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Between Science and Spirituality
The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

Posted on 12/07/2002 9:46:51 AM PST by beckett

Between Science and Spirituality

By JOHN HORGAN

Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?

There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness is an intrinsic part of reality. Similarly, quantum nonlocality, which Einstein disparaged as "spooky action at a distance," clinches mystics' perception of the interrelatedness, or unity, of all things. I see a different point of convergence between science and mysticism: Each in its own way reveals the miraculousness of our existence.

The more science learns about the origin and history of the cosmos and of life on earth and of Homo sapiens, the more it reveals how staggeringly improbable we are. First there is the fact of existence itself. The big-bang theory represents a profound insight into the history and structure of the cosmos, but it cannot tell us why creation occurred in the first place. Particle physics suggests that empty space is seething with virtual particles, which spring into existence for an instant before vanishing. In the same way, some physicists speculate, the entire universe might have begun as a kind of virtual particle. Honest physicists will admit that they have no idea why there is something rather than nothing. After all, what produced the quantum forces that supposedly made creation possible? "No one is certain what happened before the Big Bang, or even if the question has any meaning," Steven Weinberg, the physicist and Nobel laureate, wrote recently.

Next questions: Why does the universe look this way rather than some other way? Why does it adhere to these laws of nature rather than to some other laws? Altering any of the universe's fundamental parameters would have radically altered reality. For example, if the cosmos had been slightly more dense at its inception, it would have quickly collapsed into a black hole.

A smidgen less dense, and it would have flown apart so fast that there would have been no chance for stars, galaxies, and planets to form. Cosmologists sometimes call this the fine-tuning problem, or, more colorfully, the Goldilocks dilemma: How did the density of the universe turn out not too high, not too low, but just right?

The odds that matter would have precisely its observed density, the physicist Lawrence Krauss has calculated, are as great as the odds of guessing precisely how many atoms there are in the sun. Some physicists are so troubled by the arbitrariness of the cosmos that they espouse a quasi-theological concept known as the anthropic principle. According to this notion, the universe must have the structure we observe, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it. The anthropic principle is cosmology's version of creationism.

The next improbability is life. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once declared that life "is a mystery no longer," because Darwin solved it with his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet life is as mysterious as ever, in spite of all the insights provided by evolutionary theory and more-recent biological paradigms, such as genetics and molecular biology. Neither Darwinism nor any other scientific theory tells us why life appeared on earth in the first place, or whether it was probable or a once-in-eternity fluke.

Many scientists have argued that life must be a ubiquitous phenomenon that pervades the universe, but they can offer precious little empirical evidence to support that assertion. After decades of searching, astronomers have found no signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos; a 1996 report of fossilized microbes in a meteorite from Mars turned out to be erroneous. Researchers still cannot make matter animate in the laboratory, even with all the tools of biotechnology. In fact, the more scientists ponder life's origin, the harder it is to imagine how it occurred. Francis Crick once stated that "the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going." In his book Life Itself, Crick offered the speculation that the seeds of life might have been planted on earth by an alien civilization.

Once life on earth started evolving, many scientists have contended, it was only a matter of time before natural selection produced a species as intelligent as Homo sapiens. But for more than 80 percent of life's 3.5-billion-year history, the earth's biota consisted entirely of single-celled organisms, like bacteria and algae. So not even the simplest multicellular organisms were inevitable. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has estimated that if the great experiment of life were rerun a million times over, chances are that it would never again give rise to mammals, let alone mammals intelligent enough to invent negative theology and television. Similar reasoning led the eminent evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr to conclude that the SETI program -- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which scans the heavens for radio signals from other civilizations -- is futile.

Multiply all of these improbabilities and they spike to infinity. As the psychologist Susan Blackmore has pointed out, we are bad at judging probabilities, hence prone to make too much of chance events; that is why we believe in ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and other miracles. I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.

Scientists may go much further in plumbing nature's secrets. They may decipher the neural code, the secret language of the brain. They may arrive at a plausible explanation of how life emerged on earth, and they may discover life elsewhere in the cosmos. They may find and verify a unified theory of physics, which will provide a more precise picture of the origin and history of the universe. Although there are good reasons for doubting the likelihood of such scientific advances, they cannot be ruled out. What can be ruled out is that science will answer the ultimate question: How did something come from nothing? Neither superstring theory nor any other of science's so-called theories of everything can resolve that mystery, any more than our supernatural theologies can.

Although we can never solve the riddle of existence, we can never stop trying. We must keep reimagining our relationship to the infinite. Skepticism alone --- and the cold, hard facts of science --- cannot serve as the basis for spirituality. Blackmore, a practicing Zen Buddhist, helped me reach that conclusion. She described Zen as a kind of rubbish-removal system that cleanses the mind of extraneous beliefs and emotions so that we can see reality as it truly is.

I found Blackmore's garbage metaphor appealing at first, because it provided a handy criterion for judging theories and theologies. The worst ones, I decided, distract us from the reality right in front of us by postulating parallel dimensions and universes, heavens and hells, gods and ghosts and demiurges and extraterrestrials. Too much garbage! Viewed this way, skepticism appears to be the ideal spiritual perspective. Skepticism clears away cumbersome beliefs on an intellectual level, just as meditation (ideally) clears away beliefs, emotions, and thoughts on a more experiential level. Skepticism can help us achieve mystical deautomatization, or so I wanted to believe.

My handling of real rather than metaphorical garbage gradually gave me a more complicated view of the matter. In my kitchen, we put garbage in bags that come in boxes of 20. After I yank the last bag from a box, the box itself becomes trash, which I put into the bag. Sometime after I interviewed Blackmore, every time I pulled the last bag from the box and stuffed the box in the bag, I intuited a paradox lurking within this ritual.

I went through more garbage bags than I care to mention before I solved the riddle: Every garbage-removal system generates garbage. Zen apparently works as an efficient garbage-removal system for Susan Blackmore. But as minimalistic as it is, Zen clutters more than it clarifies my mind. Once I started down this line of thinking, it was hard to stop. I began looking askance at skepticism, too. Maybe skepticism, instead of cleansing our vision, just substitutes one type of trash for another. Instead of belief in reincarnation, angels, ESP, extraterrestrials, parallel universes, and the Oedipus complex, the skeptic crams his mind with disbelief in reincarnation, angels, and so on.

The problem is that any truth or antitruth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turns into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should "throw away" after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?

At a scholarly meeting on mysticism I attended in Chicago, one speaker warned that if we can't talk about mysticism, we can't whistle about it, either. In other words, all our modes of expression, including art, fall short of mystical truth. But unlike more-literal modes of expression, art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions. That does not mean mystical insights cannot be expressed within other modes of knowledge, like science, philosophy, theology -- and, of course, journalism. But we should view even the most fact-laden mystical texts ironically when they turn to ultimate questions. Some mystical writers, notably the psychedelic raconteur Terence McKenna, supply their own irony, but we readers can supply it even if the author intended none. We can read the Upanishads, Genesis, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the neurotheological suppositions of Andrew Newberg just as we read Blake or Borges or Emily Dickinson.

Viewed ironically, even the most fantastical ghost stories, including the old stories of religion, can serve a purpose. Whether they postulate superintelligent clouds of gas, insectoid aliens in hyperspace, a demiurge with multiple-personality disorder, or a loving God who for inscrutable reasons makes us suffer, well-told ghost stories can remind us of the unfathomable mystery at the heart of things. Our creation myths and eschatologies, our imaginings of ultimate beginnings and ends, can also help us discover our deepest fears and desires. But even the most sophisticated theologies and theories should never be mistaken for ultimate truth. What Voltaire said centuries ago still holds, and will always hold: "It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God defined the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

ther than art, is there any method particularly suited to evoking mystical awe without the side effects that so often attend it? In Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, first published in 1979, Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar suggested that the chief benefit of psychedelics is "enriching the wonder of normality" -- that is, enhancing our appreciation of ordinary consciousness and ordinary life. That is the spiritual value cited most often by advocates of psychedelics. But those compounds can have the opposite effect. This world may seem drab in comparison to the bizarre virtual realms into which LSD or DMT propel us. Instead of opening our eyes to the miraculousness of everyday reality and consciousness, psychedelics can blind us.

All mystical technologies that induce powerful altered states pose this risk. One mystical expert who has reached this conclusion is Jean Houston. A pioneer of the human-potential movement, she works as a kind of spiritual psychotherapist, usually for large groups rather than individuals. She seeks to rejuvenate her clients' psyches through dance, song, chanting, guided imagery, and role-playing, often with a mythological dimension. She and her husband, the anthropologist Robert Masters, proclaimed in 1966 that investigations of LSD and similar drugs could help human consciousness expand "beyond its present limitations and on towards capacities not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of."

Houston subsequently became quite critical of the via psychedelica. "l am by nature not pro-drug," she told me. Timothy Leary was one of the most charming people she had ever met -- and one of the most irresponsible. Too many people lured onto the psychedelic path by this Pied Piper suffered breakdowns and ended up in mental hospitals, Houston said. "If I were to take the American pragmatic tradition and say, 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' then I'd have to say I haven't seen too much evidence" that psychedelics promote a healthy spirituality. "Some might say it is a shortcut to reality. But the fact is, it doesn't seem to sustain that reality."

Houston's disillusionment with psychedelics led her to seek safer means of self-transcendence. In the early 1970s, she and Masters devised what they called the altered states of consciousness induction device, or ASCID. It consisted of a suspension harness in which blindfolded subjects could spin around in three dimensions. The contraption worked so well that Houston and Masters discontinued its use. "People would get addicted to it and even refuse to explore their inner states without first taking a ride," Houston recalled. The experience reinforced her suspicion that any spiritual practice or path -- particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it.

Anything that helps you see --- really see --- the wondrousness of the world serves a mystical purpose. According to Zen legend, when a visitor asked the 15th-century master Ikkyu to write down a maxim of "the highest wisdom," Ikkyu wrote one word: "Attention." Irritated, the visitor asked, "Is that all?" This time, Ikkyu wrote two words: "Attention. Attention." Fortunately, life itself is so wildly weird and improbable that sooner or later it is bound to get our attention. And if life doesn't grab our attention, death will. Whenever death intrudes upon our lives, we feel the chill of the deep space in which we are suspended.

Spiritual seekers have employed mementos mori, like a human skull, to keep themselves mindful of death. An extreme version of this technique, used in certain Buddhist sects, involves sitting next to or on top of a rotting corpse. It seems that this practice may merely desensitize you to death rather than sensitize you to life. Moreover, dwelling on death, the abyss, nothingness, may convince you that it is the only abiding reality, and that all finite, time-bound phenomena, including our mortal selves, are ephemeral and hence, in some sense, unreal. To be enlightened, Ken Wilber once wrote, is "to snap out of the movie of life." This is perhaps the greatest danger posed by mysticism -- that you will be left with a permanent case of derealization and depersonalization.

If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less. You will feel what Albert Hofmann -- the chemist who, in 1943, discovered the psychotropic properties of LSD -- felt after emerging from the psilocybin trip in which he had found himself all alone in a ghost town inside the earth. When he returned from this hellish solitude, back to the world and his dear friends, he felt "reborn," and he was overcome with gratitude and joy at the "wonderful life we have here."

This is by far the greatest gift that mystical experiences can bestow on us: to see -- really see -- all that is right with the world. Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun. Never forget the problem of fun.

John Horgan writes about science. This article is adapted from his book Rational Mysticism: Dispatches From the Border Between Science and Spirituality, to be published in January by Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 2003 by John Horgan.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: cosmos; crevolist; johnhorgan; mysticism; scientificamerican
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To: betty boop
And I think it’s abundantly clear that they are things that exist, though they cannot be seen – that is they are real but non-physical.

I will that such things as pain, including "psychic" pain, are real, but I do not accept that they are non-physical. If they were non-physical they would not respond to chemicals.

I will grant that the pit of our ignorance on the subject appears bottomless, but that does not mean it has no bottom.

A small aside: I have a nephew with schizophrenia. It was first noticed when he was about 18. His father (my brother) is a psychiatrist.) He managed to get through college with high honors and was accepted into a graduate program with full scholarship. Then his life fell apart. He lost a number of part time jobs because he complained about things that his co-workers couldn't see. He aquired several guns and talked about suicide. He scared the heck out of everyone around because he hinted (in written notes he left lying around) that he would take others with him. He was hospitalized several times and had lots of counselling.

He has been stable for over a year now, has married, works part time as a children's tutor, can hold a conversation about many topics, and seems happy. The one big difference in his life is medication. He still gets counselling and needs it, but the medication has allowed him to manage his own affairs and live independently.

How can this be if the mind is not embodied in the brain?

361 posted on 01/23/2003 12:13:22 PM PST by js1138
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To: js1138; Alamo-Girl; VadeRetro; beckett; cornelis; Phaedrus
I will that such things as pain, including "psychic" pain, are real, but I do not accept that they are non-physical. If they were non-physical they would not respond to chemicals.... the medication has allowed him to manage his own affairs and live independently.... How can this be if the mind is not embodied in the brain?

Because, as Alamo-Girl has suggested, perhaps the brain no more "embodies" the mind than a radio transceiver "embodies" radio signals. Similarly, this may be a case of "play-through" rather than some kind of sui-generis "play-in."

If the radio transceiver is damaged, it won't "play right." But that has nothing to say about the quality of the radio signals per se. Perhaps if you fix the radio, then the signal can come through correctly.

362 posted on 01/23/2003 12:31:30 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
Because, as Alamo-Girl has suggested, perhaps the brain no more "embodies" the mind than a radio transceiver "embodies" radio signals. Similarly, this may be a case of "play-through" rather than some kind of sui-generis "play-in."

Do your thoughts change when you line your hat with tinfoil?

Of this I am convinced: someone or something really does try to alter our thoughts with radio waves. Sometimes I'm totally alone in the car and I hear voices. Usually, they tell me to go to stores and buy stuff.

363 posted on 01/23/2003 12:51:41 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
Ghost of Gore3000.
364 posted on 01/23/2003 1:09:08 PM PST by cornelis
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To: betty boop
Because, as Alamo-Girl has suggested, perhaps the brain no more "embodies" the mind than a radio transceiver "embodies" radio signals.

I can play this game too. I assert that material existence is outside space and time, has no beginning and no end, is co-extensive with God, embodies God and God's thoughts, and that we are, as it were, neurons in God's mind.

Prove me wrong.

365 posted on 01/23/2003 1:12:01 PM PST by js1138
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To: Alamo-Girl
I strongly suspect the brain acts like a transceiver for our non-temporal being, what we normally call consciousness. If the transceiver is damaged, it will not process signals correctly.

Every analogy is good to a point. If our consciousness deals with personal beings, we will need another analogy, at least to show how one person can be conscious of someone or something and another person not, without attributing it to damage.

366 posted on 01/23/2003 1:26:43 PM PST by cornelis
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To: VadeRetro
Do your thoughts change when you line your hat with tinfoil?... Of this I am convinced: someone or something really does try to alter our thoughts with radio waves. Sometimes I'm totally alone in the car and I hear voices. Usually, they tell me to go to stores and buy stuff.

Howdy, VR! :^) Do my thoughts change when I line my little jeanie-beanie with tinfoil? Why, I just don't know, VR. Haven't tried it! Maybe I should design an experimental test...but then, what value would that have really, since I'd be experimenting on myself?

Yes, I hear those "voices," too. But I gather I'm not terribly suggestible; for I absolutely loathe "shopping." Mostly I find most of what I hear and see carried on the public airwaves as just a bunch of irritating, aggravating noise, with very little signal filtering through.... And a whole lot of the signals that do get through are even worse than the noise.... Argghhhh!

Do you think the application of tinfoil would help me with this problem at all?

367 posted on 01/23/2003 1:28:12 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
A good set of CDs for the car beats tinfoil, IMHO.
368 posted on 01/23/2003 1:41:54 PM PST by VadeRetro (Changing them with one hand at highway speeds not recommended.)
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To: betty boop
Thank you so much for your post!

But it seems that this concept of pain -- as dependent on bodily causation -- will not be able to understand or explain what might be called psychic pain -- e.g., guilt, regret, the anguish of losing a loved one, anxiety, loneliness.... These kinds of pain are real, too, though they do not appear to have a bodily cause. But they are so real, in fact, that they can themselves be the causes of bodily effects.

I agree completely - and I understand that was the reason the author mentioned it (based on the first sentence of that paragraph.)

For the materialistic worldview he challenges, pain must have a bodily (biochemical/anatomical) cause, i.e. we must biochemically/anatomically choose to be in physic pain (grief, hurt feelings, regret, fear, etc.)

369 posted on 01/23/2003 1:45:13 PM PST by Alamo-Girl (Magnus frater spectat te...)
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To: cornelis
Ghost of Gore3000.

I'd smash any radio that got that monotonous.

370 posted on 01/23/2003 1:56:15 PM PST by VadeRetro (Paying to get in to Bedlam to gawk. "That's en-ter-TAIN-ment!")
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To: js1138; Alamo-Girl
I can play this game too. I assert that material existence is outside space and time, has no beginning and no end, is co-extensive with God, embodies God and God's thoughts, and that we are, as it were, neurons in God's mind.... Prove me wrong.

I wouldn't dream of "proving you wrong" with respect to this formulation. I would simply pat you on the head and say, there, there js1138, dear -- you're just having a bad dream. :^)

You might want to take this up, however, with the Irish Idealist philosopher, George Berkeley. He and John Locke got into a little epistemological dispute once upon a time, and Berkeley's counterargument looks pretty close to what you want "proved" here. Suffice it to say, Locke was wrong (QM proves this); and Berkeley -- well, no one knows whether he was "right" or "wrong," because it appears impossible to verify/falsify his argument, scientifically speaking.

I've been thinking about this "dispute" lately. Maybe I can flesh out some of the details and write back a little later?

371 posted on 01/23/2003 2:02:02 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
I'm not really belligerent. I just type that way.

;^)

372 posted on 01/23/2003 2:05:31 PM PST by js1138
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To: betty boop
Thank you so much for the heads up to your post at 362!

If the radio transceiver is damaged, it won't "play right." But that has nothing to say about the quality of the radio signals per se. Perhaps if you fix the radio, then the signal can come through correctly.

I absolutely agree with your statement. I would add that people have been astonished at documented cases where extensive knowledge had accrued despite an obviously malfunctioning brain. Though not conclusive, the phenomenon fits my contention that knowledge is assembled apart from the transceiver-brain, i.e. in a non-temporal consciousness.

373 posted on 01/23/2003 2:07:49 PM PST by Alamo-Girl (Magnus frater spectat te...)
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To: Alamo-Girl
I would add that people have been astonished at documented cases where extensive knowledge had accrued despite an obviously malfunctioning brain.

Define malfunctioning. I have two malfunctioning brains among my close relatives, not to mention my own.

I once took a class in teaching handicapped children. The teacher asked us to imaging things that would be difficult to a person who had no thumbs. After a dozen or so responses, a girl in the back said, "I don't have any thumbs, and I don't have any of those problems."

The brain isn't wired like a typical computer. It can bypass injuries, just as we overcome physical handicaps. There are studies that show that people who ar born blind, learn to use the "visual" parts of the brain to process language. This does not require a hypothesis of something non-physical.

374 posted on 01/23/2003 2:17:19 PM PST by js1138
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To: cornelis
Thank you so much for your post and your analysis!

If our consciousness deals with personal beings, we will need another analogy, at least to show how one person can be conscious of someone or something and another person not, without attributing it to damage.

Perhaps you can explain this in a bit more detail - because to me, the radio-wave/conscious does not require all information to be gathered from the transceiver/brain. Awareness, reasoning, imagining, etc. are self-contained. The conscious would however require a transceiver/brain to physically communicate.

375 posted on 01/23/2003 2:22:54 PM PST by Alamo-Girl (Magnus frater spectat te...)
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To: js1138
Thank you so much for your post!

Define malfunctioning.

The example I used was of an idiot savant who is mentally incapable of functioning in all but one area where his knowledge is extraordinary.

Of course there are many different types and degrees of malfunctions. Some are physical impairments, others chemical imbalance and still others, of the psyche (such as not being able to distinguish right from wrong, suicidal personalities, etc.)

Some malfunctions can be bypassed, alleviated or cured by medical treatment or drugs; some, by counseling. The former are treating what I would call the transceiver/brain; the later, the psyche.

376 posted on 01/23/2003 2:35:09 PM PST by Alamo-Girl (Magnus frater spectat te...)
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To: betty boop
Thank you so much for the post and the introduction to Locke/Berkeley! I'm anxious to hear more!!!
377 posted on 01/23/2003 2:37:30 PM PST by Alamo-Girl (Magnus frater spectat te...)
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To: Alamo-Girl
Another analogy then.

If the sun looks at you, and you are blind, your sight perception would be limited from receiving the sun's rays. Your sight, we could say, is damaged.

But if another sun has a will, it may shine on you or not. In fact, if the sun has any talent, it could shine on you, and not on your neighbor standing next to you. And so, neither you or your neighbor is damaged. Its all the sun's fault because the sun is able to execute what it wills.

Apart from these analogies, we can also add, as Ortega did, that consciousness when in relation to other sentient beings is contingent and not self-contained. But notice Ortega's reaction to German idealism and the "philosophy of Culture and of Consciousness":

"Life in society as well as all other forms of culture make their presence felts as members of the species of individual life" The rest is "abstract, generic, schematic," secondary, and derivative as compared with each man's life, with life as immediacy. But this fundamental reality that is one's life consists not in "consciousness," in Bewusstsein, but in a fundamental unitary duality . . . Our life, the life of each one of us, is a dynamic dialogue between "I and my circumstances."

And so it happens that consciousness is understood variously. The term is rooted in a history. And our speech, like velcro, picks up its traces. Ortega rejects the self-contained idea of consciousness as something that is primary.

And so we have some who refuse to engage, because they could care less about what another says. And there are others who refuse, as I understand Cohen refused

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free.

I have torn everyone who reached out to me

And this is what Montgomery noticed about Joyce's Stephen, and even Joyce himself. "The young Stephen is setting out as artist in the direction of the fancy as the supreme virtue of awareness, as the principal weapon in a manipulation of being."

Ortega's notice of the consiousness as relational helps me connect the dots: there is common confusion as to when we are speaking of the action or passion of the one, or the action or passion of the other. Even if we set aside the slip of the sinful moment when we did not make ourselves clear, there still remains the revolutionary jack in the box or the cameleon, the poikilos, who plays the game well, now preferring to talk about the one and now the other in an attempt to outwit existence as he wishes it.

378 posted on 01/23/2003 4:19:04 PM PST by cornelis
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To: Alamo-Girl
I suppose someone could rig up a device that could receive this signal noise- and damage-free. Then it could be broadcast to everyone!
379 posted on 01/23/2003 5:33:13 PM PST by Nebullis
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To: cornelis
But if another sun has a will, it may shine on you or not. In fact, if the sun has any talent, it could shine on you, and not on your neighbor standing next to you. And so, neither you or your neighbor is damaged. Its all the sun's fault because the sun is able to execute what it wills.

Or the sun, willy nilly, snips the precise circuit that shuts out sunny signals, allowing you to receive rays while your neighbor sees only darkness. (There's a name it: Great Ray Accepting Circuit Enhancer (G.R.A.C.E.).

380 posted on 01/23/2003 5:38:58 PM PST by Nebullis
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