Metaphysic, Intuition, Intelligence

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Is there really a category of 'metaphysics' in the Occident? It is a meaningless term, isn't it?

Generally speaking, what does 'intuition' mean? Very little.

Intelligence is an historical word rich in meaning. But the meaning is no longer grasped.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

From an article by Rene Guenon "Oriental Metaphysics". (Available on 'Studies in Comparative Religion' website).

• "To comprehend universal principles directly the transcendent intellect must itself be of the universal order; it is no longer an individual faculty, and to consider it as such would be contradictory, as it is not within the power of the individual to go beyond his own limits and leave the conditions which limit him qua individual. Reason is a specifically human faculty, but that which lies beyond reason is truly “non-human”; it is this which makes metaphysical knowledge possible, and that knowledge, one must again emphasize, is not a human knowledge. In other words, it is not as man that man can attain it, but because this being which is human in one of its aspects is at the same time something other and more than a human being. It is the attainment of effective consciousness of supra-individual states which is the real object of metaphysics, or better still, of metaphysical knowledge itself. We come here to one of the most vital points, and it is necessary to repeat that if the individual were a complete being, if he made up a closed system like the monad of Leibnitz, metaphysics would not be possible; irremediably confined in himself, this being would have no means of knowing anything outside his own mode of existence. But such is not the case; in reality the individuality represents nothing more than a transitory and contingent manifestation of the real being. It is only one particular state amongst an indefinite multitude of other states of the same being; and this being is, in itself, absolutely independent of all its manifestations, just as, to use an illustration which occurs frequently in Hindu texts, the sun is absolutely independent of the manifold images in which it is reflected. Such is the fundamental distinction between “Self” and “I,” the personality and the individuality; as the images are connected by the luminous rays with their solar source, without which they would have neither existence nor reality, so the individuality, either of the human individual or of any other similar state of manifestation, is bound by the personality to the principial center of being by this transcendent intellect of which we are speaking. It is impossible, within the limits of this exposition, to develop these lines of thought more completely, or to give a more exact idea of the theory of multiple states of being; but I think I have said enough to show the extreme importance of all truly metaphysical doctrine."

I would imagine that Rene Guenon has been explored on this website though I have not bothered to check. He is one of the 'Traditionalists' who, if it is possible to abbreviate a description of their approach, do not imagine it possible to go forward to attain knowledge or 'true knowledge', but rather to return to a platform of understanding that has already been thoroughly explored, and which pre-exists. The implication is that it has all been done already, it has all been discovered already, either in this world, our world, or in all the worlds that have gone before and those that will come.

Intellect and intelligence take on a special meaning with Guenon, obviously linked to buddhi in Sanskrit. The word 'intellectus' in Latin indicates numerous things, and for the Medievalists and the Schoolmen, the world of intelligence pointed to an angelical over-world, and a part of man which he could access if he could overcome or resist the effects of the physical currents, so to speak, in which his body was ensconced. (Note the reference to the 'non-human' which is an area of supreme interest to the Schoolmen. Indeed in their metaphysic, or the popular and existential metaphysic of their day, it was a common notion that 'intelligent being' could make, and did make, regular entry into our lower-world reality. These patterns of conception still very much exist and it is surprising to note how they surface over and over again. We live in an upper surface of Medieval conception. And so, to understand ourselves, some grasp of Medieval metaphysics (in the common sense) and cosmology is required).

The traces of those old concepts are still evident in some common beliefs, and certainly in our language. According to Guenon, it is only in our Middle Ages and with the Medieval Schoolmen that we can find an articulated metaphysical school of a sort, but also according to Guenon it is rather completely contaminated with what, for Guenon, are the principal contaminants: theology and various forms of 'sentimentalism', and he is no fan of the Greek philosophical schools and generally holds them in distain. For Guenon and all Traditionalists it is our rational school and our false philosophical school that has gotten us into a rather dangerous fix from which we have no means to extract ourselves. We have lost the map, so to speak.

Guenon attaches a limited efficacy to 'reason' and he continually points in the direction of *something* toward which or in relation to which it is possible to orient oneself, yet states that no definition is possible, since a definition is a limitation. This is a bit of a conundrum, naturally, for anyone inclined to see verbal description as having a paramount importance or offering a solution to the problem of communication.

Reading the above-paragraph (Guenon's quote), it is obvious that it offers a pathway-of-concept that a person can, shall I say, 'employ' in order to begin a process of gaining some bit or some glimmer of the 'knowledge' about which Guenon is concerned. Guenon continually voices his preference for the non-sentimental, the non-religious mode, and an avoidance of theological notion or 'systematic theology', but his emphasis can only, unless I am mistaken, attempt to provoke a person to achieve knowledge, to 'know'. He is supremely ordered in his presentation but makes no claim to 'reveal' anything. Thus, it seems to me that he would only be able to say that words and discourse can 'allude' to something. If that is so it places unique emphasis on 'intelligence' and also 'intuition', which according to Guenon is significantly different than our sentiment-laden use of the word, and yet which he places over reason and ratiocination.

To say that 'in reality the individuality represents nothing more than a transitory and contingent manifestation of the real being' is to take a decidedly 'non-sentimental' stance in relation to the human world, and is thus radical to nearly the entirety of the Occidental existentialist focus. It is to describe, or to present as a possibility, the notion of an anchor or point-of-reference outside of our limited world. This can both strengthen an individual's platform of conception, as well as bring forward a group of problems relative to 'absolutism'. And it is this problem that is very much at the core of the whole issue of definition: that is, of radical definition. I would wish to suggest that 'radical definition' is the essential arena in which all question of value rests. If it isn't radical it cannot be effective, either for good or for evil.
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Gustav Bjornstrand = Alex Jacob.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines.


hosting imagenes
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Gustav Bjornstrand = Alex Jacob.

[Pam Seeback]

Hi Gustav/Alex :-)

At their core, the problem with Guenon's view of supra-rational intellectual knowledge is no different than that of the natural rationalists, that of mistaking effect for cause.

The ultimate cause or reality of a thing cannot be known by the intellect because the intellect is limited to its effect-nature, that of naming and defining. Even the 'holiest' of symbols express this most frustrating human limitation. Is the name tree 'pure' knowledge of tree (the truth of being tree?) No. It is for this reason the truthful man never forgets two things:

1. Names are temporal things (were there names when dinosaurs roamed the earth?)
2. The absolute is not a temporal thing.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello there. I believe I understand what you are saying. Except I am not clear about what to take away from

• "The problem with Guénon's view of supra-rational intellectual knowledge is no different than that of the natural rationalists, that of mistaking effect for cause".

It is that I am not sure of you are saying that you perceive that Guénon has a problem relative to his definition of the 'intellectual', or only that the 'natural rationalists' do?

I have no idea---ultimately--what Guénon is up to except that I find him and others like him useful as a pole with which to compare a general trajectory of our present. I describe that as one careening pell-mell, out of control, in non-intellectual forward motion. It is everything but intellectual, or so it seems to me.
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I am focussed in what might be described as an essentially tangible realm of consideration in my approach to all of this---a contradiction insofar as I seem to place in the limelight a notion of a 'metaphysic'.

Max Horkheimer described a core motive or motivator (for his political philosophy): "The emancipation of human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." This is a terribly problematic idea!

The ideas that I am working with---am trying to work with---weave in and out of this concept, taking it at face value in one moment and in another taking a more skeptical stance.

I attempt a critique of the present, our present, through analysis of the Frankfurt School, and I am working with the notion that our ideation, at profound as well as in superficial levels, has been infected by Marxian theory.

I deliberately avoid a critical stance, now, in relation to the House Philosophy so-called, but since I see our age as one 'infected' by Marxian acid and in need of a cure---I include myself in this---I have to say that I also see the influence of the Frankfurt School (which is as much a symbolic and general designation as it is an attempt at a precise one) in certain platforms supposedly 'spiritual' in nature. It is however more accurate to say that I intuit this and as I move to set forth ideas, I kinetically arrive at my definitions and statements. It is a strange way of working, I admit.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

• Now shadows move freely within me as words.
  These are eternal, these stunned, loosened verbs.
  And I can't tell you yet
  how truly I belong
  
  to the hiss and shift of the wind,
  these slow, variable mouths
  through which, at certain times, I speak in tongues.
  
  (from a poem by Louise Erdich)

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Let's try this ...

The definition of Universals, or the apprehension of a 'transcendental reality', is an elite activity, impossible for conditioned, unprepared, non-intellectual man, though all men, of whatever order, live in the idea-luminescence of accomplished men and seer-thinkers who discern 'higher truths' of this order. This means that most men live within lower-octaves of description or representation of high ideals: transcendent 'realities' which, for most, can never be more than symbolised representations.

The Medieval European world---the world of conquered, subservient European paganism; invaded, overpowered, and made serviceful in relation to a Great Ideal, a better-defined idea than anything primitive and pagan Europe could envision for itself---is replete with Symbols that pictorialise, abbreviate and condense transcendental knowledge, a sort of knowing that can only be grasped by the intellectual mind, a mind that functions in and deals on intellectual ideas.

Yet any pictogram, any chart, any map, any attempt at representation of what is beyond representation will always and can only be an imperfect rendering. And renderings are worse, or less complete, when they are riven with misconceptions and also with 'sentimentality': injections of emotional and sentimental content. The historical body of Europe, the historical mind of Europe, is in many respects a mass of confused ideation, competing ideas, in which tendentiousness as a quality of mind is evident. Many currents have formed that mind, and much has not been clarified and purified.

The primary container of transcendental ideas has been of course the Church; and conquest, indoctrination and administration as well as revelation of 'higher truths' has been its activity. Philosophy cannot very well, and does not seem to desire to, articulate transcendental conceptions and more often than not deals purely in critical commentary. Rationalistic thinking, which has attacked and significantly devastated the platform of 'transcendent revelation' of the Church, is not a friend of reestablishing link-ups to the realm of transcendental idealism. There is no philosophical system that could articulate a transcendental vision of Reality, and one reason is that 'transcendental reality' is supra-logical. It 'exists' above and beyond the word. Thus, it is intellectual and grasped intuitively. It is expressed---it is best expressed---through symbols which by-pass the logos-mind.

A word, and especially certain words (at their best and with certain articulation), is a symbol or a container. It contains and holds an abstract Idea, a transcendental idea. The word is not what the word represents, the word alludes. And what is alluded to is the transcendent.

But when words and the transcendent entity that embodies into words are brought down down down into 'our world' to become tools for conquest, expansion, commerce, and entertainment, and even general construction, we render words-as-symbols into arbitrary designations that reflect our own power-dynamics. When this happens (it is known as 'nominalism') one might employ a colourful metaphor to describe it: the spirt flees.

The spirit flees the laden and charged symbol and one is left with the shell, or in any case a less-spirited shell. Words and high symbols become just another currency, just additional objects that can be invested with one's own meanings, intentions and desires, as suit us in given and evolving moments.

More can be found here.
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Gustav Bjornstrand = Alex Jacob.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Whether we like it or not, and no matter if we understand it or not, our European culture, and our European mind, is a culture and mind that has evolved with and through Christian forms. Hatched and gestated as it were by the Church. A 'whole world'---that is, the Medieval world, and the High Middle Ages---embodies a peak of cultural form that placed the transcendent intellect at its centre. Filled to the brim with misconceptions, empirical errors, and distortions, it nevertheless was the container for all our notions of the transcendental.

As this is so, and with the idea of causation in mind, in order to trace back and comprehend the construction of our own self, a retracing of the elements of that intellectuality is necessary.

Similarly, as part of a project of analysis of causation, one is required to understand a peculiar and axial period of the evolution of thinking when the 'intellectual order' was overturned: the Seventeenth Century. But the thinking-style of the Seventeenth Century was not 'intellectual' in the sense referred to here. It was rational. And there is an abyss that separates them. Understanding the distinction between the two modes is crucial. They function differently.

Definitions and descriptions are required to describe the project(s) of the European Church. Analysis of these projects will lead to many different statements about the many different levels of operation and influence of the Church. These statements will span a gamut between negative and positive but in no matter what case there is no way that any of us can dismiss, or negate, or diminish, nor underestimate the influence of the Church and Greco-Christian modes in all levels of our thinking, acting and idealising. The Church (in this wide and general sense) is part of our own self even if we now reject it utterly.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Therefore the truthful or righteous path with regards to realizing the truth of ultimate reality is: still the emotions, still the rational, realize the truth of the unknowable Logos, return from realized truth of ultimate reality to be in the conditioned world but not of the conditioned world.

Please excuse me for dragging this over to this thread and commenting here. It is a rule I have to only occupy one thread for the duration.

Because this is an important issue and it factors into my analysis, your statement caught my attention. I suggest that there are different levels here to be considered. One, and this is the one that you speak to, and always have IMO, is the personal. It is important also to point out that Quinn and the others are also exclusively involved in a personal project of spirituality (or enlightenment or whatever they call it). What culture does is irrelevant to them. And what they do, too, is (largely) irrelevant to that culture.

They do not, and in a sense they cannot, speak to the culture at large, or to 'society', nor can they delve into social ethics, sexual ethics, the ethics of identity, nor 'right living', nor earning a living, nor really much of anything. The path they define is one of rejection of and withdrawal from surrounding society. It is a critical position with no investment in society. Neither livelihood, nor family, nor progeny, nor education. In this sense they dismiss from the platform of consideration what is in essence Occidental concerns.

But the culture of which we are products, and again I refer to the High Middle Ages and the Medieval epoch, dedicated intellect quite exclusively to determining and deciding all of the above. A world was built in relation to a metaphysical grasp or conceptualisation.

Here is a pictorial illustration. Note the 'cloud'. All things stand in relation to. (This is a picture of the Council of Trent).

As one moves to recover a 'transcendentalist' or anti-nominalist position, one will have to bring forth an answer to every open question about 'the right way to live'.

(People sometimes get confused by my presentation so I have to say that I am not fronting or purveying Christianity or Christian doctrines. It simply became obvious to me in my time spent on GF that it is impossible to dismiss them, nor all that has made us what we are).

[Bobo]

So... Why have you forsaken me?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I have a concern about the 'metaphysical implications' of being 'in the world but not of it'...

The idea, the fact really, of 'ownership interest' has been an important one for me. I came to it intuitionally and slowly I have begun to understand why it seemed relevant. Ownership interest is a concrete investment in things, in people, in outcomes, which demonstrates linkage to 'real things' in this 'real world'. Objectlessness, statements that could be understood as amounting to or predicating a state of quasi-being, can possibly be seen as metaphysical distortions that ally one with nebulous relationship to people, places, and things. Looked at in this way, a statement that I am 'in this world but not of it', if it is not very carefully qualified, can be seen as dangerously veering away from a 'real' stance toward 'real' things in a 'real' world. Even to say 'I am in and not of a world of sin and death' is potentially a lie, and thus a distortion of fact with metaphysical consequences. (Obviously, from a Christian theological perspective, the idea is that the soul is in the world but not of it so the statement is intelligible. But the emphasis is what counts. And the different emphasis is what is seen to have consequences).

Logical extension of the [what I am here describing as a] metaphysical distortion lead to the notion of a non-real individual in a non-real world. In this sense the predicate may be said to lead to the erasure of the individual, loss or sacrifice of personal power and effect, and eventually the sacrifice of *meaning*. Because if being in the world and being real *mean* something, then one's being should be seen as being real. And so should one's ideas, one's actions. A doctrine that supports the notion of a quasi-real is therefor a dangerous doctrine. Is it possible that by losing or letting go of an anchor in a conception of the 'real' that we---slowly or quickly---lose our ability to locate ourselves really in this world? Is this a destructive or a constructive doctrine?

The notion of 'sacrifice of substance' is attractive but also seductive. It can be seen as a surrender to irresponsibility and an irresponsibility to relationship and relatedness. To recognise ownership is to posit stewardship, and to recognise stewardship is to posit obligations of responsibility. If stewardship is recognition of an obligation to the dead that can only be paid to the unborn, then I must see myself as 'in the world and of the world' in an ever-increasing sense. My object would then be to more fully materialise myself!

The 'last metaphysical refuge' is investment in the realness of value. Yet instead of a metaphysical notion that levers us out of the world, we might just as well posit one that levers us toward evermore substantial effect in the world.
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Gustav Bjornstrand = Alex Jacob.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Hello Gustav,

Where will I start? Arktos introduced Gueon here in 2007 much like you're doing now here. But I hope you'll get more response than the last time.

Intellect and intelligence take on a special meaning with Guenon, obviously linked to buddhi in Sanskrit. The word 'intellectus' in Latin indicates numerous things, and for the Medievalists and the Schoolmen, the world of intelligence pointed to an angelical over-world

You see that a lot in theosophical teachings which do often use a comparable (competitive?) cosmology. Of course Hindu schools were hot at the time too! One teacher who comes to mind is Aurobindo who categorized mind with a range between physical and vital mind all the way up to intuition and overmind. I think he influenced Gueon too.

The following passage caught my eye and I'll grill you for it. It might relate to Pam's remark on "natural rationalists".

I attempt a critique of the present, our present, through analysis of the Frankfurt School, and I am working with the notion that our ideation, at profound as well as in superficial levels, has been infected by Marxian theory.

But one cannot just address "Marxian theory" or Marxism as mode of analysis without addressing at least historical materialism (materialist interpretation of historical development) and especially how the suggested dialectical method was derived from Kant and Hegel. There's also the distinct issue on how human nature is being defined by Marxists. Since I've already posted briefly about these issues with Marxism I might post or point to it later during any further discussion.

I deliberately avoid a critical stance, now, in relation to the House Philosophy so-called, but since I see our age as one 'infected' by Marxian acid and in need of a cure---I include myself in this---... It is however more accurate to say that I intuit this and as I move to set forth ideas, I kinetically arrive at my definitions and statements. It is a strange way of working, I admit.

Whenever moral value judgments like "acid" or "poison" are raised, one is forced to reveal the idealized platform of "health" at work, to make such evaluation possible. I might have challenged you on this before? Simply put, I'm not sure one can "arrive" at knowing a position when starting with that same position (like something being "acid"). Yes of course, in terms of the dialectic one can define oneself through various oppositions (the so-called anti-thesis). But such strong opposition is also a form of taking position. It already clarifies the position but generally such oppositional stance is directing away from any thorough self-analysis. However it might still work for you. But as long as a notion like "this age is infected by acid and diseased" remains the fundamental position fueling all further will and passion to reason any further, chances are that one only starts allowing whatever affirms that position. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

But one cannot just address "Marxian theory" or Marxism as mode of analysis without addressing at least historical materialism (materialist interpretation of historical development) and especially how the suggested dialectical method was derived from Kant and Hegel. There's also the distinct issue on how human nature is being defined by Marxists. Since I've already posted briefly about these issues with Marxism I might post or point to it later during any further discussion.

Please write something on 'how the suggested dialectical method was derived from Kant and Hegel'. If you link to the posts where you have spoken of your understanding of Marxism I will have a better understanding of your thinking.

As far as my own understanding goes, I think that it very much has to do with how human nature is defined by Marxists. And this of course is expressed in a modified form of Marxian thought: the so-called Frankfurt School, quite influential. I know that the FS is a scare-word and the influence of it is probably exaggerated. But I am reasonably sure that this style of thinking has penetrated our culture and our institutions but I lack a clear path to describing what that influence is, or how it is both negative or positive. You also know that I picked up some of my ideas about the FS from Jonathan Bowden, for example here. The ideas that mould our present, popularly, seem so utterly strange to me that one requires and searches for a corrective. Guenon, Evola and others become possibilities in which to locate counter-points.

Guenon was no fan of Theosophy and critiqued it thoroughly. He is really very good at what he does and one can learn a great deal from him. But to really appreciate him you have, I reckon, to have accepted his premises.

It is surprising in a sense that no conversations of Traditionalism have got off the ground here. I won't venture to opine why that is.

Whenever moral value judgments like "acid" or "poison" are raised, one is forced to reveal the idealized platform of "health" at work, to make such evaluation possible. I might have challenged you on this before? Simply put, I'm not sure one can "arrive" at knowing a position when starting with that same position (like something being "acid"). Yes of course, in terms of the dialectic one can define oneself through various oppositions (the so-called anti-thesis). But such strong opposition is also a form of taking position. It already clarifies the position but generally such oppositional stance is directing away from any thorough self-analysis. However it might still work for you. But as long as a notion like "this age is infected by acid and diseased" remains the fundamental position fueling all further will and passion to reason any further, chances are that one only starts allowing whatever affirms that position. Nothing more, nothing less.

We have encountered this before, and we will of course again. It has to do with 'predicates'. It is quite simple: I suggest that there is a sane and healthy environment as well as 'teaching' and group of activities that are beneficial for a child. One places a child in that environment and sees him thrive. I suggest too that there is one that is very much the opposite. Thus, valuation arises. While we might differ on details I doubt we would differ on substance.

Effectively, the whole theme and topic revolve around this issue, and of course who decides, and what values are placed in the centre. You know that the theme of 'acid' is pretty vital in my writing, and you of course have a much greater sense now than before as to why that is. My endeavour over the next years is to continue to trace back within our own traditional and other traditions to arrive at an intelligible discourse, discourse that I can make intelligible on this theme. I guess it has become my fate!

It already clarifies the position but generally such oppositional stance is directing away from any thorough self-analysis. However it might still work for you.

I don't think that noticing 'acid' or destructive elements must mean that one cannot be or is not self-critical. In fact I think self-criticism is at the core. One has to know how 'acids' have affected one's own self first to be able to make a statement about it in others.

What is the alternative that you would offer? Isn't this essentially a question of ethics? It is more than if it 'works' for me. As you know any person can come up with any sort of discourse and rap and invest it, sophistically, with content. He may be able to convince some people too. But that is how sophistry works, isn't it? In partial truths? The endeavour is, or should be, or must be, to hone one's declarations of truth to get as close as one can to a 'truthful statement' and perspective. One has no choice in this. My question to you is: What truthful statements would you make?

Can you speak some about why you are opposed to arriving at 'concrete definitions'? In any case this is my impression.

But as long as a notion like "this age is infected by acid and diseased" remains the fundamental position fueling all further will and passion to reason any further, chances are that one only starts allowing whatever affirms that position. Nothing more, nothing less.

To make the statement that you are making requires that you put your cards on the table. My sense is that you are skeptical and pessimistic and see no possible 'cure' or corrective when speaking abstractly or generally. Is this true specifically, too? All I can do is ask you to explain yourself more. I think this reduces for you to an axiom but I don't want to say. I only want to know what that axiom is. Can you state it?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It occurs to me that in any conversation on metaphysics, or transcendence, or strict materialism, that there always lurks the notion and sensation of death.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Sonnet 146 in 'plain English' for those not accustomed to Shakespearean...

[Bobo]

By the last metaphysical refuge I think you mean the idea that everyone is metaphysically guilty. Yeah that was supplanted in modernity by the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello Bobo. Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences wrote of 'the last metaphysical right': the property that one might own that would represent one's authentic connection, and commitment, to this reality. He was likely speaking of homestead, a place, a piece of land, some authentic (real) segment of the universe linked genuinely to oneself. I take the idea and modify and broaden it and thus make it a refuge for the self. The idea is to locate and to live in value, not to undermine and propose valulessness. The point is to draw a contrast with notions of propertylessness and aversion to developing 'ownership interest' in things tangible and real. It seems to me the most important 'thing' that one could define as a focus for one's valuation is one's children. In a broader sense that would mean 'unborn generation'. And so in a large sense it is education and knowledge and ethics---which is tangible and the result of lifetime's dedicated to developing it by those who pushed open those categories---that one should value. And of course I was drawing a contrast to the notion of 'being in the world and not of it'. To my ears it smacks of an unhealthy metaphysic (unless it is qualified).

If there is such a thing as 'metaphysical guilt' (as in 'fallen man' and such) it would seem to me that the remedy is, again, knowledge more-or-less. The notion of guilt is one that permeates our culture, obviously, the notion of Christian guilt that is. We always seem to have a focus on rectification. It is a feature of our ideation.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Well, it is a pain to upload those as to get them to display whole I have to upload a page at a time to create a 'hotlink'. And then post only 3 images at a time.

What I wish to point out here is first the concept of 'dashana'. Darshan as many know is generally take to mean 'vision' or 'veiwing'. When you go to Hindu temple and see the murtis it is said to be a 'darshan'. I always took it to mean that it was a viewing offered, say for example if you went to see a Hindu saint or something you 'receive their darshan'. But as I read Guenon I see that the idea is larger, and more revealing, more relevant and useful.

It means more 'angle of view', or a glimpse from a certain angle, and the genius of the Hindu system is that it understands that there are many different viewpoints that are possible when 'gazing', as it were, on the Divine, and I take this to mean 'the conceptual pathway that one uses'. The structure of Hindu thinking allows for a multiplicity of 'darshans'. Certainly this seems a necessity as every person is different, and their are different stations in life.

Richard Weaver speaks of one's 'metaphysical dream of the world', and I would place that in the category of a 'darshan': it is a way that one, in one's mind, conceives of what is quite simply not conceivable. In the most abstract sense God or divinity cannot be, say, immediately intelligible to us. We all have a 'metaphysical dream' of the reality in which we place ourselves, and we all 'employ' our view to navigate through this realm. What disconcerts us is when we run into another's metaphysical dream that is nothing like our own. How funny, how pointless in a way, that we imagine we can convert them to our (better) and truer view!

If you manage to get through this reading on 'Nyaya' (in Introduction to the Hindu Doctrines)---and the topic is of course completely germane to this forum, to its founders, and to all the conversations that weave in and out here---I wish to suggest what I think should be obvious: the rational and the rationalising and the logical mind offers to the user of it a 'darshan', a way of seeing, a way of conceiving, and certainly a way of talking about the sacred, or God, or the Absolute: a group of laden names which, we imagine, refers to something 'real'.

I am again focussed on movingalways and what appears to be a 'problem' she has with 'mind':

• "Logic gnaws at its own tail of the false construct, but it is not logic that swallows it, it is the subjective absolute. The deeper question as I see it is, as long as one is aware of the false construct being swallowed of the absolute, is one subjectively absolute?"

[Insofar as I understand, and perhaps I don't] it seems to me that she desires to counter, if you will permit me to say it that way, the particular method or 'darshan' of Quinn and the others: a gyani-esque approach to comprehending the Absolute. I reckon that many people struggle with their notion of what is required, and certainly I have objected to it as an exclusive declaration of 'method'. In fact there does not seem to be a fixed method despite our own self-love of our own cherished method and our ideas about it.

Yet, with additional information, such as Guenon offers here, I think a great deal of light is cast on the function of 'logic' and the predicating mind. In any case it seemed so to me when I read it.

Still in my view the point---if there is a point---is to clarify and purify our own relation to our own self and to our own culture and traditions. Do we not all have to remember that we are all in a process? If it doesn't revolve around the axial question How shall we live? what value is it?

[Pam Seeback]

Alex: I suggest that there are different levels here to be considered. One, and this is the one that you speak to, and always have IMO, is the personal. It is important also to point out that Quinn and the others are also exclusively involved in a personal project of spirituality (or enlightenment or whatever they call it). What culture does is irrelevant to them. And what they do, too, is (largely) irrelevant to that culture.

If one is not personally enlightened then how can they go out into the world and speak of enlightenment?

Alex: Logical extension of the [what I am here describing as a] metaphysical distortion lead to the notion of a non-real individual in a non-real world. In this sense the predicate may be said to lead to the erasure of the individual, loss or sacrifice of personal power and effect, and eventually the sacrifice of *meaning*. Because if being in the world and being real *mean* something, then one's being should be seen as being real. And so should one's ideas, one's actions. A doctrine that supports the notion of a quasi-real is therefor a dangerous doctrine. Is it possible that by losing or letting go of an anchor in a conception of the 'real' that we---slowly or quickly---lose our ability to locate ourselves really in this world? Is this a destructiveor a constructive doctrine?

It is not possible to erase one's being. Erasure of the body, ending death, as was stated by Shakespeare, this I believe is possible.

Alex: I have a concern about the 'metaphysical implications' of being 'in the world but not of it'...

To have such a concern implies you are speaking from the position of being of the universal order. To be in the world but not of the world simply means that one is identified with spirit and not flesh (ending the appearance of the body).

Alex: I am again focussed on movingalways and what appears to be a 'problem' she has with 'mind':

Logic (or emotion) is a problem (to me) because it is not absolute. Is it not also a problem for you since you seek to find universal absolutes or values?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Logic (or emotion) is a problem (to me) because it is not absolute. Is it not also a problem for you since you seek to find universal absolutes or values?

I have a more mediate position to fulfil, I suppose. It seems to me that a person, any person, might be able to have a 'darshana' of the Absolute. But it is more likely that since we indeed exist in the Finite that we do better to uderstand our particular 'metaphysical dream', our grasp of the transcendental, as partial. Who can know, and who can reveal, The Absolute?

Now, it is true that the great cultures indeed attempted to establish themselves on a relationship to the Absolute. That is why the Hindu doctrines seem to have a great deal of importance. The metaphysical vision was uniquely of-a-piece with their material and mundane predicates. And on the basis of a holistic vision they constructed an edifice of culture which assigned to each person, each individuality, a place and a role. Well, so the conception goes which, undoubtedly, has some romantic elements. And yet ...

Similarly, in our own Middle Ages, a very similar total-edifice was attempted. An intellectual order that encompassed theological ideas, the structure of society, and the functions of persons. What corresponds most to the Hindu order is our own Medieval order. Our own Europe was, in fact, an incredible and worthy accomplishment. And we are still *captured*, I suppose is the word, by the impulse, the possibility. We live in a shadow of fractured unity. (Although Diebert, for example, points out that that 'unity' never *really* existed).

What interests me, personally, is in understanding how we have fallen away from the idea-structures that would allow us to create a unified world, and I mean both microcosmically and macrocosmically. Not only are we divided inside of ourselves, the structures around us are in differing forms of chaos! Although culture offers people unprecedented opportunity (a platform in which a person can enjoy many years of living and years of life relatively free of debilitating pain) (a very real advantage) we pretty clearly are moving in directions in which the possibility of living in a 'unified' world seem to be receding. I also have the sense that a wonderful opportunity is being squandered.

GF and the folks who started it made and make a whole group of declarations about what is necessary and what isn't. It said 'We are going to answer the most important questions that have been and can be asked'. But the 'buddhist strategy', if I may call it that, seemed and seems to me not a viable path in any larger sense, but more evidence of dissolution. (Acid).

So, this got me to thinking. My thesis as of today is something like (and of course it sounds like a Declaration, a Manifesto, but it is all a sermonic effort, isn't it?): We need to redefine Core Values. We need to get very clear about how we evaluate. Making mistakes is really quite dangerous, and catastrophic even. We made errors of valuation and we have paid for them, are paying for them.

Since I am not capable of revealing, like some Oracle of God, nor of speaking as the Fount of the Transcendental about What Must Be, I am stuck working in an area of organising the reflections (of the Absolute).
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Louis Malle made a long documentary on India in 1969: L'Inde fantôme: Reflexions sur un voyage. There is one part of it, here, at 7:10-9:45, that surely must demonstrate something about functioning in or from an 'inner metaphysic' in relation to outer, ritual actions. There is something mesmerising in it, but then on another level it almost seems a madness from a modern perspective. Yet, thinking of the 'modern inane' and any number of insane actions and activities, it then looks sane and rational in comparison. It is interesting to consider 'the metaphysical dream' the priest operates from as he performs his oblations. We no longer perform oblations and most of what we do has little underpinning in anything 'metaphysical'.

[Bobo]

So you want metaphysics (and possibly society) to be under a material hierarchy. Knowledge pose a problem to that since a metaphysical principle as the same thing can be at two places at the same time doesn't apply to material things. Also the material may involve possibilities in the intellect. Maybe you are trying to reify your physical comfort into philosophy.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Spiritual to me, in our 'material world', and as far as our activities go, means 'idea' or 'concept'. To live by high ideas, high ideals, high concepts. I don't know what 'non-matter' is. Dualism as I would define it is between 'pure nature' (mindless) and the 'high-minded'. The best expressions of high-mindedness also always point to or reference themselves in relation to an 'invisible something-or-other' but I can't offer a definition of that. Can you?

[Pam Seeback]

Alex: We need to redefine Core Values. We need to get very clear about how we evaluate.

Since I am not capable of revealing, like some Oracle of God, nor of speaking as the Fount of the Transcendental about What Must Be, I am stuck working in an area of organising the reflections (of the Absolute).

Regardless of the values you or I believe to be important for the world or for ourselves, they come to us two ways, either we try to follow someone else's or we set our own. I know what values (or living words as I call them) support my being, I chose them or they chose me, I'm not sure which, this is 'my' subjective absolute. Do you not see the value in individual enlightenment wherein one ceases to listen to/follow the value reflections of others and stands firm on what is true and right for them? In other words, they live not of social ethics and mores as you seem to be proposing, but strictly of their conscience. Put in spiritual terms, to live of one's conscience and not of 'they say' is to be in union with God (the Absolute).