Jung and Deleuze

[SanteriSatama]

Implied in that are all sorts of things, but most importantly the notion that it does not make sense to speak of any archetypes or Self who exist and objectively ground all other phenomenon through their verifiable activity. Without that objectiveness and verifiability, the danger of nihilism reappears and this time there is not even faith in Being to fall back on because that has already been removed from the space of possibilities.

It was said: both socially and spiritually constructed, and archetypes and various notions of self etc. spirits exist relationally in our social realities. This does not make spirits any less real.

As for "objectiveness and verifiability", if you go to an African village and tell that you don't perceive spirits, and nobody else does where you come from, they laugh at you and think you are crazy, as spirit world is part of their everyday phenomenal reality.

Instead of "objective verifiability" - which echoes physicalism - it makes more sense to speak of intersubjective of more accurately multiperspectival realities.

In materialistic conditioning children are told that their "imaginary friends" don't exist. And by such conditioning the filter of ego-I is constructed to block most of meaning and to think that it is the source of meaning.

The Dalai Lama quote is a great example of that abstraction. He is basically saying the law of phenomenal cause-and-effect is more real than the ego-"I" which experiences and gives meaning to that relation in the first place, so that we can understand what such a law entails.

Buddhist philosophy of cause and effect is much much deeper than the reductionistic physicalist crap you are thinking. Dalai Lama is speaking from contemplation of Wild Fox Koan and similar wisdom. Codependent arisings is the beginning of coherent contemplation of cause and effect, not the end.

[AshvinP]

The "anti-foundationalist" who critiques their phenomenology with abstract philosophy and social science has already betrayed their purpose by relying on the very thing that they are critiquing in the modern age.

Nagarjuna, at least, anticipates this with his teaching of the emptiness of emptiness. Emptiness also has no inherent existence, as do the teachings which teach emptiness. Further, emancipation (or nirvana) is itself the cessation of grasping for inherent existence, an overcoming of the 'will to truth'.

It would never occur for ancient people 2,000 years ago to elevate phenomenal relations as they are perceived over noumenal essences which remain invisible.

The Buddha taught the doctrine of no-self in opposition to the Brahmanic concept of Self, so whilst they are certainly not identical, I think there are some similarities in the tensions between Buddhism and Hinduism in ancient times and those between postmodernism and idealism.

It is very hard for us to imagine how ancient people experienced the world much differently than we do today. It is literally as if a 3-dimensional being is trying to imagine its existence in a 2-dimensional world. This is not Western European dimensional superiority complex - our 3-dimensional perspective sacrifices quality of experience for precision, so our relation with noumenal essences is now almost non-existent compared to the ancients and most people believe abstract quantities are more real than the underlying essential qualities. The tensions really are not similar to those between modernism and all other non-modern philosophies. Mostly the modern and post-modern tensions are all existing within the sphere of abstract intellectual space which simply did not exist before the 15th century.

I am really not trying to be pedantic here - these considerations are of massive importance and take a lot of effort to discern properly. They may lead us to conclusions we were not previously comfortable with, questioning the worldviews we have built up within our spheres of philosophical study, and it is painful to sacrifice aspects of those worldviews to make room for others, but that is what is asked of us by our higher Self. If we go into any study thinking these things cannot possibly exist, then obviously we will not find them to exist. I am not sure about Nagarjuna, but many mystics arrive at the "emptiness of emptiness" because they are not seeking any reality beyond that. The deeper reality requires what Cleric often refers to as going through the "pinhole" of perception-cognition. The threshold of the deeper Self who is beyond that emptiness of emptiness. I think Steiner speaks of the proper mindset well:

This esoteric knowledge is no more of a secret for the average human being than writing is a secret for those who have never learned it. And just as all can learn to write who choose the correct method, so, too, can all who seek the right way become esoteric students and even teachers. In one respect only do the conditions here differ from those that apply to external knowledge and proficiency. The possibility of acquiring the art of writing may be withheld from someone through poverty, or through the conditions of civilization into which he is born; but for the attainment of knowledge and proficiency in the higher worlds, there is no obstacle for those who earnestly seek them.

It was said: both socially and spiritually constructed, and archetypes and various notions of self etc. spirits exist relationally in our social realities. This does not make spirits any less real.

As for "objectiveness and verifiability", if you go to an African village and tell that you don't perceive spirits, and nobody else does where you come from, they laugh at you and think you are crazy, as spirit world is part of their everyday phenomenal reality.
...
Buddhist philosophy of cause and effect is much much deeper than the reductionistic physicalist crap you are thinking. Dalai Lama is speaking from contemplation of Wild Fox Koan and similar wisdom. Codependent arisings is the beginning of coherent contemplation of cause and effect, not the end.

Everything I wrote to Justin above applies to our conversation as well. One can call it "spiritually constructed", but it is still being used in that abstract "anti-foundationalist" manner. The villagers would laugh at us for saying that, without a doubt, but you would also laugh at them if they told you the spirit world has an objective texture which can be systematically explored and the wisdom gained could be brought back into Earthly realm for practical use and teaching to children (of course they would not use those exact words). I know that is your response because that's how you respond with Cleric and I for saying the same exact thing. There is a lot of talk about "continuous process", but whenever that process begins leading in a direction you prefer not to travel, then it becomes, "we must stop here and go no further, because all knowledge beyond this threshold is actually delusion of Ego-Self!". It doesn't matter if we are speaking of the deepest essence of Karmic laws - it is only the Ego-I which makes it possible for those laws to have any meaning whatsoever. There are no codependent arisings or Karmic laws without a perspective (or 'aperspectival' Self) from which they are experienced and comprehended. Steiner's teaching is precisely about how our ego-I can be taken with us into exploration of the higher worlds.

[SanteriSatama]

Everything I wrote to Justin above applies to our conversation as well. One can call it "spiritually constructed", but it is still being used in that abstract "anti-foundationalist" manner. The villagers would laugh at us for saying that, without a doubt, but you would also laugh at them if they told you the spirit world has an objective texture which can be systematically explored and the wisdom gained could be brought back into Earthly realm for practical use and teaching to children (of course they would not use those exact words). I know that is your response because that's how you respond with Cleric and I for saying the same exact thing.

I merely object to the term "objective" with its physicalist and SO-dualism connotations. The actual meanings of mappings and commons of shamanic journeys -"textures" as you say, quite beautifully, woven together by all our relations - are social and multiperspectival.

You still think that I have been responding to you and Cleric personally, and take the comments personally, and that's OK. I've trying to explain that I'm responding to English language, which due it's history and layers of witch hunts, materialism, colonialism etc. has been actively trying to erode and deny meaningful language and ability to communicate our cumulative wisdom of interacting in and with spiritual worlds.

When we travel to the Below, Above and Middle realms, that's still a very low resolution mapping, but even as such, cannot be claimed to be "objective universal", even though it's analogous and useful mapping in many relations. And yes, the purpose is to gather experiences from the Below and Above regions and bring the learning into this Middle region.

There is a lot of talk about "continuous process", but whenever that process begins leading in a direction you prefer not to travel, then it becomes, "we must stop here and go no further, because all knowledge beyond this threshold is actually delusion of Ego-Self!".

Those are your words, not mine. Paying attention to how we project can be a very good practice of gnothi seauton.

The role and purpose of a path-finder is to scout and return to fellow travelers, whom the path-finder serves, to tell which directions to avoid, which might be worth a try. If it's just knowledge for the sake of knowledge that you desire, you must make such journey alone. You are not allowed to force others on such journey, make others victims of your journey if it ends badly. There are rules, you know, or should know.

[AshvinP]

Everything I wrote to Justin above applies to our conversation as well. One can call it "spiritually constructed", but it is still being used in that abstract "anti-foundationalist" manner. The villagers would laugh at us for saying that, without a doubt, but you would also laugh at them if they told you the spirit world has an objective texture which can be systematically explored and the wisdom gained could be brought back into Earthly realm for practical use and teaching to children (of course they would not use those exact words). I know that is your response because that's how you respond with Cleric and I for saying the same exact thing.

I merely object to the term "objective" with its physicalist and SO-dualism connotations. The actual meanings of mappings and commons of shamanic journeys -"textures" as you say, quite beautifully, woven together by all our relations - are social and multiperspectival.

You still think that I have been responding to you and Cleric personally, and take the comments personally, and that's OK. I've trying to explain that I'm responding to English language, which due it's history and layers of witch hunts, materialism, colonialism etc. has been actively trying to erode and deny meaningful language and ability to communicate our cumulative wisdom of interacting in and with spiritual worlds.

When we travel to the Below, Above and Middle realms, that's still a very low resolution mapping, but even as such, cannot be claimed to be "objective universal", even though it's analogous and useful mapping in many relations. And yes, the purpose is to gather experiences from the Below and Above regions and bring the learning into this Middle region.

There is a lot of talk about "continuous process", but whenever that process begins leading in a direction you prefer not to travel, then it becomes, "we must stop here and go no further, because all knowledge beyond this threshold is actually delusion of Ego-Self!".

Those are your words, not mine. Paying attention to how we project can be a very good practice of gnothi seauton.

The role and purpose of a path-finder is to scout and return to fellow travelers, whom the path-finder serves, to tell which directions to avoid, which might be worth a try. If it's just knowledge for the sake of knowledge that you desire, you must make such journey alone. You are not allowed to force others on such journey, make others victims of your journey if it ends badly. There are rules, you know, or should know.

It is very interesting how you write one thing and mean the exact opposite of what you are writing at the same time. You write "actual meanings of mappings" and then proceed to focus on everything but the actual meanings of what I wrote. You write about "role and purpose" while denying real existence to both. Your "responding to English language" is exactly a way to avoid responding to the actual meaning of what we are writing. My suggestion is that you stop manufacturing abstract entities of "witch hunts, colonialism, etc." to respond to and try responding to the living human beings who are communicating meaning in what they write. We want you to respond to us personally and not abstractly as caricatures of "enemies" from Lord of the Rings. The world is not your own personal toy to play around with by yourself. I see someone else also pointed this out to you on another thread where you say "mystical formalist" - a new member who picked it up within one comment thread. I have been involved in dozens of comment threads with you, and every time we reach the same roadblock when the conversation risks going beyond mere personal speculation into the realm of shared meaning. You decide to exit because going further will force you to expand your knowledge past the point you want to remain stationary in. Maybe, just maybe, it is not all in our heads "projected" onto you but there is a common pattern of anti-Thinking and anti-process that we can discern from your comments. Until you figure that out for yourself, it is no use writing more meaningful sentences which will be ignored to argue against a metanarrative only occurring in your own abstract thought.

[SanteriSatama]

It is very interesting how you write one thing and mean the exact opposite of what you are writing at the same time. You write "actual meanings of mappings" and then proceed to focus on everything but the actual meanings of what I wrote. You write about "role and purpose" while denying real existence to both.

What am I denying, exactly?

Your "responding to English language" is exactly a way to avoid responding to the actual meaning of what we are writing. My suggestion is that you stop manufacturing abstract entities of "witch hunts, colonialism, etc." to respond to and try responding to the living human beings who are communicating meaning in what they write.

"Witch hunts, colonialism, etc." are not abstract entities, nor manufactured by me.

I'm very happy that you mention living human beings, even though "they" still remain in the third person as "they" become written. When you write, that is the actual meaning you communicate. There's a real human being there, reaching, being reached, but still unable to say "I, a human being".

We want you to respond to us personally and not abstractly as caricatures of "enemies" from Lord of the Rings.

I don't wear a mask aka "person". I'm not a "person", a mask that wants to pick up a fight and create drama. I don't want to create drama with the person mask, I don't want to play the game that the person mask occupying and colonizing your 1st person plural wants to play. I am talking to the human behind the mask. Come, human, drop the mask.

every time we reach the same roadblock when the conversation risks going beyond mere personal speculation into the realm of shared meaning.

Yes, the "roadblock" of my refusal to bend my knee to the realm of the dying echoes of the dead god of the Catholic Church, to accept slavery to the Inquisitor of Ivan's story. Their meaning of fear and violence, meaning of dishonesty and escapism, is not the meaning I want to share.

[AshvinP]

It is very interesting how you write one thing and mean the exact opposite of what you are writing at the same time. You write "actual meanings of mappings" and then proceed to focus on everything but the actual meanings of what I wrote. You write about "role and purpose" while denying real existence to both.

What am I denying, exactly?

Your "responding to English language" is exactly a way to avoid responding to the actual meaning of what we are writing. My suggestion is that you stop manufacturing abstract entities of "witch hunts, colonialism, etc." to respond to and try responding to the living human beings who are communicating meaning in what they write.

"Witch hunts, colonialism, etc." are not abstract entities, nor manufactured by me.

I'm very happy that you mention living human beings, even though "they" still remain in the third person as "they" become written. When you write, that is the actual meaning you communicate. There's a real human being there, reaching, being reached, but still unable to say "I, a human being".

We want you to respond to us personally and not abstractly as caricatures of "enemies" from Lord of the Rings.

I don't wear a mask aka "person". I'm not a "person", a mask that wants to pick up a fight and create drama. I don't want to create drama with the person mask, I don't want to play the game that the person mask occupying and colonizing your 1st person plural wants to play. I am talking to the human behind the mask. Come, human, drop the mask.

every time we reach the same roadblock when the conversation risks going beyond mere personal speculation into the realm of shared meaning.

Yes, the "roadblock" of my refusal to bend my knee to the realm of the dying echoes of the dead god of the Catholic Church, to accept slavery to the Inquisitor of Ivan's story. Their meaning of fear and violence, meaning of dishonesty and escapism, is not the meaning I want to share.

No, the human behind the mask is telling you that you are not talking to him. The human behind the mask did not mention anything about "witch trials, colonialism, etc.". He did not talk about the use of pronoun "they". He did not talk about the Catholic Church or the Inquisition. He is now not saying that only those words were not used, but also that no concepts even remotely related to those abstract entities were used. You are denying that anyone can have personal autonomy and communicate meaning in words without becoming a mouth-piece or "mask" for your "oppressor" flavor of the week. You are only always debating those oppressors in your own head. Anyway, that's my last response on this banter unless you somehow bring it back to Jung and Deleuze and manage to write something of relevance and substance.

[SanteriSatama]

No, the human behind the mask is telling you that you are not talking to him. The human behind the mask did not mention anything about "witch trials, colonialism, etc.". He did not talk about the use of pronoun "they". He did not talk about the Catholic Church or the Inquisition. He is now not saying that only those words were not used, but also that no concepts even remotely related to those abstract entities were used.

Still in the third person.

You are denying that anyone can have personal autonomy and communicate meaning in words without becoming a mouth-piece or "mask" for your "oppressor" flavor of the week.

I'm all for spiritual sovereignity and anarchy (cf. Deleuze). That is why I read and comment the texture as it is being woven from the archetypal and spiritual forces, habits and conditionings, including very much the collective Shadow of suppressed and denied ancestral experiences of the European psyche (cf. Jung).

Witch hunts and colonization remain very active and concrete forces in the form of Western mainstream phsychiatry, which diagnoses symptoms of shaman disease - or just having strong ethical sense - as schizophrenia. Deleuze and Guattari pick the term, and turn it around:

Deleuze and Guattari describe schizophrenia as vast and unbound as opposed to something linear and set in place, propelling its subjects towards unpredictable and revolutionary behavior; the book extends from much of Deleuze's work in Difference and Repetition (1968) which similarly details being as vast and unbound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus
https://libcom.org/files/Anti-Oedipus.pdf

You talk the talk, but are you willing to walk the walk? On the gate of Moria it is written: "Speak "friend", and enter".

[AshvinP]

Deleuze and Guattari describe schizophrenia as vast and unbound as opposed to something linear and set in place, propelling its subjects towards unpredictable and revolutionary behavior; the book extends from much of Deleuze's work in Difference and Repetition (1968) which similarly details being as vast and unbound.

I prefer Owen Barfield's much less abstract take on the living essence of Schizophrenia, as well as Jung's:

There are two things that are noticeable about the modern psychology... the first is that the root, the subconscious root, of schizophrenia is increasingly being traced to the experience of what I will for the moment call "cut-offness". The second is that the experience is increasingly being regarded, not as one that is peculiar to the patient, but in a greater or less degree as one that is the predicament of humanity, or certainly Western humanity, as a whole.
...
The clinically schizoid are simply the ones who are becoming most sharply aware of it. Thus, they speak of the personality, or the self, as being isolated, encapsulated, excluded, estranged, alienated. There are many different ways of putting it. But what the self of each of us feels isolated from, cut off from, by its encapsulation in the nakedly physical reality presented to it by the common sense of contemporary culture, is precisely its own existential source [the 'true Self'].

Sin and Madness, by Dr. Shirley Sugerman... argues, convincingly to my mind, that what is now conceived and felt as insanity can only be properly understood as the evolutionary metamorphosis of what was formerly conceived and felt as sin.
...
But can there by sin without guilt? Paul Ricouer, in his book The Symbolism of Evil, observes, rightly I think, that a feeling of guilt is the fundamental experience of sin. If so, how can this contemporary madness, from which there is evidence that we all suffer, but about which we certainly do not feel guilty, have anything to do with sin? Perhaps because, although we do not feel guilty about the sin, we do feel guilty because of it.
...
There is atmosphere of guilt. Take for instance the issue of racialism, the relation between the advanced and the so-called "backward nations", or between white and colored... what was until recently called "the white man's burden" was a burden of responsibility, not of guilt.
...
People seem almost to go out of their way to find things to feel guilty about, or to encourage others to feel guilty about. I can think of two reasons in particular why it is bad... such confused feelings of guilt tend to beget paralysis rather than energy... when they do not beget paralysis, feelings of guilt tend to turn rather easily into feelings of hatred and contempt. We may feel a bit guilty ourselves, but we are very sure that a whole lot of other people are much more guilty, and probably ought to be destroyed.
...
And just this darker side to the experience of guilt seems to be even more evident when the experience is collective rather than when it is the individual. 'All are responsible for all', said Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. A noble, a truly human sentiment - perhaps the only absolutely human sentiment there is... It is the irritation of guilt that turns it into the impulse to compel, into a determination to use every kind of violence, every device of indoctrination, in order to enforce on all a systematic equality that must entail a mechanical and inhuman uniformity.

- History, Guilt and Habit - Chapter 2 - Modern Idolatry

The question of psychogenesis in mental diseases other than the neuroses, which are now generally considered psychic in origin, is discussed, and the psychic etiology of schizophrenia is affirmed. Mental processes are products of the psyche, and that same psyche produces delusions and hallucinations when it is out of balance. In turn, schizophrenia is considered as having a psychology of its own. But whereas the healthy person’s ego is the subject of his experiences, the schizophrenic’s ego is only one of the subjects. In schizophrenia, the normal subject has split into a plurality of autonomous complexes, at odds with one another and with reality, bringing about a disintegration of the personality.

-The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease

[JustinG]

Ashvin,

The immanence/transcendence and phenomenon/noumenon binaries are as much a part of modernity as the mind/matter binary. One of the strategies Deleuze uses in Difference and Repetition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_and_Repetition) to overcome these binaries is to critique the Western prioritization of identity over difference. I haven't read the book and don't claim to be knowledgeable on it, but if you ever decided to work your ideas on metamorphic progression into academic papers, you could do well to have a look at it.

Another strategy Deleuze uses to overcome modernist binaries is to characterize everything as existing on a 'plane of immanence'. I think the description by Hyo-Dong Lee of the Daoist characterisation of everything that exists as being constituted by Qi (translated as 'psychophysical energy') captures something of what is meant by this. Lee is a theologian who draws on the work of Deleuze. The full description is on the first few pages from chapter 1 of this book by Lee (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=oJ ... r_versions), but he sums up;

"In sum, psychophysical energy is what underlies and constitutes the dynamic, creative becoming that is the universe, encompassing both one and many, transcendent and immanent, object and event, organic and inorganic, ideal and material, mind and body, spirit and nature, and naturata naturans and naturata naturata."

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

The immanence/transcendence and phenomenon/noumenon binaries are as much a part of modernity as the mind/matter binary. One of the strategies Deleuze uses in Difference and Repetition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_and_Repetition) to overcome these binaries is to critique the Western prioritization of identity over difference. I haven't read the book and don't claim to be knowledgeable on it, but if you ever decided to work your ideas on metamorphic progression into academic papers, you could do well to have a look at it.

Another strategy Deleuze uses to overcome modernist binaries is to characterize everything as existing on a 'plane of immanence'. I think the description by Hyo-Dong Lee of the Daoist characterisation of everything that exists as being constituted by Qi (translated as 'psychophysical energy') captures something of what is meant by this. Lee is a theologian who draws on the work of Deleuze. The full description is on the first few pages from chapter 1 of this book by Lee (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=oJ ... r_versions), but he sums up;

"In sum, psychophysical energy is what underlies and constitutes the dynamic, creative becoming that is the universe, encompassing both one and many, transcendent and immanent, object and event, organic and inorganic, ideal and material, mind and body, spirit and nature, and naturata naturans and naturata naturata."

Justin,

I appreciate the links. I am not sure how I gave you the impression that I was ignoring those former binaries. My metamorphic essays were about overcoming all "essential" binaries, including noumenon-phenomenon and immanence-transcendence. We have spoken about reconceiving duality as polarity here often, in the spirit of Coleridge and Barfield. They both make up a significant portion of my perspective on these issues and Barfield is especially referred to often by me, as you can see in previous comment. I am not knowledgeable about Deleuze either, but I can sense that my biggest criticism of him will be the same as it is with all "post-structural" philosophers of this sort - he is making things unnecessarily abstract i.e. far removed from our concrete experience, which is basically the exact opposite approach to phenomenology. Coleridge, Steiner, Barfield, Heidegger, Gebser, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and others have already detailed all of his conclusions in much more accessible and concrete language. I don't even think it is hyperbole to say "all" - if you could find a metaphysical assertion Deleuze made that was not already made prior by one of those names in a much more accessible manner, I would be very surprised and would happily explore that assertion further via his writings. Here is Coleridge from his Biographia Literaria in the early 19th century (he may actually be the least accessible, up there with Heidegger, but still more accessible than the "post-structural" thinkers):

In the same sense the transcendental philosopher says; grant me a nature having two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely, while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity, and I will cause the world of intelllgences with the whole system of their representations to rise up before you.
...
When we have formed a scheme or outline of these two different kinds of force, and of their different results, by the process of discursive reasoning, it will then remain for us to elevate the thesis from notional to actual, by contemplating intuitively this one power with its two inherent indestructible yet counteracting forces, and the results or generations to which their inter-penetration gives existence, in the living principle and in the process of our own self-consciousness.
...
The counteraction then of the two assumed forces does not depend on their meeting from opposite directions; the power which acts in them is indestructible; it is therefore inexhaustibly re-ebullient; and as something must be the result of these two forces, both alike infinite, and both alike indestructible; and as rest or neutralization cannot be this result; no other conception is possible, but that the product must be a tertium aliquid, or finite generation. Consequently this conception is necessary. Now this tertium aliquid can be no other than an inter-penetration of the counteracting powers, partaking of both.