hey Jakob, where can I learn about the kaabahlah?. (to practice it)
Reading this will give you an idea if you want to pracitice it - if you can finish it, it’s easy from thereon
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.
Only if it has not been formalised - but then it must be intuitively understood.
Yeah, just as the Creator is possible without Creation: “pure consciousness”…
Just as reasoning is possible without a goal, right? But how about the need for excercise (or play)?
“Dance, like philosophy, began with physical combat.
The first to keep the body in trim, the second to do the same for the mind.”
[William Nietzsche.]
“There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method [Vernunft, “reason”] in madness.”
[Zarathustra, Of Reading and Writing.]
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.
Cool! Allright then.
Of the 22, what’s your most effective path for deconstructing reason?
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.
A tool cannot be blamed for how it is used.
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.
This seems to indicate that if the tool did not exist, it could not be misused, a copout of human responsibility. I once was debating with a brother-in-law about a county voting to become dry. His argument was that if the hootch wasn’t in that county his son wouldn’t go for it. He underestimated the resouces of his son, who could drive twenty miles from his home and buy all the liquor he wanted. What was dropped from Enola Gay included a premeditated human idea.
Hi Jakob! 
what if I already feel that way? (not to be cocky or anything) before practicing the kabaahlah? 
I guess I was just born crazy 
lol
h.d.,
I know what you mean. I’ve been able to go on “trips” without drugs, to feel exhuberant in sunsets, sunrises and beautiful scenery, to create from a joy of living that needed no mystic references.