painting beautiful, I believe that the painting, which I feel is outside of me, possesses the beauty. But I think a more accurate appraisal of the situation is that the painting reflects the beauty that I possess within. Or--I have used the metaphor of enjoying a natural landscape elsewhere (and I think I may have encountered the image somewhere in my reading). If I and a squirrel are looking at the Grand Canyon, only I will be able to feel the beauty and grandeur of the vista. The squirrel cannot. So it must be that the beauty is not finally an attribute of the vista, but is an attribute of me. Or perhaps the beauty is inherent in the vista but it takes a perceiver, a subject, that is capable of registering that beauty for it to be expressed or exchanged. Either way, my capacity as a human is crucial to the manifestation, or perception, of this beauty. And if I realize that, I have taken the first step towards incarnating the beauty within. Because it is certainly there, I just need to find it.

I think this is one of the general principles behind the many schools of meditation across the world, especially those involving visualization. But that is for another day.

Natural vs. conventional

Love is probably the emotion most talked about and extolled by Americans and probably also the least understood. In large measure this is because love seems a natural human emotion that requires no explanation. It is taken for granted that love for one's spouse and children is a universal element in human experience, something that men of all places and ages have felt in common. Affection and warmth are universal, to be sure, but not love in the middle-class sense of the word. What seems to be a natural emotional response is largely a conventional response.

The range of human emotional potential is broad, and that set of responses which accorded the highest value in one society may not be highly regarded in another. Thus, filial piety was considered the finest emotion in traditional Chinese society, patriotism was the transcendent emotion in ancient Sparta, the Puritans extolled the fear of God above all else, and the modern Americans exalt love.

--Gail and Snell Putney, The Adjusted American: Normal Neuroses in the Individual and Society (1964)

An excellent book by two sociologists, analyzing some of the assumptions underlying mid-century, middle class American society, and their psychological ramifications. Particularly interesting are discussions, like the one above, about the consequences of equating natural with conventional. (They use "love" in a few different ways in the book, some more consistent and precise than others, so it's difficult to get the full sense of that discussion from just this quote. I am emphasizing the "emotional potential" point more here).

(J)

...symbols, theories and opinions...

  Everything written symbols can say has already passed by.  They are like tracks left by animals.  That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept that writings are final.  The aim is to reach true being by means of those tracks, those letters, those signs - but reality itself is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks.  It doesn't come to us by the way of letters or words.  We can go toward it, by following those words and letters back to what they came from.  But so long as we are preoccupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.
  But when we give up symbols and opinions, are we left in the utter nothingness of being?
  Yes.

Kimura Kyuho, Kenjutsu Fushigi Hen [On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship], 1768

(H)

A Thousand Peaceful Cities

"I'm concerned with the spiritual aspect," Mr. Trąba started to giggle unexpectedly and in a very peculiar manner. "I'm concerned with the spiritual aspect, plus practice, of course.  Training is the way of life.  Moreover, one mustn't forget that this," Mr Trąba raised the crossbow to his shoulder, "is the weapon of the ancient Chinese.  And the ancient Chinese say that when you shoot at your target, you must free yourself from trivial thoughts of the necessity of hitting it.  The shot must have a spiritual scope, whereas the shooter must remain in intense tension until the shot falls upon the target like a ripe fruit falling, like snow from a bamboo leaf..."

(H)

Truth is a pathless land.

"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others."

--Jiddu Krishnamurti, from this speech

This reminds me of don Juan's statement about all paths leading nowhere. 

Li Tuan

"Her hands of white jade by a window of snow
Are glimmering on a golden-fretted harp--
And to draw the quick eye of Chou Yu,
She touches a wrong note now and then."
-Li Tuan

(J; courtesy of James Monaco)

1939 and 1999

Two articles about 1939 and 1999, two very important years in American movies.

(J)

movies and power

"[Movies] function, not by literally presenting us with the world, but by permitting us to view it unseen. This is not a wish for power, . . . but a wish not to need power, not to have to bear its burdens."

--Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

Again, the responsibility ("burden") of power, agency.

(J)

Emotions and responsibility

". . . we will not . . . be in a position to understand much less to change ourselves until we have learned to accept this responsibility [for our emotions], to view the passions as our own and our doing, and to ask, not 'What causes me to feel this?' but always 'What reason do I have for doing this?"

--from Robert C. Solomon's The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotion

I am nearly finished with this book, and I will certainly discuss it more--this is just a taste. This shift he describes in one's approach to the emotions completely turned me on my head when I read it. In the days following, I have already noticed a distinct change in my attitude towards my emotions, particularly paying more attention to the strategies employed by different emotions, but with a greater sense of responsibility, assuming that each reaction or habit is at heart my own doing. This is been my opinion on the matter for a few years, but Solomon's book has really helped to clear much of my confusion about putting this conviction into practice.

(J)

Divine Darkness

J (4/21/12):

Here is Alan Watts' translation of Pseudo-Dionysius' Mystical Theology.

Note (1) in particular stood out to me:

(1) Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or nescience as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore it is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge. There are two main kinds of darkness: the subdarkness and the super-darkness, between which lies, as it were, an octave of light. But the nether-darkness and the Divine Darkness are not the same darkness, for the former is absence of light, while the latter is excess of light. The one symbolizes mere ignorance, and the other a transcendent unknowing - a superknowledge not obtained by means of the discursive reason. [italics mine]

I love encountering images like these in the writings of these early theologians: the Darkness that is the "excess of light," a luminous presence so intense that it becomes a form of darkness, of "super-darkness."

---

H (4/21/12):

One quick reaction (only because I can apply what I've learned in the Marias' book):

 "that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One" is an extreme form of nomalism (originating in Medieval Scholasticism), one that William of Occam (Ockham) wrote about.  His theory was that only faith could give us access to theological truths (that is, bring us closer to God) and that reason had nothing to do with theology and God; reason is only used for science.

Chikamatsu Monazaemon

"The twittering yellow thrush rests on the corner of the mound. If a man fails to rest in the place meant for him, does it mean that he is inferior to this bird?"

I have loved this quote ever since I first read it.  It's from a 18th century Japanese playwright whose plays are superb.  What are your thoughts?

(H)

What have we really learned thus far?

I posted this on the blog with Peter (from here on out, known as P/H's), but really wanted you to see this interesting line from the Don Juan book.

"Fear is the first natural enemy a man must overcome on his path to knowledge."

From The Teachings of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda.

(H)

Re: really long movies...

"However, another approach to the mind in time is to make us acutely (sometimes painfully) aware of our own apprehension of the world by slowing down the passage of minutes. Slow cinema--a form in which 'longueurs' is not a dirty word--throws us back on our own thought processes, sometimes even deliberately bores us so that we are obliged to keep thinking if we want to stay conscious. Never underestimate a film-maker's recourse to the oppressive effects of duration and repetition, as with Chantal Akerman's icily analytical Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a 225-minute account of domestic drudgery that sets out to prove that a woman's work is never done until the viewer's mind is done in.

Other devotees of duration (either over an entire film or within single extended shot) are Jacques Rivette, many of whose films (including the original 13-hour cut of Out 1) make us experience the real duration of film so that the act of sitting in a cinema becomes akin to an extended theatrical experience. Also theatrical, in a more pageant-like sense, are the works of Hungary's Miklós Jancsó and Greece's Theo Angelopoulos, both of whom represent modern history as a series of stately and complex dance moves to be executed by individuals and crowds on large landscapes in long takes (Jancsó's The Red and the White, Angelopoulos's four-hour The Travelling Players). There's also a film that might be called the ultimate 'documentary' about the viewer's relationship to vision: Michael Snow's majestically incommunicative Wavelength, a single (or apparently single) 45-minute zoom in which the viewer's mind becomes aware of its own forward thrust, straining to detect whatever the certain hidden something is that the camera obstinately refuses to disclose."

This is from an essay, "Let's get cerebral," by film critic Jonathan Romney, which surveys the range of movies whose subject matter include time, perception, the mind, cinema itself, etc. The essay is from one of my favorite books about movies, TimeOut's 1000 Films to Change Your Life, which is organized, delightfully, by emotions that movies can evoke or explore. The nine emotions included are: joy, anger, desire, fear, sadness, exhilaration, regret, contempt, and wonder, along with a tenth category, "food for thought." When I first came across the book, I found this approach so refreshing, as I was growing tired of my usual source of movie recommendations, "greatest" or "most important" lists, or lists organized by genre. Instead of organizing movies by their technical, historical, cultural, or aesthetic significance, this book organized and recommended them based on their emotional power.

From the introduction: "To begin with, we make no suggestion that every film mentioned in the following 240 pages is 'good,' or even 'worthy.' Secondly, this book does not have a special interest in the critical or popular stock of any given film--though it's not short of praise for hundreds of movies we think anyone would enjoy watching. Instead, it's about the ways--even ways their makers may not have foreseen--that films go to work on us. . . . We reckon there are already quite enough generalist movie books organised by genre--chapter on the Western, chapter on the road movie, chapter on horror flicks, and so on. More interesting, we argued, to look at films through the emotions they trigger: the instant, unthinking, gut reactions, the Geiger counter clicks of a movie's power. That's why 1000 Films is shaped by the nine emotions people are most likely to feel at the cinema; there's one chapter dedicated to each. And a tenth chapter, entitled Food for Thought, assesses the thinking responses that are often just a short distance behind the visceral ones."

The book's essays are fascinating. I like to see how people plot the relationships between movies--historically, thematically, emotionally. One essay will discuss the history of the American road movie, while another will trace different images that pop up in many films noir, and another will analyze the genre of the musical in the context of presenting an image of joy, especially in dark times like the Great Depression or the World Wars. The emotional approach gets really interesting when a particular American silent movie's emotional tone is likened to a very similar tone in a Japanese drama made 70 years later. Of course, any given movie will cycle through many emotions and produce varied emotional responses in its viewers. They wouldn't be as rich as they are if this were not true.

I find this book a nice accompaniment to the list put out by the National Film Registry's list--a division of the Library of Congress whose criteria are three of the ones I mentioned above (culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant), along with the requirement that the movie was American-made. I'll have more to say about the National Film Registry another time, but I will say that its goal, to me, seems to be naming and ensuring the preservation of American "documents" or "texts" that happen to be in the format of film. So, you not only have Hollywood feature films, but animated shorts, documentaries about race relations, specific geographical regions, or cultural segments (like Frederick Wiseman's 1968 documentary High School, which presents a "fly-on-the-wall" view of a typical day at a Philadelphia high school). If you read over the year-end report published by the Library of Congress detailing the 25 new films that were added to the registry that year, you will see the range of types of film chosen to represent America.

I have more to say about these different ways of valuing movies, as other "lists" come to mind, like the Academy Award Best Pictures and the AFI Institute lists.

(J)

knowledge & war

"A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.  Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it will live to regret his steps."

From The Teaching of Don Juan, A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda.

(H)

The body and its potentials

Re: our discussion about the possibilities of the body, and the role that one's culture/society plays in defining certain limitations for the body, emphasizing certain potentials and not recognizing other potentials. One culture, and even one historical period, may recognize cosmetic surgery as a potential for the body, another may recognize the ability to walk on hot coals, another may recognize the self-infliction of pain as a path to spiritual understanding. Charles Tart has some things to say about this in the context of assumptions. 


I was thinking about the particular role psychedelic plants and compounds have played in modern American culture, mainly during the twentieth century, in this context. What ethnopharmacologists, anthropologists, and other researchers have found is that most cultures in the world outside of the modern West have some recognition of certain plants as "teachers," to be treated with the same respect and humility one would accord a wise man, a shaman, or a guru. This is a possibility that is recognized in those cultures, the idea that a student-teacher relationship can be conducted with a particular plant. But our culture for the most part does not have much experience cultivating this potential. There have been traditions, both in Europe and America, that emphasized the healing or instructive powers of nature, like the Romantics and the Transcendentalists. And there has certainly been a history of ingesting certain plants/plant products for artistic inspiration (cannabis, opium, etc.), recreation (alcohol), or even for increased production, especially in the post-industrial age (coffee). Of course there are other relationships and dimensions with these drugs, these are just a few.


But the plant as teacher, ingested teacher, particularly for the purposes of spiritual or religious understanding, is not as common in our culture. So it seems like a good idea to turn to these other cultures, who have been cultivating this particular relationship for a long time--creating ritual settings, educating the members of the culture as to the safe, beneficial use of the plant(s)--to learn from them. It's another example of the fact that different assumptions lead to different conclusions: what is the end result of assuming that if I ingest a particular plant, I can learn certain things, that I can follow a specific path with this specific relationship? Like I mentioned, it never occurred to me, before I was exposed to certain ideas from India, "how can I train my own body to control the 'involuntary' aspects of my breathing?" Similarly, I never assumed, as a child, that a plant could be a teacher--not just on the level of communing with nature, but by actually introducing a substance into my body. 

And on the topic of the body and its potentials, I see some similarities between certain drugs, like the psychedelics, and sex: easy to misuse or abuse, potentially dangerous, managed/regulated/controlled in different ways in different parts of the world, but also potential teachers and sources of profundity. Both also have a multifaceted relationship with different religious systems and approaches to spirituality, ranging from outright damnation to complete abstinence to consecrated ritual use.


Some resources I have found helpful:


Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within (documentary, 2011)


DMT: The Spirit Molecule (documentary, 2010)--the YouTube channel for the documentary has full interviews with several interesting people in this field


Council on Spiritual Practices' section on entheogens

This book


Dale Pendell's three books, particularly Pharmako/gnosis

Alan Watts' Joyous Cosmology


(J)

Prologue and Requisites

H (3/7/12) sends the Prologue and Requisites from Julián Marías' Reason and Life: The Introduction to Philosophy. 


---


J (3/20/12) responds to this paragraph in particular:


"The Greek verb from which the noun "problem" is derived means to throw or cast forward. Problem means in the first place something jutting out, for example a promontory: more concretely, an obstacle, something that I find before me; and by metaphorical extension, what we usually call an "intellectual problem." But let it be noted that in order that something should be an obstacle to me, it is not enough that it should be there in front of me: I have the wall in front of me too, and does not serve as an obstacle to me, but as a shelter--another sense which the Greek word also possesses; its presence in front of me is not sufficient for it to be converted into an obstacle: it is necessary that I should need to pass to the other side of it, precisely by going through it; then it is a real obstacle, in the concrete form of what the Greeks called aporia, that is, lack of any pore or hole through which to escape from a situation."


J: Still reading it, so dense! But I can say a few things right now.

I appreciate the likelihood that I may never read the actual book, but that the introduction has shown me several interesting ways of thinking about the process of thinking, philosophizing, and problem-solving. As he points out, the historical situation is central to the relevance of a particular philosophy, and part of the reason why I feel like I may not read the actual book, at least following my current patterns, is its historical situation in 1950s America, one that I don't connect with as much. But he himself recognizes that, and so he at times discusses matters that are less entwined with his own historical situation, like the discussion of what a "problem" is, including the Greek origins of the word. That was my favorite part so far (I'm about halfway done). His pointing out that something--a situation, a concept, an attitude--is only a problem if it is perceived as an obstacle. And "obstacle" implies movement, the process of going somewhere, and the thing that is preventing one from getting to where one is going. Like when he mentions a wall--a wall can be either an obstacle or a shelter, depending on one's goals and where one wants to go. I love this because it reveals to me a bit why different people get passionately involved in vastly different theories, concepts, ideas. It seems that it is partly a matter of where they are going, or where they believe they are going. For one person a particular religious belief may take the form of a shelter, and the person may passionately guard this shelter from any outside attack, from entertaining any possibility of their belief being wrong or false, just as one would want to protect one's physical home from attack. But for someone else, who is also religious but takes shelter in otherbeliefs, this same religious belief may prove to be an obstacle for them--an obstacle in their journey for truth, or peace, or happiness. So they may seek to debunk or dismantle the other person's belief, because for them it is not necessary, and appears to be impeding a religious understanding that they believe they are heading towards. Does that make sense? It's like what you told me about that older woman whom you spoke with. Was it Gwen's grandmother? The woman's face when you felt like you shattered, or at least tampered with, one of her cherished beliefs. Sort of like that. 

Or I think of it in terms of relationships. In a monogamous, romantic relationship if one person wants to go out and experience romance with other people, they may perceive the relationship's boundaries, its walls, as obstacles to be overcome or solved, whereas the other partner may perceive those boundaries as their shelter, taking comfort in the exclusivity of the monogamy. The first person will experience the conflict of facing an obstacle, while the second will experience the comfort of resting in a shelter. Of course, it is usually more complex than that, but you know what I'm saying.

Anyway, that discussion of obstacle vs. shelter has proven to be most fertile for me.

---

H (3/21/12): Wow.  Can I pass this along to Peter?  You've got some great thoughts here.  I mean, you're talking about what defines the very nature of conflict (vs oneself, vs others).  There is a subtle motif below the larger issue of obstacle vs shelter which also interests me a lot: the manifestation of ideas, and their physicality.  It's interesting to think that an IDEA can become a wall.  It's as if the make up of a thought straddles metaphysical and physical composition.  

There's a lot more I want to think about before continuing along this line of thought.

Dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est Deus

H (4/19/12): (from pp. 145-6 of Julián Marías' History of Philosophy)


[THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. In his Monologium, St. Anselm gives various proofs of the existence of God, but the most important proof is the one he expounds in the Proslogium, and which, since the time of Kant, has generally been referred to as the ontological argument. This proof of the existence of God has had enormous repercussions in the entire history of philosophy. Even during St. Anselm's lifetime a monk named Gaunilo attacked the proof, and St. Anselm himself replied to Gaunilo's objections. Later on, opinion was divided and interpretations of the argument differed. St. Bonaventure took a position close to that of St. Anselm; St. Thomas rejected the proof; Duns Scotus accepted it with alterations; then Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, established its impossibility in an apparently definitive way. Yet Hegel afterward restated the proof in different terms, and still later, in the nineteenth century, it was studied in depth by Brentano and especially by Father Gratry. Up to the present day the ontological argument is a central theme of philosophy, because it involved not only mere logical argumentation, but also a question that concerns all of metaphysics. This is the reason for the singular renown of St. Anselm's proof.


We cannot here enter into details of the interpretation of the argument. It will be sufficient to indicate briefly its essential meaning. St. Anselm's point of departure is God, a hidden God who does not manifest Himself to man in his fallen state. This is a religious point of departure: the faith of man, who was made in order to see God but has not seen Him. This faith seeks to understand, to practice theology: it is a fides quarens intellectum. But there does not yet appear the necessity or the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God. St. Anselm cites the thirteenth psalm: Dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est Deus (The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God).This denial calls the existence of God into question for the first time and gives St. Anselm's proof a meaning it lacks without the fool's statement. St. Anselm formulates his famous proof in these terms: When the fool says that there is no God, he understands what he is saying. If we say that God is that entity such that no greater entity can be imagined, the fool will understand this as well. Therefore, God is in his understanding: what he denies is that God is also in re, that is, that He really exists. But if God exists only in the imagination we are able to imagine that He could also exist in reality, and this conception of Him is greater than the earlier one. Therefore, we are able to imagine something greater than God if He does not exist. But this contradicts our premise that God is such that nothing greater than He can be imagined. Then God, who exists in the understanding, must also exist in reality. That is, if He exists only in the understanding, He does not fulfill the necessary condition; therefore, it would not be God of whom we were speaking.


As a matter of fact, St. Anselm's proof shows that the existence of God cannot be denied. It consists of confronting the fool's denial with the meaning of what he is saying. The fool does not understand the full implication of what he is saying, and for this very reason he is a fool. He is not thinking of God, and his denial is an error. His folly consists of this: he does not know what he is saying. If, instead, we imagine God as fully as possible, we see that it is impossible that He should not exist. Therefore, St. Anselm confronts folly with the doctrine of intimacy, the return to oneself, following the example of St. Augustine. When man enters within himself and finds himself, he also finds God, in whose image and likeness he is made. Thus the ontological argument is an appeal to the sense of intimacy, to the depths of the personality, and is based concretely on the refutation of the fool.


This meeting with God in the intimacy of the mind opens a clear path to St. Anselm's speculation. This is the course that medieval thought will follow in the subsequent period.]


---


J (4/20/12): I'll definitely be chewing this for a good while, but initial thoughts:


Marias wisely points out the importance of the doctrine of "faith seeking understanding," which seems to me an attitude preferable to its opposite, understanding seeking faith. In other words, faith seeking understanding seems to create more "room" for the rational faculty, following on the assumption that a particular human rational faculty does not know all, and cannot fully grasp God. If it did know all, then there would be no reason to seek any further knowledge, and thus all doors would be (apparently) closed. But if the faith that God really exists is taken as the primary motivation, and the desire to understand this, to apprehend it with reason, proceeds from this primary motivation, it seems to give reason much more room. It is like the difference between someone standing on a beach and having faith that there is another land beyond the horizon, assuming that he doesn't know all that is out there, and someone else assuming that he does know all that is out there, and refuses to get in a boat and find out for himself. It may turn that there is no other land, but the man who gets in the boat will know for sure. His faith will have sought understanding.


Anselm's ontological argument, then, is one attempt at apprehending the existence of God with reason. I think that ultimately God cannot be apprehended with reason, but this is the God that also cannot be labeled with any term, even "God." This is sometimes distinguished as the difference between God and the Godhead--Godhead cannot be apprehended by reason, for reason proceeds by categories, and no category can contain the Godhead. God can be represented by any number of logical proofs, or images, or even emotions, but the Godhead is beyond all of these.


Also, I am intrigued by what Marias calls "the doctrine of intimacy." He indicates that the fool's stance closes the door to the intimate knowledge of God. Because the fool is so confident in his estimation that God does not exist, he sees no reason to pursue the inquiry any further, and thus will not descend to the "depths of the personality," there to find God. But because faith in God's existence is Anselm's premise, supported by its rational counterpart in the form of the ontological argument, one who adopts Anselm's position feels free to pursue the intimate path to God. It is important that faith is still fundamental for Anselm, and that the rational proof is almost like a bonus. This is the sense of faith seeking understanding; understanding is perceived as something continuously attained, which is only possible when proceeded to from the foundation of faith. I think this attitude is characteristic of the Middle Ages, and would become reversed with the rise of the scientific method around 1600.


But I don't think the fool is necessarily condemned, or "wrong." What will he do if he does not pursue Anselm's intimate path, if he closes the door to the possibility of God's existence in reality? When one door closes, another can open; perhaps he will end up on another path, and find God in another way. Surely there is not one path to God; Anselm's is only one of infinitely many. And if we consider other ways of defining God other than Anselm's "that which there is none greater," we can see the situation in a new way. As I said earlier, I think that ultimately, and perhaps Anselm would agree, that God (the Godhead) cannot be defined, even as that which there is none greater.  Eckhart would agree with this. He could also be that which there is none smaller. "Small" and "great" imply size, but the Godhead is sizeless. So we can use epithets like that which there is none greater, or the All, or the One, or the Ground of everything, while recognizing that these are just concepts that don't even begin to scratch the surface of the true nature of God/Godhead.


So what if we define God as present in his entirety in every "entity" in the universe--every atom, every emotion, every thought, every image, every everything? According to this view, the fool's denial of God's existence is itself an expression of God. And if we return to the image of the doors, the fool may have one door closed, one which Anselm leaves open, but this may lead him to another door, which can itself lead right back to God. This is the same sentiment as saying that the saint is nowhere nearer to God than is the murderer.


All this is to say that, while acknowledging the subtlety of Anselm's attempt to apprehend God with reason, and it is the best logical argument I have come across, the very nature of God is so far beyond reason that it is laughable. Augustine expressed something similar:


"I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. An existence they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art. For only that really is that remains unchangeably. . . . Thou, Lord, madest them, who art beautiful, for they are beautiful; who art good, for they are good; who art, for they are. Yet they are not beautiful, nor good, nor are they, as Thou their Creator art--compared with whom, they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are." (quoted in Alan Watts' Supreme Identity)


The seeming contradictions of this passage indicate the extremely paltry status of reason, even in its highest human expression, to the Godhead. It is as if the level of reasoning that Anselm, Aquinas, and co. are operating seems to be the summit of Mt. Everest; but from the Godhead's point of view, they are simply standing atop a mole hill.


---


J (4/20/12): Re-reading, and clarifying one thing: when I say that the saint is nowhere nearer to God than is the murderer, this is to be understood in a certain sense, and not as an appraisal of human morality. It is meant to indicate the presence of God "within" every entity in the universe, whether it is a human or a leaf, in the sense of Eckhart's "God is nearer to you than you are to yourself." And it is also meant to indicate what is hinted it in the Augustine passage--from the point of view of the Godhead, who is infinite, all of finite creation appears as equal manifestations of his infinity. A commonly used diagram is the circle--the center is the Godhead, and every point along the circumference is everything in the universe. From this viewpoint, the saint and the murderer, a rock and a galaxy, are equal in the eyes of the Godhead. Human morality is another story.

Charles Tart, 1976 lecture, "The Assumptions of Western Psychology"

(J)

Two lines from Raymond Chandler

Two lines from Raymond Chandler's novels:


"There's nothing as empty as an empty swimming pool."


A description of an old man's thinning hair, clinging to his scalp "like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock."


--from Richard Schickel's Double Indemnity, a study of the film (for which Chandler co-wrote the screenplay)


(J)