Ladder, climber, view & transitional structures - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-29T01:22:39Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/ladder-climber-view?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A1593&feed=yes&xn_auth=noAlthough I did appreciate Wil…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-05:5301756:Comment:423822012-07-05T01:38:04.322ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Although I did appreciate Wilber from <em>Integral Spirituality</em> when he said:</p>
<p>"'Without a conceptual framework, meditative experiences would be totally incomprehensible. What we experience in meditation has to be properly interpreted, and its significance—or lack thereof—has to be understood. This interpretative act requires appropriate conceptual categories and the correct use of those categories'.... Notice that 'cognition' is actually derived from the root gni (co-gni-tion),…</p>
<p>Although I did appreciate Wilber from <em>Integral Spirituality</em> when he said:</p>
<p>"'Without a conceptual framework, meditative experiences would be totally incomprehensible. What we experience in meditation has to be properly interpreted, and its significance—or lack thereof—has to be understood. This interpretative act requires appropriate conceptual categories and the correct use of those categories'.... Notice that 'cognition' is actually derived from the root gni (co-gni-tion), and this gni is the same as gno, which is the same root as gno-sis, or gnosis. Thus, cognition is really co-gnosis, or that which is the co-element of gnosis and nondual awareness....in Sanskrit, this gno appears as jna, which we find in both prajna and jnana. Prajna is supreme discriminating awareness necessary for full awakening of gnosis (pra-jna = pro-gnosis), and jnana is pure gnosis itself. Once again, cognition as co-gnosis is the root of the development that is necessary for the full awakening of gnosis, of jnana, of nondual liberating awareness" (112-13).</p>
<p>The first part was quoting Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche (a Kagyu tulku) from <em>Mind at Ease</em> (Shambhala 2003). Another part of the quote is this: "Meditative experiences are in fact impossible without the use of conceptual formulations" (112). Wilber adds on the same page: "Meditative experience per se--that simply does not exist."</p> This thread might also shed l…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:423812012-07-04T22:40:37.443ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p><a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/what-is-the-differance" target="_self">This thread</a> might also shed light on how I see the difference between <em>differance</em> (as khora) and the causal realm per Wilber (and his Vajrayana sources).</p>
<p><a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/what-is-the-differance" target="_self">This thread</a> might also shed light on how I see the difference between <em>differance</em> (as khora) and the causal realm per Wilber (and his Vajrayana sources).</p> Fair enough. "If you're not…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:422872012-07-04T20:13:55.898ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>Fair enough. "<em>If you're not shocked by emptiness then you haven't understood</em>" is a diamond that cuts in many interesting directions. Cheers.</p>
<p>Fair enough. "<em>If you're not shocked by emptiness then you haven't understood</em>" is a diamond that cuts in many interesting directions. Cheers.</p> I hear you. And I've heard th…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:420742012-07-04T19:09:25.011ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>I hear you. And I've heard these and many other arguments about emptiness and the nondual from the various Buddhist traditions. I explored them in the <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/stephen-batchelor" target="_self">Batchelor thread</a>, as well as its Gaia predecessor "letting daylight into magic" (linked in the former). I have nothing new to add at this point.</p>
<p>I hear you. And I've heard these and many other arguments about emptiness and the nondual from the various Buddhist traditions. I explored them in the <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/stephen-batchelor" target="_self">Batchelor thread</a>, as well as its Gaia predecessor "letting daylight into magic" (linked in the former). I have nothing new to add at this point.</p> X is too square a number for…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:422862012-07-04T18:23:53.201ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>X is too square a number for play. IX is too precise! XI is extravagant enough to appear as either praise, profundity or paradox.</p>
<p>So I am definitely being facetious -- but only if facetiousness is fastidiously understood as a form of love. I am trying to make creative pleasure into the basis of my communications using whatever elements strike my fancy and tickle my own nostalgias. Perhaps the three-finger air-quotes of tri-rony are more accurate than "facetious". The most…</p>
<p>X is too square a number for play. IX is too precise! XI is extravagant enough to appear as either praise, profundity or paradox.</p>
<p>So I am definitely being facetious -- but only if facetiousness is fastidiously understood as a form of love. I am trying to make creative pleasure into the basis of my communications using whatever elements strike my fancy and tickle my own nostalgias. Perhaps the three-finger air-quotes of tri-rony are more accurate than "facetious". The most appropriate word, from my point of view, is whichever term describes the simple-minded pleasure of singing-spelling <em>Ipsissimus</em> as if it were <em>Mississippi</em>. </p>
<p>Now, I personally find the idea that the "excluded middle" can be excluded or included in various philosophical positions to be extremely dubious. This spatial metaphor does not empower or limit reasoning.</p>
<p>There is a point in comprehension where possibilities become maximally constrained, epistemology turns into de facto ontology and concepts acquire autological (super-tautological?) intensity. Such limits are irresistible in the moment of their enactment (Descartes' claim) regardless of the fact that we can speculate about them from other perspectives. These conditions are, as far as I'm concerning, the quasi-Kantian presencing in thought of the pre-conditions of knowing. An optimal fidelity is reached that functions as absolute truth. And since "boundary" is only another spatial metaphor for this process it doesn't do me much good to wonder whether this boundary might be permeable or vague. </p>
<p>That which our alternatives cannot do without is functionally eternal. So I am quite content with the simple dichotomy (non-dualism appearing implicitly as the dual) implied in the idea that distinguishing the Relative from the Absolute requires something Absolute and detecting the Time-Bound as opposed to the Timeless requires something Timeless. This is all "on the inside".</p>
<p>(Though "on" is perhaps misleading... or maybe quaint.)</p>
<p>Given the above remarks it will come as no surprise that I do not accept that the "emptiness of emptiness" doctrine is an ultimate claim which is nonetheless entirely relative and constructed, remaining empty of an absolute, inherent existence". I have several points of complaint against such a claim (which is very interestingly picked through in the linked thread you provide). </p>
<p>First, in general, I think it is a complete misreading of Nagarjuna (Lord White Snake?) to do -- as generations of Buddhist and Western academics have done -- understand him as making claims about the nature of reality. I view him as a meditation-radical who pioneers the functional aesthetic of the Zen koan by attempting to pervert all speech to produce the critical "encounter" with the non-dual (what I call the <em>indiscernible element within difference</em>). Emptiness is a poor traditional translation. I suggest that something analogous to virtual indiscernibility is more accurate.</p>
<p>Second, and I am a cheerful simpleton here (perhaps an "imbecile" in the Zizekian sense), for me emptiness of emptiness is fullness. Nihilism at the level of intellectual cognition is the tendency to treat absences as presences. The side-effect is that many subtle and profound doctrines of "something" are treated ambivalently as if they might as well be doctrines of "not-something". For this is disingenuous in the same way that it is disingenuous to postulate the inherently empty nature of the All and then pretend to step aside as if oneself and the postulate were inherently empty -- rather than being "as real as real is". So I revert to the obvious complaint that one is either an absolutist honestly or dishonestly (a relativist). </p>
<p>Thus true causal structures, including the causal junctions which constitute our apparent access to the non-dual, have the real "otherness" of Platonic forms, of computational pattern possibilties -- which are, as in Stephen Wolfram's work, both eternally available and eternally emergent-unpredictable beyond the threshold that he terms Computational Equivalence.</p>
<p><br/>Ah -- I have transgressed my own threshold for too-much-shit-in-one-message! Apologies. </p>
<p></p> More of my dialog with Andy f…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:423772012-07-04T17:36:55.780ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>More of my dialog with Andy from the above referenced IPE thread:</p>
<p>Andy: <span id="bc_0_6b+seedDfCtD">Oh, I don't disagree that we should require more. I was just observing that the majority in the U.S. do not seem to be at that point yet. I was surprised to learn that a poll found almost 70% against Obama Care. I understand that a lot of people who have coverage now through their employer are afraid they will lose it (which indeed they may), and that what replaces it will neither be…</span></p>
<p>More of my dialog with Andy from the above referenced IPE thread:</p>
<p>Andy: <span id="bc_0_6b+seedDfCtD">Oh, I don't disagree that we should require more. I was just observing that the majority in the U.S. do not seem to be at that point yet. I was surprised to learn that a poll found almost 70% against Obama Care. I understand that a lot of people who have coverage now through their employer are afraid they will lose it (which indeed they may), and that what replaces it will neither be as cheap or as comprehensive. Even so, I'm a little shocked that so many people are willing to consign a large minority to no guaranteed health care.</span></p>
<p>theurj: That's because they're being fed lies about it from the well-funded conservative spin machine, since money now equals speech. And they're spending HUGE amounts of money on this ad campaign. Interestingly, when people are polled on the individual aspects of the Bill, like not refusal for pre-existing conditions, they overwhelmingly support it.</p>
<p>But one of my broader points is that we must hold all people accountable to higher standards (moral, legal or otherwise) than their current center of gravity. Democracy itself is one of those higher standards, which of course has yet to enter into BUSINESS (for the most part; there are successful, competitive co-ops etc.).</p>
<p>I'd also agree that the distinct dividing line between transitional and enduring structures seems strained. And yet per the above examples when we require of ourselves a higher value system like democracy it is not consistent to say that this can also include aristocracy or slavery. Granted democracy as it stands indeed has various components of such in one form or another, but actually owning people as property is no longer acceptable. And as I said, democracy has yet to enter the business world, where people are functionally chattel owned by the company. In co-ops though they are not, and the latter is indeed a higher developmental form than corporate business.</p> As I wrote in the chorus of a…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:423762012-07-04T17:22:29.480ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>As I wrote in the chorus of a song, years before I was a neophyte, called <em>The Three Veils</em>:</p>
<p>That's right, that's right, nothing<br/> And not just nothing, but no nothing<br/> And not no nothing neither.</p>
<p></p>
<p>As I wrote in the chorus of a song, years before I was a neophyte, called <em>The Three Veils</em>:</p>
<p>That's right, that's right, nothing<br/> And not just nothing, but no nothing<br/> And not no nothing neither.</p>
<p></p> As to your reference of me be…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:423752012-07-04T16:55:51.399ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>As to your reference of me being a frater of the XI degree, I'm not sure if you're being facetious here. Regardless, there is some accuracy to that assignation. In the GD 0 = 0 is the Neophyte, with each successive degree indicating to which Sephira the degree is assigned. E.g., 1 = 10 is the first degree assigned to the 10th Sephira. The apparently highest degree is 10 = 1, assigned to Kether. And yet there is indeed an 11th degree, when one steps off the sephiroth into the 3 veils of…</p>
<p>As to your reference of me being a frater of the XI degree, I'm not sure if you're being facetious here. Regardless, there is some accuracy to that assignation. In the GD 0 = 0 is the Neophyte, with each successive degree indicating to which Sephira the degree is assigned. E.g., 1 = 10 is the first degree assigned to the 10th Sephira. The apparently highest degree is 10 = 1, assigned to Kether. And yet there is indeed an 11th degree, when one steps off the sephiroth into the 3 veils of negative existence from which the created world depend. It is like a rebirth in the 0 = 0 degree, but after one has traversed all the paths and sephiroth. Sort of like the 10 ox herding pictures, where after the path one again enters the common marketplace. And again, like the emptiness of emptiness (non)doctrine, or like our friend <em>differance</em>, the transcendental condition of all opposition. In whatever spirit the XI degree was offered I'll take it with honor in light of the foregoing.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the values assigned to the three veils are 0, with three of them being OOO. Hence my current fascination with finding a homeomorphic equivalence with object-oriented ontology.</p> Also see this section on the…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:423742012-07-04T16:35:38.655ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Also see <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/b-madhya/#H3" target="_blank">this section</a> on the IEP entry for Madhyamaka, which I used in the Gaia thread.</p>
<p>Also see <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/b-madhya/#H3" target="_blank">this section</a> on the IEP entry for Madhyamaka, which I used in the Gaia thread.</p> There is only a performative…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2012-07-04:5301756:Comment:421812012-07-04T16:12:54.199ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>There is only a performative contradiction if viewed from a formal operational perspective, which cannot handle the <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/object-oriented-ontology?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A41233" target="_self">excluded middle</a>. Ironically such a perspective itself presupposes an idealistic, rational 'outside' from which to launch such a charge. And as you say, "everything is on the inside."</p>
<p>I'm reminded on the emptiness of emptiness…</p>
<p>There is only a performative contradiction if viewed from a formal operational perspective, which cannot handle the <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/object-oriented-ontology?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A41233" target="_self">excluded middle</a>. Ironically such a perspective itself presupposes an idealistic, rational 'outside' from which to launch such a charge. And as you say, "everything is on the inside."</p>
<p>I'm reminded on the emptiness of emptiness doctrine, which states that no suobject has an inherent existence (emptiness) and that all suobjects are dependently originated (also emptiness). This is an ultimate claim as to the nature of existence, which is entirely relative and constructed. And yet the claim itself is empty of an absolute, inherent existence. See <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/francisco-varela?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A7805" target="_self">this prior post</a> and the one following, as well as <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3ket5n91z-5NjRkZTRmZWMtNTY2OS00ODNkLTkwYmMtZWQ2ZWFmZTZiM2Jh/edit?pli=1" target="_blank">an entire thread</a> I devoted to the topic in our old Gaia forum when Nagarjuna was faced with this same charge by the Nyaya.</p>