findingblanks wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:45 am
Okay, I can let Abraxas (to the extent I have an understanding of how that is being used) be the blind, instinctive will. And then from that will we have core manifestations. You name two of them "God" and "Devil".
So does this mean that you would be thinking of "God" as a pattern of forces/images/activies that human's represent? And same with the Devil?
"In other words I don't see Kastrup's M@L as relating to Schopenhauer's 'blind, instinctive will', I see M@L as Jung's Pleroma but Abraxas as something which, as Jung wrote "Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general." More like Schop's 'blind, instinctive will.'"
Since my instinct is to equate Kastrup's MaL with "the will", I need to look carefully at how you are setting things up here. Maybe one way I can get there is to ask you this:
If 'blind' and 'instinctive' describe Abraxas, what characterizes Pleroma/M@L? And am I correct in that we are thinking of Pleroma/M2L as more fundamental that that which manifests from it, which is the blind will/Abraxas?
It's Jung who names them but for me the names aren't as important as what they may be pointing to. I would prefer a more agnostic way of expressing these things but I'm not going to fall into a ditch over it or I would miss the point.
OK, let me see if I can articulate how I see it but yes, your last question is a good precis of it. It might be useful to refer to Jung's Seven Sermons here:
http://www.gnosis.org/library/7Sermons.htm whereas you're likely more current with Kastrups work so I'll assume that. I'd also like to start in a fairly simple way and get to the nitty gritty in later posts, as much as I am able and competent enough. This is where I feel you can help me.
Both in Jung's terms (Pleroma) and I believe what Kastrup is pointing to (M@L) seems to me that they are essentially similar, perhaps entirely. It's worth quoting Jung here:
"
I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In infinity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, as for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities.
This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma.
In the pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about the pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution.
But wherefore, then, do we speak of the pleroma at all, since it is thus everything and nothing?
I speak of it to make a beginning somewhere...
When we distinguish qualities of the pleroma, we are speaking from the ground of our own distinctiveness and concerning our own distinctiveness. But we have said nothing concerning the pleroma."
Then asking if Kastrup is speaking of the same thing, just in different terms, when he suggests that Mind (I prefer this to consciousness in this context) is the ontological primitive and the one thing we must assume because we can not reduce any further. So we can't get 'behind' it to observe it and indeed it would be impossible let alone circular. The M@L Kastrup speaks about, in it's ontic foundation, is not meta-conscious, nor, I would say, even conscious although we might say that it is the ground of consciousness itself, or Mind. Even this is problematic because we have a tendency to want to nail a word to it and capture it so that it can have distinction and therefore relation and therefore meaning. But really all we might legitimately say is that 'it is of itself' and no more, even that can be misleading as it suggests an 'itself'. Jung says it far more ably than I ever could but I feel that the Pleroma is what Kastrup is pointing at when he uses the term M@L as ontological primitive. In more poetic terms I might say that it is the 'space' in which the dream can take place but it is not the dream nor the dreamer as they would be effects/distinctions. "
The eternal and infinite possess no qualities."
So then when Kastrup makes his next move we have excitations within M@L and he uses the metaphor of waves in water. I'd have to go back to Kastrup's books to see what exactly he says about this as I can't recall precisely. But it does appear to me that these excitations are 'instinctive' and 'blind'. I would see these as the foundational 'indefinite' yet 'distinct' expression of all potential forms/images, coming into being/transforming/going out of being/coming into being etc. This also seems to me, in the limited way I understand, to be Schopenhauer's 'blind, instinctive will'. Which to me seems similar to Abraxas "
Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general......It is force, duration, change."
In one sense then this is like a dream world, and if I remember correctly Kastrup talks about this in More Than Allegory in the fictional story at the end. A sense of consciousness of instinctively created images and when I read Jung's Sermon III I can get a sense of this in the way Jung describes Abraxas. Especially as he starts it with "
Its power is the greatest, because man perceiveth it not. From the sun he draweth the summum bonum; from the devil the infimum malum; but from Abraxas life, altogether indefinite, the mother of good and evil."
"...
but from Abraxas life" Life, death, good, evil, hot, cold etc and even more specifically "
It is the life of creatura." (Man) and "
It is the operation of distinctiveness." (Images) or as Kastrup would say "What it looks like..."
So then it gets interesting for me because Kastrup suggests that at some point there are images that loop back on themselves and in doing so create a reflective surface and it is from this reflective surface that awareness or meta-cognition can arise. But what's really interesting for me is that this arises out of the 'effect' of Abraxas or 'blind, instinctive will', which is not meta-conscious.
So in a real sense whilst Jung says that we are inescapably bound to 'terrible' Abraxas, "
But Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing." we are a Creatura of the Pleroma, "
Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous."
So, for me, M@L is the Pleroma and Abraxas is 'Blind, instinctive will.' Apologies if this isn't entirely all lined up and neat and if my articulation isn't spot on.
