From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 06 2005 - 04:32:22 GMT
Platt,
[Platt said:]> Some here consider
> mystic "enlightenment" to be the way forward, but have yet to spell out
> what that path will lead to much less what mysticism is other than the
> absence of thought.
Just thought I'd butt in by saying that I've been promoting a mystical
philosophy that doesn't fit this characterization. Plotinus, for example,
holds that what the path leads to is reascending to the Intelligible realm
(the first emanation from the One). His recommendation to the aspirer is to
study mathematics and then dialectic.
As to what the Intelligible realm is like, well, I assume one has to get
there to say. Here's Franklin Merrell-Wolff on the kind of thinking he
encountered:
"There is a sense of enormous *depth penetration* with two phases barely
distinguishable during this first phase of insight. The first phase is
highly noetic but superconceptual. [Footnote: By "superconceptual" I mean
beyond the the form of all possible concepts that can be clothed in words.
However, the nature of this knowledge is nearer to that of our purest
concepts than it is to perceptual consciousness.] I had awareness of a kind
of thought of such an enormous degree of abstraction and universality that
it was barely discernible as being of noetic character. If we were to
regard our most abstract concepts as being of the nature of tangible
bodies, containing a hidden but substantial meaning, then this transcendent
thought would be of the nature of the meaning without the conceptual
embodiment. It is the compacted essence of thought, the "sentences" of
which would require entire lifetimes for their elaboration in objective
form and yet remain unexhausted at the conclusion of such effort. In my
relative consciousness, I knew that I KNEW in cosmical proportions.
However, no brain substance could be so refined as to be capable of
attunement to the grand cosmical tread of those Thoughts."
"Associated with the transcendent Life-force, there is a very curious kind
of *cognition*. It is not the more familiar analytic kind of intellection.
To me, this development has proved of especial interest, for by temperament
and training my mental action, heretofore, has been predominantly analytic.
Now analysis achieves its results through a laborious and painful
dissection of given raw material from experience and a reintegration by
means of *invented* concepts applied hypothetically. This gives only
external relations and definitely involves "distance" between the concept
and the object it denotes. But there is another kind of intellection in
which the concept is born spontaneously and has a curious identity with its
object. The Life-force either brings to birth in the mind the concepts
without conscious intellectual labor or moves in parallelism with such
birth. Subsequently, when these concepts are viewed analytically and
critically, I find them almost invariably peculiarly correct. In fact, they
generally suggest correlations that are remarkably clarifying and have
enabled me to check my insight with the recognition of others."
"Undoubtedly, this cognitive process is a phase of what has been called by
many "intuition". For my part, however, I do not find this term wholly
satisfactory, because "intuition" has been given a number of meanings that
are not applicable to this kind of cognition. Accordingly, I have invented
a term that seems much more satisfactory. I call it "Knowledge through
Identity". As it is immediate knowledge, it is intuitive in the broad
sense, but as it is highly noetic, it is to be distinguished from other
forms of immediate awareness that are largely, if not wholly,
non-cognitive.There are intuitive types of awareness that are quite
alogical, and, therefore, such that they do not lead to logical development
from out their own nature. In contrast, Knowledge through Identity is
potentially capable of expansive development of the type characteristic of
pure mathematics....Knowledge through Identity is not to be regarded as an
analytic extraction from experience, but rather as a Knowledge that is
original and coextensive with a Recognizable, but nonexperiential, Reality.
It is capable of rendering experience intelligible, but is not itself
dependent upon experience."
"While in the State, I was particularly impressed with the fact that the
logical principle of contradiction simply had no relevancy. It would not be
correct to say that this principle was violated, but rather, that it had no
application. For to isolate any phase of the State was to be immediately
aware of the opposite phase as the necessary complementary part of the
first. Thus the attempt of self-conscious thought to isolate anything
resulted in the immediate initiation of a sort of flow in the very essence
of consciousness itself, so that the nascent isolation was transformed into
its opposite as co-partner in a timeless reality."
[All quotes taken from the chapter "A Mystical Unfoldment" of his
"Experience and Philosophy"]
Merrell-Wolff, by the way, also credits his studies in philosophy and
mathematics to have been an aid to enlightenment.
- Scott
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