Yes and no. We can say what it is, but we cannot convey it to someone who does not have the experience necessary for understanding. If I say, “my coffee cup is black pottery,” you will know what that means (more or less) because you have experienced coffee cups, pottery, and the color black. You understand the difference between a coffee cup and a wineglass, between pottery and styrofoam, and between black and, say, green. But when I say “mystical experience is an experience of one’s own unity with all that is,” that conveys a precise meaning only to another mystic, who has shared that experience and knows what I am talking about. To someone who has not, it’s gobbledegook. And so, in trying to teach an aspirant, oftentimes one is better off using metaphorical language, poetic expression, rather than trying to describe the goal literally.
You know the Zen saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water”? Thinking is a part of that. One does not cease to be a human being. Therefore, one continues to think and feel. Cessation of thought is a temporary measure, a way of silencing the noise and allowing the quiet voice of the All to be heard. Or a way of putting down the mask, so that the true Face can be seen. But the trick is to keep hearing the voice through the noise, to remember the Face while wearing the mask. Not easy.
Well, there is one other thing: the use of magical power. The Kabbala has been used for that purpose as well. But as far as its spiritual value, I see the Tree of Life as a form of Jnana Yoga. In the end, one has to surpass such intellectual systems. They may serve as roads for a time, but like all roads they can only take you so far. One must eventually go cross-country. That’s especially true for someone who is inclined to intellectualize things. I am such a person, and I get the feeling you are, too. It’s very tepting to make a fine symbolic map of the universe, and suppose the understanding of such a map to be enlightenment – but it isn’t. At best, it’s a partial approach to enlightenment. At worst, it’s a crutch and a trap.
I propose we start a sauwelios fan club! Your artful integration, through thought, of science and philosophy to create relative, applicable, and potent points in an inspiration to those of us that believe in the beauty of the real philosophical experience.
“We who are about to die salute you” — Gladiator =D>
Navigator: I think you overlook the exhiliration that a system like Kabbalah can offer. To me it’s not an intellectual system primarily, but a tool to increase the depth and dynamism of meditation. I have to moderate it now, because it’s become frighteningly intense.
I don’t really think that enlightenment is an end either, though- it’s a state from which you can operate consciousness. I think I’ve attained enlightenment pretty early on as beginners luck when practicing Zen for the first time - but when you’re not living in the mountains in a monestary, it’s just not enough to see through the veil of maya. You need to empower yourself to get that state to alingn with your life. That’s hard work, and that’s where kabbalah comes in for me. It’s ploughing through the mud of ratio, fertilizing it for weird and wondrous plants to grow. Plants of enlightenment.
And yes, in the end all worthwile life is offroad. No matter how enlightened you are.
Coming late in these discussions, I wish to present a biopsychological perspective for what it’s worth. If anyone here believes in evolution, he/she will admit to physical, experiential precedents for mental development. In these precedents are communication before language and emotive intensifications of drives.
Dennett’s take on evolution is that there does not necessarily need to be explanations that consider some linear development from a single organism to a variety of species in order to explain what evolves. He thought what evolves can be expressed as the quality of adaptational potential. And, of course, this evolving is from a human take on reality.
The latest scientific findings are that bacteria communicate. Bees and ants comunicate by pheronomes (sp.?) Bats communicate by echolocation as do dolphins and whales. (We do know what it’s like to be a bat–sorry, Nagel.) Why should we contend that language communication is the only form of communication available? Humans may not communicate by echolocation, but they can at least understand it and construct sonar devices based on it. Humans do communicate more by scent than most are willing to admit. Only a century or so ago Napoleon wrote to Josephine, “Don’t bathe. I’ll be home in a couple of weeks.” (The scent of a woman!)
I know little of the Khabala, but recognize the experience of geometry. Why do we continually sell ourselves short by declaring this is all there is for some single aspect of our developmental processes?
Postscript, past Dennett–
The only evolution we can actually verify as homology, not analogy, is the genetic continuum. What a wealth of development of potentials this includes!!!
You seem to have interpreted the question as whether or not there is communication without language. This you have satisfactory answered by the example of smell. But my intention was to examine if thought beyond language is possible - and smell does not qualify as thought to me.
The definitive argument that there must be thought beyond language is that language must be created by some thought process.
All the objections brought forward by Sauwelios are thereby proven futile. Navigator had some intelligent things to say but about general mysticism instead of the properties and consequences of suprarational thought, which is where thought and the world really meet, as in the case of Einstein and others, unknown the general public, the Demiurgic figures to which I refer in the OP - and of course God Himself.
To your last question, why do we sell ourselves short by declaring it is is all there is - I don’t know who does that, and I wouldn’t know why anyone does it but cowardice or lazyiness. I use kabballah as a philosophical tool, a hammer, to sculpt, but I could do very well without it.
Kabbalah has little to do with geometry (The form of the glyph of the tree of life itself is arbitrary, has no real value except convenient design)except for the geometrical properties of the numers one through ten represented by the ten sephirot - but this is only very incidentally mentioned in kabbalistic literature and never elaborated upon. I could do this myself in the future, and I might, but in a book, not on a forum as a topic for discussion. Anyone who’s interested in the subject of living geometry outside of kabbalah I refer to the works of Michael S Schneider.
Language, or the means of communication, is a customised form of communication. Communication, however, arises from the need for communication, from the will to communicate, which is a pathos. Thought is simply internalised communication.
J.,
I don’t play with absractions. Scent is the language of many animals and may be part of primal, human communication. Where do we draw the line between developmental communications and knowing as minds describe it? IMHO, there is no such line, there are only varieties of experience none of which contradict any of the others without resort to abstraction.
Communication is possible without language, thought is possible without communication, communication is possible without the need for communication.
Like Plato, you start with an assumption. Form thereon, like Plato, your logic is flawless. But it is circular, only capable of sustaining itself, not of creating. You seem to have no goal for your intellect - the excersise of it suffices.
The statement that experience is all does not define experience (or all) in a meaningful way - although logically, it suffices. Your reasonings are the ‘stiff necked adversary of thought’
Thought, of course, is poetic genius.
We are totally immersed in a genetic continuum. In my teleology thread Xunzian accurately describes the motivational force of organisms as an optimizing of potental. To describe the human experience as including some “thing in itself” is to dismiss the reality of organic and inorganic chemical interactions that insure survival. To describe the motivational force in organisms as “will to power” is to misinterpret how a set of drives function in order to achieve the best possible adaptational success. Survival has no room for debate. Metacrap does not fertilize!
Of course there is more to existence than survival. But survival is prerequisite for anything else. Any take on reality, seen from the mind’s perspective, is nonsense if it cannot include all physical precursors of mind, all history of genetic constructions of organisms.
All formulations are wrong only if they claim that any point in a continuum defines an entire process.
Perhaps I didn’t make it clear that I am myself a student of the Kabbalah, as well as many other mystical and magical systems, and know about that exhilaration very well. No, I’m not overlooking it.
When I say that the Kabballah is an intellectual system, I mean that it uses an elaborate mental model of the universe, with carefully and precisely defined structure. It’s at one extreme, while Zen (in one sense) and Santeria (in another sense) are at the other.
I agree with this completely. In fact, I would say that there is no end of the work, except when you die.
Reason does not need deconstruction. It’s a good tool for survival, genetically evolved. It does need deflating, however, since it is not the end-all be-all of experiential reality.
To anwer a request; The ten sephirot as I understand them now. I formulate them anew every now and then, as my understanding of them evolves.
Kether, the crown
The point where the latent potential af the cosmos is concentrated into actual potential. Equatable to the Sahasrare chakra at the crown of the head. Brilliant white light flows in from above.
Chokmah, wisdom
The might of spirit revealed. The will of God, pure force.
Binah, understanding.
The great sea of being, time, matter, space. Absorbs all force and begets all manifestation.
Chesed, mercy
The summit of manifestation; existence relishes in itself. Zeus, the good to itself; good beyond morality, love.
Geburah, strength
The sword of good, the strength of love. The destruction of decay in defense of health.
Tipharet, beauty
the experience of Chesed by means of Geburah, the consequence of the workings of Good; self-existence.
Netzach, victory
The entrance of the self / soul in the physical realm - the creation of the world of experience.
8] Hod, splendour
The formation of identity asccording to experience. The self experiencing itself being formed by experience. Chesed experiencing itself.
Yesod, the foundation
The consequence of self-experience; instinct. The desire for more experience of self and procreation caused by existence appreciating itself.
Malkuth, the kingdom
The concequence of self-appreciation and procreation: the continuum of the biological world.
It’s a good tool for world destruction as well. Reason needs to be deconstructed as live evolves, so that it can arise new and clean, adapted and suited to the purpose of serving and sustaining the new life.
“Reason is the circumference of energy”
-W. Blake.
I don’t blame reason, reason is not someone I can blame.
I can’t blame the atomic bomb for being dropped on Hiroshima. I can observe that that is a consequence of it’s existence.