A Bridge to Everyone

We've been improvising on the theme of reality tunnels, which is to say, those neurocognitive psylos we conflate with "reality." 

If you think about it for a moment, you'll agree that, if human beings are confined to reality tunnels, then this requires no explanation, since we are in the same position as any other animal. Only if we somehow transcend instinct, neurology, and subjectivity, and actually come to know reality, is an explanation required. And it had better be a good one.

Note also that transcendence too will require an explanation, a principle, a ground. Certainly it makes no sense to affirm the tautology that human beings have an instinctive capacity to transcend instinct. 

And yet, we do, for it is in our nature (which doesn't imply that it is merely genetic). You could say that humans may be defined as the anti-Gödelian being, since we always and everywhere have this *inexplicable* capacity to transcend ourselves; put conversely, we can never be enclosed in any immanent system or ideology. Supposing you try, you've transcended the system.

Which is not to say a system can never be imposed upon man. This is where power comes in, but we'll deal with the left later, as some additional groundwork is needed.

This notion of the anti-Gödelian creature reminds me of what Schuon says -- something to the effect that man is "condemned to transcendence," so to speak. We just have to accept this truth, no matter how pleasant.

The spiritual man is one who transcends himself and loves to transcend himself; the worldly man remains horizontal and detests the vertical dimension (Schuon). 

Ah. Now it seems that transcendence implies -- or demands, rather -- the presence of a "vertical dimension" in the cosmos, and who am I to argue, since I could only do so from a vertical perspective? 

Indeed, who am I to argue, period? 

That's true. I am an animal. Not to belabor the point, but an anti-Gödelian animal. Unlike us, those purely immanent animals "cannot know what is beyond the senses" and "cannot choose against their instincts." Nor can they transcend themselves, and the most intelligent among them has no idea what Gödel is even talking about. 

Conversely, man

is essentially capable of knowing the True, whether it be absolute or relative; he is capable of willing the Good, whether it be essential or secondary, and of loving the Beautiful, whether it be interior or exterior. In other words: the human being is substantially capable of knowing, willing and loving the Sovereign Good (ibid.).

My dog is a good dog, but she knows nothing about the concept of goodness. 

The animal cannot leave his state, whereas man can; strictly speaking, only he who is fully man can leave the closed system of the individuality, through participation in the one and universal Selfhood (ibid.).

About those reality tunnels we've been discussing. Schuon writes that

man is the bridge between form and essence, or between “flesh” and “spirit” (ibid.).

Bridge, tunnel, what's the difference, as long as we get to the other side.

Except we can't get to the other side without some divine assistance. In other words, our best bridge will be a "bridge to nowhere" unless it first proceeds from there to here. Finitude cannot reach infinitude. 

Which is what I meant yesterday with the idea that the Incarnation is God's reality tunnel to man, which thereby becomes our reality tunnel back to him.

To be continued...