AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 3:42 amMan that was a fantastic essay, especially the sections above. These correlations between the psycho-spiritual realm and the 'physical' realm will be what most idealists have a hard time accepting. I personally have a lot of hesitancy and skepticism about them. I start to wonder, how far can we really take this? Can we draw correlations between every single 'object' in the physical realm and an underlying 'psycho-spiritual' being or process? Kantian idealism would reply with a hard "NO". Hoffman's IPT model similarly implies a world of 'icons' which cannot possibly correlate to the things-in-themselves, although perhaps IPT is only dealing with sensory correlations and not psycho-spiritual ones? BK's MAL model seems much more flexible and could accommodate such correlations, since the 'natural world' is already viewed as being representative of 'orderly' excitations within MAL.
Despite my ingrained skepticism, it also seems to me that idealism necessitates a correspondence between the appearances and the represented 'things' as such. Our givens of experience in the world of conscious activity should always link back to some fundamental aspect of that world. Phenomenology and Jungian psychology pursued that path very fruitfully. And then you have Steiner's Anthroposophy which clearly aligns with what Harpur is discussing in his essay. So maybe everything from quarks and gluons to rocks and rivers and 'dark matter/energy' and black holes reveals, in our rationalistically distorted way, a fundamental insight into the noumenal reality, if we can just reframe the axioms through which we perceive and think about them.
I tend to feel much the same ambivalence ... In any case, it seems that whatever such primal noumenal ideation may be like, whatever fundamental inspirations the phenomenal representations of nature bespeak, are irrevocably lost in poor translation into our inherently limited languaging of it, such that even the most inspired poets are left with "the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao". Perhaps when one is ready to utterly die, and abandon every possible alter-mode expression, then one can once again know this primal state. But then what remains to tell anyone? You see the conundrum.
I'm not so pessimistic on that front. We have good evidence that our relatively recent ancestors had vision which could penetrate the numinous quality of their collective representations. That means such a capacity also lies dormant in us as their descendants. It just takes some clear thinking, training and practice like everything else.
"You need soft eyes" -Bunk Moreland
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
I'm not so pessimistic on that front. We have good evidence that our relatively recent ancestors had vision which could penetrate the numinous quality of their collective representations. That means such a capacity also lies dormant in us as their descendants. It just takes some clear thinking, training and practice like everything else.
"You need soft eyes" -Bunk Moreland
You may well be right, and the problem may well lie with our capacity for linguistic expression of the 'noumenal' having been bastardized and usurped by the materialist mindset and its lingo, and that we may have to relearn this dormant talent within the context of a paradigm based in the primacy of consciousness, albeit easier said than done.
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
I'm not so pessimistic on that front. We have good evidence that our relatively recent ancestors had vision which could penetrate the numinous quality of their collective representations. That means such a capacity also lies dormant in us as their descendants. It just takes some clear thinking, training and practice like everything else.
"You need soft eyes" -Bunk Moreland
You may well be right, and the problem may well lie with our capacity for linguistic expression of the 'noumenal' having been bastardized and usurped by the materialist mindset and its lingo, and that we may have to relearn this dormant talent within the context of a paradigm based in the primacy of consciousness, albeit easier said than done.
Perhaps even much of the language can be retained if the conscious paradigm in which it is expressed reverses, lands a K-Flip.
Right now it is snowing outside. Am I perhaps 'seeing' the purity of angelic thought-beings showering the Earth? Or did I just stretch the psycho-spiritual correlation too far? Perhaps they only apply at the 'invisible' scales of our representational realm, tiny or enormous or energetic, where our Imagination has a blank 'canvas' on which to project its repressed psychic contents?
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
This short video is very relevant to Harpur's essay. He talks about how the "digital" is viewed as opposite to the "physical" in the modern de-spiritualized era, and how our computers are the lamps containing the Djinn who will grant our wishes. Finally, he relates it to the Jung/Neumann archetype of the devouring Great Mother.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
The_Soft_Parade wrote: ↑Tue Jan 26, 2021 5:17 am
This seems fascinating!
Could you elaborate?
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
