Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Truth: What is it Good For?

Well, I started writing this post, but then Mrs. G. was too sick to care for Future Leader, so childcare responsibilities were unexpectedly thrust upon me before I could finish. Consider it a spontaneous and undisciplined ramble from Bob's Unconscious, not a proper encyclical bearing the authority of Petey .... I finished up with a previous post that seemed to fit in with the general topic (below the asterisks)....

Now, reader Episteme asks, to put it bluntly, what Raccoons get out of these silly verticalistenics and gymgnostics. What's in it for us? What advantage do we gain?: "What exactly are the fruits produced by this capacity of awareness that I, and many others it seems, apparently lack? What great advantages do you have being aware, as you think you are, of Truth? If you really see this whole part of reality that I can't see, what is it that you can do that I can't?"

While not unreasonable questions, they are posed in a tone that betrays a lack of sobriety, sincerity and receptiveness. Nevertheless, for readers who may be just on the other side of the membrane with their nouses pressed against the glass darkly, but who are willing to open their hearts, this is for their benefit. We know ahead of time that Episteme's intellectual pride, at least at this time, fills the space where grace might otherwise flow, and as we know, while nature abhors a vacuum, Spirit requires one.

We begin with one of those metaphysical bobservations that we know is true because it cannot not be true, on pain of eliminating the very possibility of truth. It is this: truth is the adequation of knowledge to being, and this adequation is the sufficient reason for man's intellect. In other words, our intellect was made to know the Absolute, otherwise it makes no sense that we possess it. That is to say, on any Darwinian grounds, it is absurd that monkeys could one day harbor an ability to know truth -- not to mention love and beauty. For where was this truth before the monkeys discovered it, and how did it get there?

Another unavoidable truth is that the existence of truth imposes an obligation on man to know it. Can I prove this? Only to those who already "know" it implicitly -- who bear this eternal truth within their soul (which we all do, only for some people it is buried under so many layers of ice and rock, that it is inaccessible).

Now, the need to know this truth can be more or less pressing, depending upon the architecture of the particular soul. For some -- say, "vital beings" who essentially live a sensory, quasi-animal existence -- they are not aware of this need. But for others, the need is acute, and it forms the motive passion of their lives. To paraphrase Augustine, the soul of man cannot rest until it rests in God. Or as Schuon writes, "metaphysics satisfies the needs of intellectually gifted men" (and please bear in mind that Schuon is not using the words "metaphysics" or "intellect" in their modern, debased, and profane sense understood by Episteme). "Metaphysical truth concerns not only our thinking, but it penetrates also our whole being; therefore it is far above philosophy in the ordinary sense of the word."

Now, adequation to the Real cannot be achieved by the ego, which is only adequate to a certain narrow band of the reality (both interior and exterior) to which it is an adaptation. Man is a "bicentric" being, in that he has two subjectivities, the local ego and the nonlocal, uncreated intellect. The relative corresponds to the ego, while the Absolute corresponds to the intellect. It is not that the intellect itself is absolute, but that it represents a "mirror" of the absolute within the relative plane. The Great Mystery is that, in the words of Schuon, "the Absolute has made Itself relativity so that the relative may return to the Absolute." Man is an inverted shadow of God, which is why our vocation is to invert the inversion and receive light into the shadowy world of the fallen ego: "Soul, instead of contracting and hardening in its natural selfishness, must open itself to Heaven and to the Divine Influx."

But why? What do we get out of it? Well, one thing we get is the awareness that the cosmos is not a oppressively closed circle but an infinitely open spiral -- that God has not just "opened a gate in the middle of creation," but that this gate is Man himself. Furthermore, "to slip through the human state without being truly Man, that is, to pass God by," is to reject our own soul and our very existence. It is "a waste and a suicide," especially when the brevity of temporal life is contrasted with the depth of eternity.

*****

One of my favorite little books on Jewish mysticism is The Thirteen Petalled Rose, by Adin Steinsaltz. He writes that "The physical world in which we live, the objectively observed universe around us, is only a part of an inconceivably vast system of worlds. Most of these worlds are spiritual in their essence.... Which does not necessarily mean that they exist somewhere else, but means rather that they exist in different dimensions of being. What is more, the various worlds interpenetrate and interact in such a way that they can be considered counterparts of one another, each reflecting or projecting itself on the one below or above it."

I like this description because it is exactly analogous to the way the unconscious -- the lower vertical -- operates in psychoanalytic theory. The unconscious is another world that operates along different logical principles, but it is not "someplace else." It is not literally located in space, "below" the ego. Rather, it is right here, right now, interpenetrating everything we think and do. To "see" it, it is merely a matter of shifting your perspective. Like right now, if I open my ears, I hear a bird chirping in the backyard. In the distance is the "hoo hoo" of an owl. There's the very quiet humming of the computer. These things were always there, but it's a matter of paying attention to them.

In another way, it's analogous to these progressive bifocals I just got, which change the focal point depending upon where you point your eyes. Look up, and things that are near become out of focus, but look down, and the distant becomes blurry.

Steinsaltz discusses the differences between the vertical and horizontal, which for me is the essence of any spiritual metaphysics. Again, in speaking of the vertical, of higher and lower, he is not speaking of an actual physical location. Vertically speaking, "to call a world higher signifies that it is more primary, more basic in terms of being close to a primal source of influence; while a lower world would be a secondary world -- in a sense, a copy." Thus, viewed horizontally, we may trace the material cosmos back to a primordial event some 13.7 billion years ago.

But this is only the horizontal explanation. Traditional metaphysics deals with the vertical causation of the cosmos, which is what confuses people. From the vertical standpoint, this world is indeed a copy, as are human beings, of a divine prototype. The "logos" might be thought of as the model of all things, the nexus between the divine mind above and the creation here below. Looked at in this manner, the inexplicable beauty of the world is not somehow the outcome of horizontal cause and effect. Rather beauty is the cause of the cosmos (among other nonlocal causes, such as Love and Truth).

Because of the ubiquitous vertical and horizontal influences, every aspect of human existence is made up of both matter and spirit, of form and essence. While we are fundamentally spiritual, we are unavoidably material, which sets up a host of interesting tensions and conflicts. The fall --or exile, if you like -- is indeed a vertical one, a declension from the divine repose of celestial bliss, down to this world of toil, conflict, uncertainty and ambiguity.

In the past, I have posted on the inner meaning of "angels," which -- now, don't be too literal here -- are nothing more than vertical beings that travel in only two directions: up and down. Have you ever had a brilliant insight that came out of nowhere? That would be the gift of a vertical emissary. The more you reconcile yourself to the process and accept it on its own terms, the more messages you get. What about those lower promptings? Yes, we'll get to those momentarily.

Now that I've lost most of my readers, I'll ask the question: Did you know that you can create an angel, a vertical being? I know I do all the time. According to Steinsaltz, every mitzvah you perform -- every good deed -- is not just a horizontal act in the material world. It also has an effect in the vertical world. As a matter of fact, a holy act creates an angel, a new spiritual reality that will then go on to have its own vertical life and influence.

Let's just consider a banal but highly illustrative example, the first one that came to my mind -- Oscar Schindler. One flawed man nevertheless trying to do the decent thing in a hopeless hell of utter depravity. But how many countless angels did he create, angels that continue to bless the world in demonstrable ways!

Let's jump ahead to the shadow side of this spiritual economy for, as Steinsaltz explains, "just as there are holy angels built into and created by the sacred system, there are also destructive angels, called 'devils' or 'demons', who are the emanations of the connection of man with those aspects of reality which are the opposite of holiness." Thus it would follow that, just as good deeds create beneficent vertical beings, other actions create vertical beings "of another sort, from another level and a different reality." In so far as it is possible to do so, I try to create angels with this blog. I don't know if I am successful, but I do know that I attract demons.

Here again, you can take this literally or you can take it figuratively. But think, for example of just one awesome conjurer of demons, say, Karl Marx, who belched his new anti-revelation from the vertical depths of darkness. Could you even begin to count the number of devils, demons, and other agents of the nether world who are still being created and still making mischief as a result of falling under his sinister spell? You do see them, don't you? They're everywhere! Some things are metaphors, some are not. The term body snatcher is not a metaphor. Petey says that it explains all you need to know about the left.

If you have stayed with me this far, then you will understand that, just as there are evil beings, there are evil worlds. These are simply the "space" inhabited by the evil beings. Wisdom is a space, or "mansion." So too, creativity, love, beauty, peace. You can sense it when you enter one of those mansions. You can also sense it when you are near one of those haunted mansions where the dark ones reside.

The closest I like to get to one of these mansions is memri.org, which makes the Islamic darkness visible to us on a daily basis. Can you not feel and sense the utterly dark abyss of that black hole, where light neither enters nor escapes? If not, you may want to contact an exorcist, for something has hijacked your moral vision. There are many such vertical abysses in the world. Bottomless pits of anti-Truth and anti-Beauty.

Enough malevolent wishes and wicked deeds, and pretty soon you have created a closed world, cut off from the divine influence. As Steinsaltz describes it, "the sinner is punished by the closing of the circle, by being brought into contact with the domain of evil he creates.... as long as man chooses evil, he supports and nurtures whole worlds and mansions of evil, all of them drawing upon the same human sickness of the soul.... as the evil flourishes and spreads over the world because of the deeds of men, these destructive angels become increasingly independent existences, making up a whole realm that feeds on and fattens on evil."

Hitler. Stalin. Bin Laden. Yasser Arafat. Kim Jong-il. Ahmadinejad. Detached worlds of pure evil as an end in itself. Who could say it isn't so?

That would be the Old Serpent's vast team of useful idiots. He's got a very deep bench.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very strange. Pride and Grace. I made my last post on the dead thread just before reading today's piece. I had to stop after the first paragraph, and write this. Now back top the post.

JWM

Anonymous said...

"Metaphysical truth concerns not only our thinking, but it penetrates also our whole being; therefore it is far above philosophy in the ordinary sense of the word."

Alan watts makes this distinction:

Metaphysics (plural) and Metaphysic (singular), where "the singular form is used to distinguish it from the "metaphysics" of Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel, which constitute a viciously circular attempt to make factual statements about that which transcends facts--in other words, to make that which is metaphysical an object of scientific knowledge."

Metaphysic (singular) is the "apprehension of reality prior to any facts," which is precisely the definition of pneumatic—"a priori identification to spiritual substance;" and I might add bearing on a quote to Muhammad, that "the greatest sin is that of existence"--being aware of the metaphysic as such is the same as being aware of the inherent flaws of existence itself, or of the "fallen" condition—samsara. The choice that first arises out of this situation is between the beginning of a radical humility with the jettison of egoist tendencies, or the contrary position of selling ones soul to the underworld, and telling that eternal lie.

Anonymous said...

So, to explain epi’s original complaint that Schuon was making a mistake by dissociating metaphysics with philosophy—more properly, he was referring to the overwhelming and almost inherent historical circumstance of western philosophy’s attempt to explain the Metaphysic from the presumption of duality, duality having its root in the Greeks. Doubt is inherent in the fallen, dualistic condition, whereas “the starting point of metaphysical formulation is always something intellectually evident or certain…knowledge that we bear unconsciously and ‘eternally’.” The intellect here is one that is unborn; and in the realm of manifestation this intellect necessarily coincides with the Divine meta-substance of interest.

Anonymous said...

>>. . . a holy act creates an angel, a new spiritual reality that will then go on to have its own vertical life and influence<<

I think most don't comprehend the power they actually wield, this power being rooted in everyday life, even in the most so-called mundane of activities and thoughts. The left generally only sees power in the political, in political activism. Not that good can't come from activism, but it does take a certain talent, a certain psychological type to be an effective activist 24/7, and not everybody qualifies.

In any event, activism with its emphasis on the external, is never enough. The object is to change the external for the better, but activism amounts to "the external trying to change the external" without the internal compliment. "As it is within, so it is without" - the internal must first be changed, the external follows.

The fate of the world is being decided in living rooms, in restaurants, etc. - I think that's the extent of the power that we, as individuals, possess.
Everything, cooking a dinner, listening to someone's troubles with compassion, feeding a cat, shopping for clothes - these can be done prayerfully and with gratitude. The radiance spreads out, influencing the world for the better, bringing us a little closer to the Parousia.

robinstarfish said...

"You can also sense it when you are near one of those haunted mansions where the dark ones reside."

Rookery
murderous archive
underneath the bishop's house
ravens remembered

James said...

Yesterday, Epi said:

So what exactly are the fruits produced by this capacity of awareness that I, and many others it seems, apparently lack? What great advantages do you have being aware, as you think you are, of Truth? If you really see this whole part of reality that I can't see, what is it that you can do that I can't?

Will, Van, and others have already answered this question for you. I can tell you about the fruits of my spiritual labors. In a nutshell, the world and people make sense now. Since becoming a believer, I've found more depth and clarity in myself then in all the previous years of meditation, Taoism, and new-agey self-help. I never would have believed I could make more progress in two years then in my previous fifteen years of daily work. It hasn't been easy. Sometimes I feel my life has been thrown in a blender, but the fruits of faith have made it all worth it.
A big part of my resistance to these ideas is I'm not the center of the universe anymore. Man is not the measure of all things. Suddenly instead of being in charge man finds himself subject to a higher authority. This is a big adjustment, but speaking from the heart my life is better now that I'm letting someone else drive. I understand your skepticism; I shared it for most of my life. You do have to make a leap of faith. With very few exceptions you approach God, or O, on his terms. Keep Lurking, you will find what your looking for. I did.

Dougman said...

Bob->>. . . a holy act creates an angel, a new spiritual reality that will then go on to have its own vertical life and influence<<

Will-"I think most don't comprehend the power they actually wield, this power being rooted in everyday life, even in the most so-called mundane of activities and thoughts."

Struck a cord there Bob and Will.
For some reason I thought of the Good Samaritan and the robbed man on the side of the road.
Both in need of each other to create something Holy.

Anonymous said...

"Wisdom is a space, or "mansion." So too, creativity, love, beauty, peace. You can sense it when you enter one of those mansions."

I had just that experience at least once: in the early Sixties I worked after school as a delivery boy for a small grocery store; around dinner time one Saturday I made a delivery to the apartment of a building superintendent (basically a janitor) who didn't usually have stuff delivered. When I brought the small box of groceries into the apartment the family was sitting at the table in the kitchen. There was a palpable feeling of warmth and love in that house; it felt so good I didn't want to leave. I knew the man from seeing him around the neighborhood; he gave off an aura of happiness (how's that for weird)and always had a smile for you as you passed by.
Usually I delivered to the 'rich' people, who owned their own houses and such. I never felt that same sense of happiness and well-being as in the apartment of the guy who cleaned the stairs and took out the garbage.

Anonymous said...

"The "logos" might be thought of as the model of all things, the nexus between the divine mind above and the creation here below.

Looked at in this manner, the inexplicable beauty of the world is not somehow the outcome of horizontal cause and effect.

Rather beauty is the cause of the cosmos (among other nonlocal causes, such as Love and Truth)."


Aaaaaaaahhh.....

Simply Beautiful

QP said...

Five stars for this one Bob!

BTW, some angels have been working overtime:

A Hollywood film director has seen the light! David Mamet, writing today in the Village Voice, even names Thomas Sowell “our greatest contemporary philosopher.”

The piece is getting a lot of traffic. Over 240 comments.

NoMo said...

Whew, angels. Rich subject. Obviously, the Bible is loaded with 'em from start to finish. On the whole, they appear to be created spiritual beings/persons with wills and purpose. Anyway, its a subject worth exploring. Bob's view is definitely a leap for me, but hey, its not the first time.

NoMo said...

Perhaps our vertical acts, both upward and downward, "feed" the angels, both good and bad - another way we participate in the spiritual war that crosses realms.

Dougman said...

"spiritual war that crosses realms"

I'm finally at peace with my spirit.

It was a Nasty One I tell ya'!
Always twistin' this way and that way and slithering here and there and to and fro.
Oh LOOK! There's another One!!!

~ ~ ~

Mmmnn.. If feel a rumbly in my tumbly :^/

walt said...

One Cosmos: good for ... ??

When I first stumbled in here 500 posts ago, I recall excitedly telling my wife, "He (Bob) knows about vertical and horizontal!" This idea exists in various sources, but you have repeatedly returned to it as a "tool" to frame your points. And what a useful symbol it has been!

If Steinsaltz is correct, even metaphorically, then you have, over time, created something of a vertical Way for your readers, helping us access higher realms, that we might not enter by ourselves. I once wrote that I have felt daily "nudged upward." Or so it has seemed.

A couple of days ago I commented that the posts have been valuable because they are generative, not replacing what I have otherwise known (speaking personally), but enhancing and illuminating them through greater understanding, and leading in all sorts of tangential directions. You wrote several posts discussing how language can help us "colonize" parts of consciousness, thus inhabiting and full-filling its potential.

None of that would likely impress epi, but I found it useful.

But the main "fruit" of stopping by here regularly is akin to a "physical" sensation of being drawn upward, of being incessantly beckoned to the Higher.
There is a corollary in the body, that occurs in various yogas, or prayer:

One "...gradually and quite spontaneously feel as if it is being gently elongated and stretched upward and outward. In human beings this force can be felt as a source of extension or radiation. Sometimes it may almost feel as if you are being drawn up by some mysterious force analogous to the force of gravity, yet opposite to it in its direction of pull and influence."

Personally, and consistently, this is the effect (fruit) that OC has on me -- the "angels" that Bob creates, i.e. that upward pull.

I take such things simply, as I do aesthetics (Beauty), and illumination (Truth), and the elegance of the potential that is expressed here. Performance trumps theory, and opinion.

Good jokes, too!

None of that is here nor there to other folks, who are working along their own lines. But Bob asked, "What is it good for?" and it doesn't hurt to formulate such answers.

Anonymous said...

>> . . . a holy act creates an angel, a new spiritual reality that will then go on to have its own vertical life and influence<<

I once had an idea about writing a book, the theme of which would be something along the lines of "live the adventurous life, how every life is essentially an adventure," that sort of thing. In other words, something to inspire the "ordinary" individual or even those whose fate has cast them into seemingly "unimportant" or non-roles in life.

I couldn't bring it off, I found, without coming across as too hokey and rah-rah - still, the idea obtains, and anybody who grasps the basic idea should find reason to endure the hardships of life with a sense that they, too, are frontline warriors and that their personal lives, no matter how obscure, are really cosmic dramas.

I think at this juncture in history, it's not a matter, really, of choosing to be involved in the cosmic drama. It's only a matter of choosing what side we will represent.

>>I try to create angels with this blog. I don't know if I am successful, but I do know that I attract demons<<

Speaking of this juncture in history, I think it should be expected that the oppositional forces will increase in intensity and persistence.

Dougman said...

Will-
"...the oppositional forces will increase in intensity and persistence."

Sweet! We don't even have to order out now!
A steady diet of fresh meat.

De-livered!!!
Mmmnnn...

For the record, I don't care for Liver.
Who wants my share?

Anonymous said...

"For the record, I don't care for Liver.
Who wants my share?"

Me me me! Yumm yumm, nice & pink inside, with a big pile of brussel sprouts & a side of beets....

Ahw crap, now I'm really really hungry!

julie said...

You can have my share, too Ximeze

Anonymous said...

Ximeze said:
Me me me! Yumm yumm, nice & pink inside, with a big pile of brussel sprouts & a side of beets....

If you served that to anyone under 25 years of age it would warrant a call to Child Protective Services. You could do serious time on a rap like that.
;)

Damn. There is much I'd like to add, but I'm so tired I'm crosseyed. (By the way, Ximeze I like liver just fine. But it must be served with onions, canned (not fresh) green beans, and a big pile of buttered noodles)

JWM

Jim said...

Mmmm meat good, liver not good.

NoMo said...

I'll take mine with some favre beans and a nice chianti...
OK, skip the liver and the beans.

Anonymous said...

Usually I comment on a topic(s) raised in Bob's post or the commentary of others, but tonight I must comment on a weird phenomenon occurring in my own domicile:

My cat Fergus has taken to going into the second bathroom at various times, getting into the bathtub, and sitting on his stomach with his head under the trickling faucet. (the faucet has been broken)

I've known something was up for a while now. His gleaming wet head was the giveaway. The warm water tended to make the fur on his head somewhat spiked as if he has jelled it.In any event, tonight I finally caught him in the act. Ah ha, caught you, I said. Fergus gave me a baleful look, but did not rise from the tub.

Obviously, he enjoys this strange activity. Personally, I am inclined to think it perverse and maybe a bit unnatural, but who am I to really say? Do your thing, find your bliss, etc.

Still, one must ask, why now? Fergus is 17 years of age. Suddenly he discovers he actually likes water splashing on him? Is this some improvised self-therapy? Some version of a cat massage? A form of meditation? (buddhist monks will occasionally meditate while lotusing under small waterfalls)

Fergus has always prided himself on being the very essence of a cat archetype, and this activity runs, I believe, quite counter to the Tyger Tyger Burning Bright ideal. Perhaps, I am thinking, it is a validation of Schuon's theory (via Bob) re: the end of the kali yuga age in which time-honored archetypes began to break down.

On the other hand, maybe Fergus is simply getting senile.

Or craftier.

Of the above possible reasons that might account for this odd behavior, I don't know which is more frightening.

Anonymous said...

...just as there are evil beings, there are evil worlds. These are simply the "space" inhabited by the evil beings.

Aha. I *knew* there was a reason why MySpace gave me the creeps.

Magnus Itland said...

I shall heed the advise to not take the angel creation literally. After all, experience shows that the real flow is generally from higher, more primal, pre-existent worlds to new, emerging worlds (such as ours).

That we can bring angels "into existence" is however quite real, at least as far as we mean our existence, our world, our plane of reality. The Christian mystics that instructed me when I was young, spoke of certain actions and corresponding attitudes creating an atmosphere where angels could stay. (Hospitality probably being the most obvious case, by which some have entertained angels unaware.) Conversively, some things are inimical to angels and makes it hard for them to come to our assistance.

Of course, for the Christian there is only one Mediator. But I believe angels may assist in various practical ways. Perhaps they have a holy aura that strengthens creatures aligned with good and weakens creatures aligned with evil... In that case, there seem to be some of them even in the emerging world of cyberspace.

urthshu said...

you know, it really isn't such a complicated thing you're writing about here, bob. its almost like you had to pad it out to make a post of respectable length. be aware, though, that it invites overthinking.

as far as what one gets out of the awareness and immersion in the 'vertical', i'd say pretty much nothing. maybe a degree of suffering.

not much of a sales pitch, i know. but see ruth, jonah, job, et al., and compare balaam.

ps - sorry for lower cases; broken elbow/one-handed

Magnus Itland said...

Compare Balaam indeed. He saw the vertical and preferred the horizontal. It is a constant danger with which some of us are all too familiar. Being a prophet does not make one bulletproof to temptation.

PS: Get well soon.

Anonymous said...

Beer. Is there anything it can't do?

walt said...

Preventive medicine is a good thing!

julie said...

Hm. If the active, Alzheimer's-preventing ingredient in beer is silicon, does this mean silicone implants are actually healthy for women?
Wonders never cease...
(yes, that was a joke)

Lisa said...

Will, thanks for opening up the discussion to the realm of the bathroom. I was unsure of how to incorporate this bizarre news item into this thread but it simply cannot be missed. I don't think any extra jokes are really even necessary here. But in any event, it makes Fergus' behavior seem a little more normal...It's all relative, eh?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_re_us/woman_in_bathroom

Anonymous said...

I swear on Toots' grave that two days ago I stumbled upon this feline factoid in the course of an entirely unrelated search. And no, it wasn't what you're thinking....

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