Incidentally, this line of reasoning is more or less exactly what drew me towards these kinds of thinkers; the notion of human freedom as guaranteed by some liberal conception of universality always struck me as cartoonish and ridiculous, and it always seemed to me that it'd only be by working through the processes of subjectivization that one could ever, in any coherent manner, speak about freedom.

As I said to Πετροκότσυφας any kind of universal transcendent ground, or basis of our existence need not relegate freedom as absurd or ridiculous. Yes you are correct to identify some human freedoms in subjectivisation, but that's not surprising, because they are culturally derived and subjectification is the means by which they are generated, or rather subjugated, and controlled in the cultural narrative. Unless you are blinkered to any freedoms which might be found outside this subjectification, there are other freedoms to be both found and lived.

There are freedoms to be observed and participated in with other beings(organisms) in the biosphere. There is freedom to be found and enjoyed in the imagination and in creative expression. There may be other freedoms available which are orthogonal to our evolutionary directed experience as organisms.

Why would one choose to ignore other freedoms?

Because to think 'live is lived' is exhausted by our 'thoughts, beliefs, intuitions and experience' is to conceive of life in a horrifyingly narrow and morbidly 'intellectualist' manner. Rather than live life in ones head, life generally is concerned with the things I do, the things I say, the actions I take. And perhaps even more importantly, the things done to me, said of me, that impel me and make claims upon me; life as composed of habits, regularities, flourishes of creative engagement amongst rhythms of time and movement, punctuated with time wasting, routine, imposition, sleep, intensity, and so on.

If one confines freedom to physical actions and the way in which within the society freedoms are bestowed or deprived, it is in itself to relegate freedom to a byproduct of a mechanistic robotic process, presumably deterministic to boot. I wonder if there are any ranks of thought police involved in this narrative.

Well for people our age, although I keep hearing something about playlists. I haven't tried one yet. But yes 6music is more established and recognised now.

Wicked! I've been listen to Sleaford mods recently, can't put it down!

Just a thought, have you tried BBC 6music online? that's where it's all happening these days.

Thanks, both interesting articles. I'll have look.

I think about these things in imaginary visual form in the minds eye. I find it works better for me to articulate concepts in this way. When it comes to the basis of spacetime, I tend to visualise all space and time as one existing point extended into a nearly endless quantity of points of extension analogous to atoms. The one point is somehow split, or divided through a kind of symmetry breaking, so the large quantity is equal to the one, just a different form of it.

It's a much simpler thing I'm talking about; which is that if people do not believe they are free they will not experience freedom nor will they act freely, but instead their acts will be determined by their slavery to the ideas that deny their freedom.

Do you mean(in other words) that one allows the possibility of ones self acting freely. By making this space it frees the self that it can feel and act freely, unconstrained?

It's too early to say what the economic repercussions are. There are strong arguments on both sides in the media about the fluctuations in the £.

Anyway, it's my perception that the economy was not the reason why most people voted the way they did. I was a poling officer for the vote, and the mood in my poling station was that people were fed up of the creeping control from Brussels and the lack of sovereignty and were happy to take an economic hit. This was in rural Suffolk.

Also, it was an anti-establishment backlash, so the media being of the establishment will inevitably show some bias in favour of the doom and gloom perspective.

You don't need to remind me about the suffering and injustice in the world, I am acutely aware of it at the moment. Anyway, I will fall in line with Willow on this one. I am still thinking of my own position of freedom here, it doesn't normally figure highly in my priority of subjects to contemplate.

Not the true world, simply the world we find ourselves in. Do we really understand it? I know some folk might think they do. Anyway my point was that even if we find a rational explanation it still might be mistaken as a result of our limited knowledge. We cannot presume that the underlying nature of this world is going to appear in any way rational from our incomplete perspective.

You do realise presumably that this question cannot be answered from our limited knowledge and understanding of the world we find ourselves in? Whatever freedoms one might rationally identify, may only have that appearance. Without access to the underlying basis of this world we are the blind leading the blind, surely?

A case can be made that if there is something universal about human nature, then we don't have the radical freedom, ethical responsibility etc that you seem to want to preserve. If there is an essence and that essence is given by something outside the subject (by something transcendent, say), where is the freedom?
— Πετροκότσυφας

This presumes that this universal human nature is a rigid framework of some sort. It need not be, only the phenomenological stage or ground upon which that human dwells need be universal("all the world's a stage").
As I have pointed out it is incorrect to consider the transcendent somehow external to the subject. It is only ever accessed, received through the intangible being of the self. One ought to realise that temporal and spatial extension are a projection, from the transcendent realm, so each being is symultaniously in (dwelling) the transcendent realm and in the spatio temporal world. It is the world of extension that is external.

But what in the world has belief got to do with freedom?

I can't speak for John, but as I see it what he is referring to is something along the lines of this. To have a conscious conception of the freedom one is engaged in. I have experienced this, rather like in a lucid dream in which you realise you are fully conscious in the dream and then experience a literal freedom in your actions. Even more so, if you can somehow control the dream, something I was never able to do. A freedom that is fully actualised in living action. This smacks of revelation to me, but one which embeds a realisation of freedom within oneself.

You were asking about seeing monads. It would mostly be with the mind's eye. Even unity of consciousness is really something detected by the intellect.

Yes the intellect has to fashion a suitable conceptual form. I find this monad sort of disappears when I visualise it. But I still know it's there so that's sufficient to continue.

BTW: an interesting comparison is Leibniz to Einstein on the relativity of space.

Yes, I quite like imagining a banana is the only thing in existence and then trying to visualise it, how big it is, is it infinitely large or small? What colour is it? However I imagine it requires some kind of sensual stimulus. I do know what it tastes like though.

I know how you feel, but really we owe it to our descendents who are not here to respond, to at least try to preserve the ecosystem, ourselves and make some progress towards securing our long term survival. It's not much to ask, is it?

@TheWillowOfDarkness.

It's more than that. When I say "infinite" or "meaning," I am only pointing to something which my language never is. All language does this. My thoughts and speech about my eye are not my eye. Talk about my computer is not my computer. Speech about the infinite is not the infinite.

Yes, I know this and I understand your perspective. I agreed with you in my first reply to you.
Here I was picking up on the idea that there can be meaning in the infinite, I find this problematic, I would always defer to the use of eternal rather than infinite.

The infinite cannot be known in the personal. It cannot be an interpretation. Either requires that the infinite be subject to change, for it be a object depending on the actions, understanding or existence of the finite human.

Yes I agree, but I don't see it as this simple, see below.

Transcendent accounts consider the infinite something to be obtained, through study, through living, through following a tradition: belief in the spiritual (to use Wayfarer's term), then the infinite will be present, the world will be saved from the absence of the infinite. Ironically, the argument for the transcendent is that we become the infinite, that we cease living in the finite realm and enter the eternal.

Here we need to tease out the esoteric from the exoteric understanding and use of transcendence as it has been handed down to us from the traditions. The notion of attaining the infinite(being delivered into eternity) and following a study and practice and then reach Nirvana and leave behind the finite. This is the exoteric understanding that is disseminated widely through our culture and the religious traditions.
By contrast, the esoteric understanding of transcendence (as it has been handed down to us by the traditions) is a discipline undertaken under strict direction from a master in which the initiated disciple relinquishes the exoteric in every form, stills the mind and metaphorically breaks into the eternal soul within themselves(which is veiled at this point in our evolution). This can be viewed as the opposite of breaking out of something, one breaks into that inner sanctum which is veiled to us in this world, rather like the pulling away the scales which protect a developing bud to allow the flower to bloom.

This process and the language used by the initiated would always have been concealed from the uninitiated.

We might describe immanence as the understanding that the infinite is inaccessible to us. No matter what we do, we will not live the infinite. Whatever our lives, we will still be finite creatures of change, no matter how much we understand the world or the infinite which it expresses. While there is infinite expressed everywhere and anywhere, the most we will ever do is point to it, no matter how much we understand (or do not understand) it.

Yes, this is strictly true of infinity, but do you realise that infinity is a human invention? We should be using the word eternity, or some other word which refers to an endlessness, but also allows for the unknown, which allows for realities and events which seem illogical, or impossible to us from our limited perspective.

It is in the respect that immanence and transcendence are similar, both refer to eternity expressed in reality. The difference is that transcendence understands eternity to be an object obtained or accessed though specific action, while immanence understands it to be necessary and unavoidable. Even you, more a pluralist in these matters, would say that it's particular action, a particular life, a particular mystic tradition which brings the eternal, which accesses it.

This comes to the heart of the matter. For me eternity is also unavoidable, but currently (due to our evolutionary incarnate predicament) unavailable, or veiled to us in our day to day existence. It is due to the veil that eternity is transcendent, but the mystic realises that the veil is the hard casing of a bud, to speak metaphorically and that our body has within it, in a latent form, the apparatus to release our true nature in some way into our incarnate selves.

I say that no-one needs to do anything to express the eternal. Everyone necessarily does so, no matter who they are. The whole world does. God (the eternal) is necessary and not something that is obtained or acts. Even the despairing or suffering express it. There is no means to obtain it (God, tradition, etc.,etc.) because it not the sort thing that is obtained. It's outside the world of change, greed and desire. No-one ever accesses it, no matter how much they understand or feel it.

Yes, I agree, the eternal is everywhere, is all, we are eternity devices, but we just don't see it.

The implication though is that we can't expect to understand it through our invention of logical thought alone. Our understanding would naturally develop through a natural process of unfolding/opening/revealing/unveiling. Because logic can't, at least at this time encompass the eternal.

So as far as I can see we are in agreement.

I am interested in the take from the christian tradition, it might help me to access the ideas better. I will look up Michael Henry. Can you recommend any other sources, perhaps in the Christian mystical traditions?

I am very interested in the Pomo being discussed in the other thread, but lack the vocabulary within the tradition. It mirrors closely my own studies which are from the perspective of the mystical traditions, but in a different language of metaphor. Personally I don't see a need for a fuss about one's the particular route into the study, or who is or isn't a deist, an atheist, materialist, idealist etc. If god exists, or not, these things are not important to me in a study of ideas. It is the ideas themselves that I collect and I am well aware that we are all focussing on pretty much the same ideas anyway, just with our own personal take, or colouring.

Yes that might well be the case, but they are using terminology which apes what we are familiar with in a study of the self. It's like they are coming up with some insights into the self by looking into a mirror, but without considering what might be there which isn't currently known, or what doesn't fit within a current logical narrative.

Yes I see what you mean, but I dont recognise it, in my own understanding of transcendence. For me transcendence is a process of accessing an interdimensional reality, or eternity present in the here and now. It doesn't contain meanings, these are known in the personal self, but are interpretations. It seems as I delve into this issue that what I consider transcendent is what you and perhaps the PMs call the immanent. And what you consider immanence is what is to me transcendence.

This can be explained by your refering to what is understood as an exoteric understanding of transcendence. While I am not considering that, but rather considering an esoteric transcendence which appears to equate with your immanence. Which is as I explained the authentic transcendent in the mystical traditions, which only the initiated were to work with.

So the immanence of PM is the equivalence of the esoteric transcendence In the mystical traditions.

Things get left behind in some sense, but I am unsure I can see the future rather than walking a razor's edge of future-oriented present competence. The more I think about it, the more I seem to live in an endless moment, more than the stretch that Husserl's extended present implies. The easiest example should be a melody, I guess (though even this is misleading because it's not as if anything is happening in a melody that isn't always supposed to be happening), especially a melody that one is familiar with. But here I feel like there are all sorts of little non-passive future intrusions of what's to come as well

Have you tried meditation? I have found it most beneficial in developing the finer mental faculties for the contemplation of such ideas regarding the self.

Immanence sets the logical meaning (what you call the "ideal") outside the question of time. It understood to be infinite

So how is this not transcendence?

Thankyou, I will repeat the quote of Master Dogen for it's crystal clear insight, which is apt for this juncture. It is one of my favourite proverbs.

“Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment."

Like the appearance of a precise reflection of the moon in a dewdrop, indeed many millions of them on a dewy hillside and the evocation of walking through that light, in that still quiet night, with a clear mind.
Such things happen every moment in nature, while we lumbering apes(by contrast) labour over how we as a group condition each other's thoughts and nature, I ask you!

Anyway I would point out to philosophers that they can't presume many things about nature which they do every day, unthinkingly. For even if they can come up with systems which describe accurately how things in the world operate, it is only in the world of appearances. Appearances which are likely only a tiny fraction or slither of what is going in the here and now. Developing an insight into what we do not know and cannot presume to be the case is a powerful tool in allowing subtle insights in wisdom to reflect on that dew drop and flicker through that still still mind.

Yes agreed, I was addressing you rather than StreetlightX because there doesn't appear to be any point in addressing him personally. Claims that imply that the world, the universe, reality, or existence can now be made sense of simply through Chitta Chatta of the mind in isolation suggest a naivety, which I would point out. It must be comfortable in that cloister.

It's true that the universe can be made sense of; insofar as rational, discursive accounts and explanations can be given of it. But there remain aspects of human life, many of which are the most important to us, which cannot be explained in this way. The notion that some things must remain mysterious does not offend me or make we want to reject them in accordance with a demand that all must be explainable. On the contrary I feel happy on account of that.

I agree, but it seems to me that the basis or ground of our existence(the universe) here and now is beyond us at this time, due to our limitations(confined within this particular evolution we find ourselves in), or because it is somehow hidden, disguised, or veiled. It might be easy to understand, even to manipulate, but we are none the wiser, it's like we are the blind leading the blind.

An alien, or higher being could come along and tell us the answer and we might say well I never, it's so simple, but we just didnt see it, why were we so blind?

That's ok, it is like a different language I expect.

In a knutshell I was saying that thinking about it doesn't give us an answer, the thoughts just chase their own tails and that mysticism has been grappling with this issue and developing answers independently of western thought for millennia. Perhaps a crossover would yeald a more rounded solution.

I can't communicate in the language of the post moderns, if I can find time perhaps I will read a bit, it looks interesting.

Perhaps there are parallels which can be drawn between mysticism and PM, to square the circle so to speak.

He is therefore the prince of philosophers. Perhaps he is the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere"

StreetlightX

You see this is a mistaken quest, the transcendent is the immanent in the eye of the mystic. Wherever one approaches or suspects the transcendent, or the transcendental one is mistaken and yet that same approach and suspicion is to and is of oneself, (oneself needn't have gone out to look in the first place, for the gaol, the aim was already here and know).The mystic squares the circle by realising that his/her mind only sees/knows that which leads/looks away from the immanent, the transcendent is mistakenly thought to be out there and one might see it and know it, or never attain it or understand it. But it and the immanent are one in one, in the self and not in the purview of the mind, but the whole self.

I can understand how this might be problematic in philosophy.

Anyway going back to your question, a notion of self is a mental construct, the self which concerns the mystic is the being in which we have our being, in which we have our mind and it's contents. It is understood that the mind cannot access this being, as the mind only looks out from it. Instead the mind is stilled, bypassed, schooled in receiving inspiration through contemplation and living practice. Methodology for this practice is well documented in various religious and mystical traditions. The goal is to develop a synthesis between body spirit and mind, resulting in the transmutation, or in ocassion transfiguration of the self.

I don't know if this can be parsed philosophically(logically), I would have to ask a philosopher?

I suppose what I'm saying is that in such areas of philosophy, philosophers are trying to figure out things about our being and nature and coming up with these philosophies, which are aping what has been explored and practiced for a long time by Mystics who may be well versed, but in a different metaphorical language.

That the authentic understanding and use of the transcendent is in a personal enquiry within oneself, as was pointed out by Metaphysician undercover a few posts back. So it is a fallacy to regard the transcendent as anything other than immanent, as something external, or not of this world.

Again, you're only arguing against the religious caricature of the transcendent, as it was used to exploit people.

To address it as it was originally conceived and the way it is is lived you would be required to study its use in mysticism. As it was only the initiated in the religions who actually contemplated it and saw past the caricature.

If anything, the insistence on immanence means that the universe can indeed be made sense of; that sense is engendered within the universe, and we don't have to gape like dead fish out of the water after the unnamable, the unknowable, and the inconceivable.

In mysticism the contemplation of the transcendent is not a gaping at the unreachable. This is a perversion of religion, actually it is a contemplation practice used to focus the mind on a constant, an ideal. The intellection involved in mysticism regarding the transcendent (including the unnamable, the unknowable and the inconceivable etc) is likewise a practice of contemplation on an ideal, which one shapes oneself conceptually, for the purposes of the process of the transfiguration of the self.

I can't speak for the transcendent in philosophy much, as I am not a philosopher, but it appears to be a caricature of the transcendent handed down to us by religion.

You say that the universe can be made sense of, but its ground remains veiled from us(by the nature of our evolutionary inheritance, our bodies). How would we peek beyond that veil, from here?

So I'm thinking it is something in our being and a unity. More specifically something to do with our conscious experience.

Sounds like the Hindu "atman", atman is that bit of Brahman in each being.

From wiki;
In Hinduism, Brahman (/brəhmən/; ब्रह्मन्) connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe.[1][2][3] In major schools of Hindu philosophy it is the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists.[2][4][5] It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes.[1][6][7] Brahman as a metaphysical concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe.[1][8]

For me "the world" is a realm which consists of where we find ourselves on the ocassion of our birth, including the interactive involvement in that world of the biosphere of biological beings we are a member of. This includes all that we access through our bodies including the universe and the ideas we have.

I define it this way because it limits the world to what we encounter as incarnate beings. Thus allowing a myriad of other realms and things etc that may exist and which may constitute or interact with this world, but which we are not aware of as not being a part of this world, but due to our lack of capacity, or for some other reason, are veiled from us.

In my model my body is a result of many monads cooperating with my single monad to act out my being. Also I am cooperating with other single monads to act out the being of our planet, for example.

It all sounds good to me, but does he say what a monad is? All we can see is a myriad of colours and shapes and ideas, we can't actually see a monad, subjectively.

My point about the "transcendent camps" (whether pre-modern religions and traditions or modern consumerism) is to do with the motivations and understanding of the word

Yes I am aware of these misgivings, I did point out that I am aware of the problems brought about by religions. I don't really want to get into a discussion of religion because that is a different issue than what is being discussed here. But it is partly relevant in that it has supplied us with a tradition of the transcendent to work with.

Your criticisms are relevant concerns, but merely point out the social and political issues around any product or goal which is to be desired in the human condition, but which can be restricted and controlled by an elite. Also if it, the transcendent, as the desired goal were absent, then it would be replaced by something else, because as I pointed out, this is an issue about politics and control of the society. This also applies in regard of the personal self and personal greed, or desires. The goal of transcendent here is simply a tool employed in ones life to control, or passify greed and desires, or to act as an excuse to indulge them and if it were absent, it would be replaced by something else.

To address the transcendent absent religion one should consider humanity before religion, or the origin in society of ascetics and their teaching, which resulted in the origin of religions. Simply, people on the event of the development of intellect began to think philosophically about their predicament. Naturally this brought them to questions of our origin, purpose and whether there are agencies behind the appearance of this world. Thus the birth of mysticism and philosophy. These are contemplations and can be carried on in isolation of ones physical life. However they can be used as an philosophy of action in the world and in the case of the ascetic Jesus, can be viewed as teachings in practical and constructive strategies in lifestyles.

It is a mistake to consider that transcendent insight is in any way in opposition or conflict with pragmatic, scientific, or down to earth practical living. It is not and it's message is simply to enable one to extend ones view of our directions and goals a little further and provide a value in seeking to follow that course. For example, for humanity to seek to live in harmony with the biosphere, manage the ecosystem and develop long term stable cultures within humanity to secure our long term survival and gradual expansion beyond the planet(which is vulnerable to meteorite destruction).

Now if you imagine one of the first early humans to really contemplate their predicament, to really do some philosophising. I would not be surprised if they had come up with a conclusion similar to this example I have just given. It is not mysterious, profound, unattainable. But it does require an effective cooperation between the members of our society at large.

This is what brings me into conflict with Wayfarer all the time, despite our occasional agreements and shared interest in the importance on meaning. He thinks meaning must be granted by the transcendent. I say there is no meaninglessness, so there is no work for the transcendent to do. There are those who are depressed, anxious or despairing, but those are instances of meaningful lives, who find themselves in some unethical situation. A worldly change is what they need (it could even be a belief the transcendent), so they realise their meaning/end the horrible state that's haunting them.

There is no necessity for a conflict here, as I said transcendent insight is in alignment with constructive practical living. I do not see Wayfarer falling into the religious cliches regarding the transcendent, although his stance is towards the other end of the spectrum from your own.

'The burden of self-hood'

This is interesting, so beings which had self awareness, an awareness of their own actions and that there is an alternative to their conditioned, or genetic actions, which they now have a choice to take. However a while after taking that alternative course of action, they find themselves in a pickle and think how did that happen, where did I go wrong. Was that the right course of action? was it a bad course of action? What course of action should I take now? Now that I have forgotten what my original course was? Am I now lost? Have I lost my way back to the garden of Eden? Help!

You have not addressed the issue presented in the allegory of the
garden of Eden. This is the cornerstone of the religious narrative. Essentially, humanity left the garden of Eden when they developed intellect. This gave them the option (intelligence)of imagining and then acting on self indulgent, destructive and evil acts. It is the development of this capacity in humans which resulted in the problem of good and evil and an imbalance in nature(on this planet). Before this, point of crisis, all beings in the biosphere were arranged into evolutionary niches, which, while there was some imbalance, change and adaptation, was generally in balance.

Yes the body has a consciousness of its own, it is an animal, an organism. You are a multi-layered being.

A lack of egoism or of being a bigot does not equal humility, humility is about something else. A good philosopher is one who simply considers all ideas and approaches as approaches to be developed, revised, questioned and seeks healthy balanced debate.

Humility is (apart from the humility which is a result of conditioning, mental trauma, or disease) an outlook, approach, technique in self development, or spirituality. A tool which some people may recommend egotists to practice to escape their plight. But which is also utilised in mysticism in exploring, or developing the self.

Jim Morrison for surrealism perhaps. We each have our favourite artists, or musicians. I think that particularly in the case of music it is the music which grabbed us most during our formative years. Bob Dylan passed me by at the time, but I've discovered an appreciation in later years. For me it was Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie( in that order). Although Bob Marley was always there in the background and the depth of feeling and meaning in his Redemption Song is always moving to hear for me.

Opinion of Bob Dylan is divided for cultural reasons which occurred at the time of his rise in the folk movement. But for whatever reasons he became, or was perceived as, the most influential artist in music in the late 20th century, this cannot be denied.

That building never looks like it could have been pretty.

Yes it's an industrial hangover in the marina of my local town, Ipswich. The development of the marina was stopped in its tracks in 2008, a nod to the disgraceful behaviour of investment bankers.

You should see the building next door, an even better metaphor for the vacuous nature of Trump.


It's known as the skeleton, or wine rack tower.