The Direction of Truth

Meaning "is always lost, sometimes for good, when in order to inspect them [tacit particulars] focally, attempts are made to withdraw ourselves from those feelings and perceptions, those particulars, within which one is dwelling in an act of knowing" (Prosch).

In other words, by rendering what is implicit explicit -- by turning it into the object of perception -- its meaning is lost: we see at instead of through, like a pair of dirty eyeglasses.

An aphorism or two pop into mind: for example, There exists no truth in the humanities that does not need to be rediscovered each week. And When things appear to us to be only what they appear to be, soon they appear to be even less.

Consider the first: it explains why religious truth can never be discovered just once; rather, faith is more like a continuous process of discovery; indeed, you could say that the endless discovery is the discovery, right? You can never really arrive at the (explicit) place toward which the (implicit) clues are pointing, or you would be God. Thinking otherwise is a little like looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Likewise, consider the second: to focus on the appearance instead of the reality toward which it points is to literally reverse the direction of the human vector. It is the quickest and most efficient way to bar or undo meaning. Not to bag on the left, but this is what they do, and why their worldview is so unavoidably nihilistic (because it flees from real meaning).

In fact, it brings to mind another aphorism: The left's theses are trains of thought that are carefully stopped before they reach the argument that demolishes them. They must not go to where the facts and clues lead, or they would be paralyzed. Thus, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Period.

"B-b-but..." Zip it!

Along those same lyin's, The atheist devotes himself less to proving that God does not exist than to forbidding Him to exist. For one thing, it is strictly impossible to disprove the existence of God, so why waste time trying? This is why atheists construct their false gods which they then go about disproving. But in reality, if God doesn't exist, only He knows it.

While looking for those aphoristic nuggets of joy, I found several others, each looking at the phenomenon from a different angle:

To be stupid is to believe that it is possible to take a photograph of the place about which the poet sang. The scientistic/materialistic type must believe that the photograph is more "real" than the poem, but this only testifies to their own inadequacy, or lack of conformity, to the nonlocal object. It's like dogs, who presumably cannot hear melodies, rather, just noise. They cannot perceive, let alone appreciate, what the noise is pointing to.

Here is another malady that afflicts the left: Reducing another's thought to its supposed motives prevents us from understanding it. Misunderstanding is one thing. That is obviously susceptible to correction. Disunderstanding is another thing entirely, and it is what the left specializes in. It is why they do not deal in arguments, only slander.

Here is how it works, courtesy Happy Acres:

Everything is trivial if the universe is not committed to a metaphysical adventure. Again, the adventure takes place in the space between tacit and focal knowledge, or between matter and (ultimately) God, if you like. As it so happens, this is precisely Ibn `Arabî's view, albeit expressed in slightly different terms.

That is, there is the empirical/material world and there is the intelligible/rational world. In between is what Corbin calls the imaginal world, and this is the space were religion "takes place," as it were. Importantly, it is not "imaginary," for which reason Corbin coined the term "imaginal."

We don't have sufficient timelessness to give a full airing of the subject -- that's a coming attraction -- but this space is where spiritual knowledge, visions, and theophanies take place. It is where (k) shades off into (n). And no, you cannot take a photograph of it. However, icons, cathedrals, and sacred music, for example, point to it. As does scripture, of course.

Which is why scripture functions in a manner similar to the Aphorisms: My brief sentences are dots in a pointillist painting. The difference is that no single mind can comprehend -- i.e., wrap its mind around -- scripture, and "see it whole," like a painting. Again, it provokes an adventure of endless discovery in its imaginal space.

Humanizing humanity again will not be an easy task after this long orgy of divinity. Oh my! You could say that when human beings are seen as merely human, they soon become even less. There is a kind of infinite space -- the imaginal space, to be exact -- between merely biological human beings and our innate deformity. But the distance between man and beast is but a single step. Or vote.

To deny God is to divinize man, because again, only a being with divine capacities can know that God doesn't exist. But man without God is no longer man, rather, just a randomly evolved primate. Man "takes place" in the space between biology and O. Which is why anti-religion leads to a toxic and destructive religiosity, every time. It brings about another kind of dystopian imaginal space we call Hell.