Vertical Instincts and Meta-Needs

In yesterday's post we mentioned that the Cosmic Skeptic, Alex O'Connor, would like to believe, but that his intellect will not permit him to do so. Which is to say, the intellect can only assent to the truth, and neither can can nor should believe what is repugnant to it.  

But this account does a disservice to the powers of the intellect, which must be distinguished from the reason which is only one of the instruments in its toolbox. If man were literally confined to reason, he could never know it, because such knowledge obviously transcends reason. 

Thus, although man is the rational animal, he also has access to a "view from above," through which he is aware of his own rational powers. At the same time -- obviously -- he can sink beneath reason, which is to say, think and behave irrationally.

Now, even the rationalist will admit to the latter, which is to say that man can descend beneath himself. But what he will not acknowledge is that man can rise above himself, even though the one implies the other.

As to falling beneath himself, this is usually handled by the psychology department, specifically, clinical psychology, AKA my old racket. 

However, by mid-century (the 20th), a number of psychological theorists began to address the upper vertical as well, e.g., Abraham Maslow and his "hierarchy of needs," with meta-needs such as self-actualization at the top. 

Notice that man also has aesthetic needs, which is to say, an instinct for beauty:

This would consist of having the ability to appreciate the beauty within the world around one's self on a day-to-day basis.... [T]o progress toward Self-Actualization, humans require beautiful imagery or novel and aesthetically pleasing experiences.

So there is something in man that allows him "to extract the world's beauty," and this clearly isn't reducible to reason, otherwise it could be fulfilled by pondering syllogisms or working out math problems. Not to say that math isn't beautiful in its own way, only that it is inaccessible to the likes of us who dropped out of Algebra 2. I found no beauty there, only toil, tears, and sweat.

Now, it's easy to see that the lower vertical has "content," generally ascribed to the unconscious. And as indicated above, it is self-evident that man transcends reason, the question being "into what?" 

In other words, it seems to me that modernity is characterized by the loss of content, so to speak, of the upper vertical, or by an inability to perceive it via intellection.

It is a kind of forgetfulness, or perhaps it's just plain carelessness. Whatever the case, it seems there is an attenuation in man's ability to perceive the upper vertical, even though his need for it -- just like cognitive or aesthetic needs -- remains the same.

Just this morning Andrew Klavan touched on this:

We’ve been talking about recovering our ability to see the miraculous in the everyday. “To see a world in a grain of sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower,” so to speak. And the general feeling I get is that this ability slipped away when the medieval mindset was more or less particlized by the ray gun of science.

"People refer to this as the 'disenchantment of the world,'" but in reality, man is "built to know the infinite in the everyday." 

In the past we've discussed this in terms of right brain capture by the left, through which a totalitarian scientism is superimposed upon the world, thus eclipsing the upper vertical. But the same occurs with the internalization of any ideology.

You could say that ideology functions as a counterfeit substitute for Maslow's transcendent needs mentioned above. Which also accounts for the irrational passion of politicized vertical needs, i.e., secular religions.  

Here's a timely meme from a perhaps unlikely source:

In order to brush up on the subject this post, I reread an essay by Schuon called To Refuse or Accept Revelation. In Schopenhauer's case, he indeed accepted revelation, just not the Christian one, rather, the Vedantic, enthusing that "In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads."  

Indeed, they were even his favorite bedtime story (he read them every night before bed), "a source of great inspiration and means of comfort to my soul.... The Upanishads have been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death."

Speaking of man's meta-needs, he wrote that

Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all lands and in all ages, in splendour and vastness, testify to the metaphysical need of man, which, strong and ineradicable, follows close upon his physical need.

Likewise, similar to what we said above about ideological counterfeits, this vertical need "sometimes allows itself to be satisfied with clumsy fables and insipid tales."

Having said that, it seems to me that Schopenhauer conflated the upper and lower vertical, as if the Upanishads were speaking of nothing more elevated than his concept of the world as blind will.

Just to remind ourselves what this post is supposed to be about, it began with the Cosmic Skeptic's inability to accept revelation, specifically, the inability of his intellect to assent to it. 

But for Schuon, "The objection of agnostics and other skeptics is too facile." That is, the "excuse of the moderns" is "easy enough" for a "people who believe in nothing and who are unaware of the plenary nature of man."

This understanding of man's full range of abilities and potentials is obscured by a lower vertical "passionate attachment to the here-below," and a "chaotic and even exclusive love for earthly goods," which prevents the person from intuiting what is "inscribed in the very substance of the heart." 

We've barely scratched the surface, but I'm running out of gas, so, to be continued....