Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Part 46–50

The Prophets of the Meaning Crisis

Welcome back to Awakening from the Meaning Crisis notes. If you missed Part 40–45 click here. Notes on Dr. John Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. Link to full series here.

Part 46: Conclusion and the Prophets of the Meaning Crisis

Wise Cultivation Of Enlightenment:

Wisdom is a kind of dynamical system that is counteractive for overcoming self-deception and therefore would be counteractive for overcoming parasitic processing and foolishness.

Vervaeke suggests that wisdom is doing (especially where it overlaps with enlightenment) to enhance meaning in life is it’s enhancing religio, which in turn takes us into sacredness. These are all intertwined and reinforcing.

This is the wise cultivation of enlightenment (WCE).

This is situated within two things:

1. A worldview based in a scientific worldview of 4e CogSci (allowing it a naturalistic explanation through relevance realization)
2. A co-op network of communities of practice: a dynamic equilibrium relationship with a wisdom wiki which is compromised of researchers and practitioners.

Ultimately, when taken together, all of this is how we can awaken from the meaning crisis — all explained and engineered from within a secular, scientific worldview. Dealing with all the perennial problems and historical issues, connecting wisdom and enlightenment together in a comprehensive fashion and connect that to enhancing meaning in life — and the situating it within a socio-cultural framework. That’s not to say it’s a worldview that is hostile to religion, but it is not dependent on religion (nor a political ideology).

Roadmap Of Central Prophets of The Meaning Crisis:

We will now put this schema into dialogue with some of the central “prophets” of the meaning crisis, especially in the 20th/21st century. We won’t be discussing all the philosophers (e.g. Wittgenstein, Whitehead), but rather a network of people who have a kind of causal influence with one another.

Heidegger is a pivotal figure in this. Behind Heidegger is Husserl and phenomenology. Heidegger is also influenced by the Gnosis underground running through Germany — this comes through Eckhart. Another is Kant, and behind Kant is Descartes. Another important figure in theology coming from Heidegger is Tillich (there are gnostic elements throughout that). Heidegger also has influence on Corbin (to do with symbolism). Corbin has deep connections to Jung — and is directly influenced by the Gnostics and Kant. This allows another important connection which is the work of Dourley (he shows the similarities between Tillich and Jung as nontheistic). Someone directly influenced by Gnosis, and by Kant through the romantics, is Barfield (notions of participation). Derrida connected to Heidegger as post-modernism. Also connected is Harman, and Han. Heidegger also has a deep influence on (in addition to Buddhism) on the Kyoto School — especially the work of Nishida, and then Nishitani.

Husserl: Phenomenology:

Let’s first talk about Husserl, who had a titanic influence on Heidegger and who we haven’t discussed yet.

He’s famous for founding a whole philosophical movement called phenomenology. (existentialism actually comes out of phenomenology via Heidegger).

(Phenomenology requires a full course but Vervaeke recommends Introduction to Phenomenology by Robert Sokolowski and Experimental Phenomenology by Don Ihde)

Phenomenology was Husserl’s attempt to try and get us back to a contact epistemology. i.e., How deeply embodied and connected we are to the world, through a reflective, experimental, exploratory, probative attention to contact.

Husserl forms two poles of contact (relating to agent-arena)

1. Noesis: intentionality as a core aspect, representing mental directedness or perspectival knowing. A mental agency
2. Noema: world disclosure as a meaningful structuring of the environment, forming the other pole of the contact relationship. An arena

In phenomenology, this intentionality is focused and directed on the transjective relationship. “A reflective attention paid to your perspectival knowing of the transjective relationship.”

Heidegger’s Criticism of Husserl:

First Criticism:

• Heidegger criticizes Husserl for not adequately addressing contact and participatory knowing, particularly the fundamental relationship between the agent and the arena is left undisclosed
• The lack of grounding in ontology (the structure of being) is identified as a limitation in Husserl’s work.

Second Critisicm:

• A related criticism was that Heidegger felt Husserl was still bound within the Cartesian (he might say Platonic, or Aristotelian) grammar, keeping him from making contact
• So how do we get to this deeper contact. How do we open up participatory knowing, situated in an ontology and break free from the cartesian worldview that keep us out of contact with reality. We need to phenomenologically realise our being

We can connect to the participatory knowing by directing our phenomenological realization towards our being — who and what we are. About what grounds the Husserlian framework in participatory knowing.

Existentialism says that human beings don’t have an “essence.” That who and what we are — our being-ness — is in question. That you exist before you have an essence. That your existence precedes your essence

Notice that this question of “What am I?” is bound up in the question of “What is the meaning of my life? What makes it meaningful. What makes it meaningful to me?”

Heidegger and Dasein:

Heidegger introduces the term Dasein to move beyond referring to humans as mere “beings.”

• Dasein translates to “being there” or existence, emphasizing the active, engaged mode of human existence
• Dasein introduces an aporetic element to participatory knowing, creating a philosophical puzzle or impasse in understanding
• The aporetic nature of Dasein means that our very being is in question, adding depth and complexity to our self-knowledge

“I know myself as a being whose being is in question, and knowing myself that way is also to put being into question. And so, I’ve got this deep participation in the co-determining mysteries of who I am and what being is.”

By phenomenologically exploring the being of Dasein, we can come into contact with modal existence, open up to the wonder of our own being, — the mystery of being itself.

Heidegger is going to argue that the history of metaphysics (all the cultural-cognitive grammar from the Axial revolution onwards) is the history of nihilism. We need to unearth the grammar and deeply re-establish our contact with being.

In Part 47, we will continue this exploration of Heidegger by breaking down some of quotes and put it in co-operative dialogue with everything else we have learnt.

Part 47: Heidegger

To start the exploration of Heidegger we can start with the essay ‘Vom Wesen der Wahrheit’ which explores the essence of truth. It is important to keep in mind that Heidegger’s writing is very difficult, perhaps on purpose to help us break free of our cognitive grammar.

The Essence of Truth:

Quote 1:

“A statement is invested with its correctness by the openness of comportment for only through the latter can what is opened up really become the standard for the presentative correspondence.”

1. A statement is invested with its correctness: when we say that statement is true when we mean it is correct
2. By the openness of comportment: how you were comported towards things
3. For only through the latter: openness of comportment
4. Can what is opened up really become the standard for the presentative correspondence: that a standard of truth correspond with reality

That must mean that in making the statement, the person is directed and connected. It also means that the statement is picking up on some aspect of reality that is disclosed and there’s some kind of connection there.

So, the normative standard, what we normally call truth, truth as correctness, as correspondence between statement and reality is ultimately grounded, dependent on how this deeper relationship, which we haven’t quite articulated yet, affords the connectedness.

Heidegger talks about this grounding in terms of attunement.

Quote 2:

“However, being attuned, attunement can never be understood as experience, because it is thereby simply deprived of its essence.”

He is rejecting any subjective interpretation of attunement and that you lose the essence if you try to understand it subjectively. It is not an experience. It is something that makes meaningful experience possible

“Being attuned, this eksistent (standing out / existence) exposedness as a whole can be “experienced” and “felt” only because the man who “experiences” without being aware of the essence of attunement is always engaged in being attuned in a way that discloses beings as a whole.”

So, attunement is not subjective. Any subjective feeling or experience of it is grounded in the attuning relationship that precedes and grounds our cognitive appraisal or appropriation within the agent arena relationship.

Because we have been locked at the propositional level (truth correspondence) we have forgotten the attunement relationship (RR) which makes correctness of statements possible.

Quote 3:

“Man clings to what is readily available and controllable even where ultimate matters are concerned.”

What is readily available and controllable: There’s a deep, modal confusion at this deep existential level. The forgetting of the grounding attunement also traps us within propositional processing and it traps us in the having mode, the having of correct propositions.

Heidegger is trying to get us to remember philia-sophia, not philia-nikia (the pursuit of victory). He wants us to remember to forgotten mystery of Dasein.

Quote 4:

“Whenever the concealment of being as whole is conceded only as a limit that occasionally announces itself, concealing as a fundamental occurrence has sunk into forgetfulness.”

And what Heidegger says is, when you only acknowledge it as a limit, you have actually deeply forgotten it. That relationship to the combinatorial explosive nature of things has to be an ongoing feature of your thinking.

To link this to the relevance realization framework, we need to turn to Harman and his theory of speculative realism (object-oriented ontology).

The Thing Beyond Itself:

So, the core of this is not the Kantian picture of the thing in itself, veiled by subjectivity. What Harman is picking up on is that this transjective attunement makes both the subject and the object possible in experience, in phenomenological experience

Instead of the Kantian thing in itself that is veiled from us by our subjectivity, instead, think about two things happening simultaneously.

1. Think about the thing shining into subjectivity and that’s what phenomenology originally means
2. But that is interpenetrated, inter-afforded with, it is simultaneously withdrawing from my framing (beyond the framing)

So, if that world constantly withdraws, as it also shines into your experience, then it is real to you. The withdrawal is as much a contributor to the realness of things as they’re shining into your subjectivity. They co-contribute to the realness of the object for us. And it’s precisely the withdrawing, according to Harman and others that was missed by phenomenology because of the way it was still bound within a Cartesian subjective framework.

Replacing the Kantian term, the thing in itself: the thing beyond itself.

Truth as Aletheia:

This takes us to a new understanding of truth: How do we get an attunement that discloses things as things beyond themselves, things that are simultaneously shining into our subjectivity, but also withdrawing into their objectivity where this no longer means an object of thought. It means a depth beyond our framing?

This comes to Heideggers notion of ‘Truth as Aletheia’(relates to satti — a deep disclosure)

So truth is aletheia is this attuning to the mutual disclosure, the fittedness within the mystery of being. You’re attuned to how they are simultaneously appearing, shining and withdrawing.

Dreyfus and Heidegger:

The reason we are talking in terms of RR is there is a connection between Heidegger, Dreyfus and 4E CogSci. Dreyfus is an interpreter of Heidegger and a founding figure in cognitive science.

A quote from Being-in-the-World his book on Heidegger’s Being and Time:

“Facts and rules are, by themselves, meaningless. To capture what Heidegger calls significance or involvement, they must be assigned relevance. But the predicates that must be added to define relevance, are just more meaningless facts; the more facts the computer is given he harder it is to compute what is relevant to the current situation.”

You get into combinatorial explosion if you stay at the propositional computational level, and you lose your ability to fit yourself to the current situation, to cope with the current situation.

This is important as it developed that you cannot understand the mind in purely computational/ propositional terms. So, Heidegger relates deeply to the machinery of relevance realization and participatory knowing, and optimal gripping. E.g. Dreyfus and Charles Taylor, Retrieving Realism

A Dynamic Coupling:

Moving on: to discuss Aven’s book ‘The New Gnosis’ discussing Heidegger, Corbin and Jung.

Quote 1:

“A questioning that involves the questioner in the matter of thoughts so deeply, he becomes, in a sense, one with it. At this point, knowing is no longer divorced from being. We know the way we are, and we are the way we know. In the Platonic tradition, this is expressed in the axiom, like can only be known by like.”

He’s pointing to how Heidegger is actually bringing back this deeply Neo-Platonic idea of knowing, of participatory knowing as a deep kind of conformity between you and the world. This is a participatory knowing that is a dynamic coupling.

He then points from Heidegger to Corbin. Corbin calls this participatory knowing that is a dynamical coupling, a dynamical conformity gnosis (a term we have examined).

Quote 2:

“Gnosis for Corbin is “a salvational redemptive knowledge, because it has the virtue of bringing about the inner transformation of man, It is knowing that “changes and transforms the knowing subject.”

To appropriately respond to Dasein, one must acknowledge themselves as the being under scrutiny and explore the depths of their being. True comprehension emerges when self-awareness and knowledge of the world become intertwined, mutually enriching one’s understanding of being, both personal and existential. This interplay allows for a comprehensive response to the quest for being.

This is what Corbin is calling gnosis and getting from Heidegger. Corbin is pointing out that gnosis is redemptive — it saves us. the Gnostics are trying to free us to liberate us from existential entrapment.

Forgetfulness of Being:

Reviewing this all again, but more carefully.

1. We have the being mode and the having mode
2. The being mode is the transformative participation in the mystery of being
3. This leads to aletheia
4. This has two components: attunement, and independence of being
5. Attunement points to relevance
6. Independence of Being, is what gives realness which we have neglected. That being always transcends how it is being known and being experienced by us. This is the moreness
7. In the having mode, we think of its being in terms of how it can be manipulated by us, not just physically, conceptually
8. And thus, we misunderstand in a modal sense being as a particular being

Onto-theology and Nihilism:

In the having mode, being modally confused, we may try understand Being as a supreme being. The highest being. The highest subject, perhaps. The highest person at the highest force. The highest thing.

For Heidegger, this is the ultimate modal confusion (indicates having mode) for this is to try to turn being into a problem that can be solved by the conceptual manipulation of a propositionally defined object.

And what is being alluded to here is classical theisms traditional representation of God.

So this is known as the problem of onto-theology, where we try to understand Being theologically, in terms of a supreme being

Where God is understood in this limit sense. God is understood within the having mode. God is understood as the supreme being that somehow grounds and makes all other beings. And this is a fundamental mistake for Heidegger. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. It’s a fundamental problem.

Understanding Being or the ground of Being as a supreme being, onto-theology, is the deep forgetfulness that just caused us existentially adrift in modal confusion and fundamentally misframing our relationship to Being and therefore being subject to a disconnectedness from realness, which is at the heart of nihilism and the meaning crisis.

In Part 48, we will explore the work of Corbin and how it relates to Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology.

Part 48: Corbin and the Divine Double

The Rose & Physis:

Heidegger had commentary on poetry by Angelus Silesius — who was a poet trying to put the work of Meister Eckhart into poems.

“The Rose is without why. It blooms because it blooms. It cares not for itself. Asks not if it is seen.”

Heidegger emphasizes the concept of physis, the blossoming forth or springing forth from itself.

• The rose’s blossoming is grounded in itself, a pure emerging out of itself — a pure shining
• The depth of the rose is revealed through its shining, showing that it emerges and withdraws into its own depth — a pure withdrawal

This relates to Eckhart’s maxim: live without why. But then one might think: That sounds like a meaningless existence. There’s no why there’s no purpose. There’s no grand unifying purpose.

But think, perhaps the quest for a grand unifying purpose is coming from the having mode not from the being mode. Eckhart is not proposing meaninglessness. He’s actually proposing a non-teleological way of being. It’s to move beyond.

There’s no narrative to the rose. The rose is not that it’s sort of lacking. It’s beyond, above and beyond the narrative. Maybe the universe as a whole is like the rose: blooming from itself, grounded in itself, blossoming, shining from itself while always, always withdrawing.

Going Beyond Narrative:

Role of Narrative:

• Narrative provides cognitive and existential practice in non-logical identity
• Non-logical identity exists between the world inside and outside the frame and between one’s current self and future self (transframing)
• Narrative symbolically represents the non-logical identity over time
• Despite the changes, the self at birth is non-identical to the present self, but there is still a sense of continuity.

Training in Transformation:

Narrative serves as a tool for training individuals in working with non-logical identity and fundamental transformation. It helps in tracing and understanding the process of change across time.

But we can exapt that ability and instead of thinking of it as unfolding narratively across time we can do the vertical ontology — connecting the depths of ourselves to the depths of being in a non-teleological being mode.

Pure Shining & Pure Withdrawal:

Pure Shining:

• This is relevance realization. Pure shining involves salience landscaping into intelligibility. It relates to the process of making relevant and creating meaningful patterns.

Pure Withdrawal:

• This is independent inexhaustibleness of a combinatorically explosive reality. It signifies the depth and mystery that cannot be fully captured or exhaustively understood.

These two can be drawn together in a profound and important way: a trajectory of transframing that is always closing upon the relevant, while always opening to the moreness.

When we recognize that aletheia, remember it from within the being mode so that we can accentuate it and celebrate it that’s what I’ve argued sacredness is. This is what underpins our sense of ‘realness’.

Realness:

There is a creative polar tension highlight by Barfield between confirmation, coherence, and moreness. We need them all for this realness — hence the importance of pure withdrawal and pure shining in our search for the being mode.

If the virtual reality just has the confirmation and the coherence, it falls flat. If it can’t provoke a sense of opening and wonder, if there’s no element of surprise. If it’s all assimilation and no accommodation, if it’s just the foreclosure and never also the opening. If it’s just the homing and never the numinous.

We can now move on from Heidegger to Corbin.

Persian Sufism & Corbin:

Corbin was deeply influenced by Heidegger, as well as Neo-Platonism (especially within Persian Sufism).

Sufism is the mystical branch in Islam. Persia plays a central role between the Arab world, the European world, and the world of India and China. The Persians because of the difficulty of their history were attracted to Sufism (a mystical interpretation) because they were trying to find a form of liberation from an oppressive Arab empire.

Corbin is trying to explain gnosis and how it can be redemptive in the face of the meaning crisis. He does this by connecting gnosis with a form of imagination that is not in Heidegger’s work.

(Explored in the ‘Lost Knowledge of Imagination by Lachman and ‘The World Turned Inside Out’ by Cheetham)

Distinction Between Imaginary and Imaginal:

Carl Jung (explored later) originally splits imagination into imaginary and imaginal.

1. The Imaginary: purely subjective experience of generating inner mental imagery (we know is not real) — what we typically mean by imagination
2. The Imaginal: bound up with gnosis and related to Jung’s ‘active imagination’ (explored next)

Schematic of imaginal:

• Two ways of cognitive contact with reality: abstract representations and the concrete sensible world
• The imaginal mediates between them, integrating both in meaningfully structured experience
• Corbin notes the Cartesian division (mind and matter) and argues that the imaginal bridges these two worlds

Transjective Nature of the Imaginal:

• The imaginal bridges the subjective and objective realms
• It involves ongoing transformative transframing, not a static relation
• Corbin emphasizes the vibrant and vital movement within the imaginal

It’s a use of images, but not using them subjectively, using them transjectively. In a way that mediates, bridges, integrates the abstract intelligible world and the concrete sensible world together. But again, not just statically, but in this ongoing transformative transframing.

For Corbin, if you lose the imaginal, you lose the capacity for gnosis. And then if you lose the capacity for gnosis, you lose the capacity for waking up within the being mode, through aletheia to being and the ground of being in sacredness. This includes having a attitude towards the symbolic that is dismissive (as our culture does).

Corbin’s Imaginal Understanding of The Symbol:

Let’s talk about how Corbin understands the symbol, the imaginal understanding of the symbol, as opposed to the imaginary understanding (from Parts 34–35).

Features:

1. The translucency of a symbol, you look at it, but you look through it
2. The symbol is not only transjective, but also trajective (on a path of transformation)
3. Transtemporal and transpatial (it’s an ontological movement between a smaller frame and a larger frame)

Gnosis is achieved through aletheia, facilitated by the symbol (imaginal) in Corbin’s view.

The Notion of The Divine Double:

The most important symbol of this for Corbin is what he calls the angel (not standard interpretation — please refrain from dismissal). It relates to the concept of ‘the divine double’ (explained in work by Stang).

It involves the idea that one’s true self is bound to a divine double, and the spiritual path is to reunite these aspects. The thing pulling us forward for improvement and on the spiritual path.

The realization of their interdependence leads to mystical union.

The divine double is a pervasive mythos. The angel is a symbolic way of talking about the divine double.

An Aspirational Process Towards a More Angelic Self:

Parallels with Socratic Project:

• The aspirational process toward a more angelic self parallels the Socratic project
• Found in the mythos of normative self-improvement, emphasizing the transformation of the self rather than the external situation

Connections to Jung and Maslow:

• Jung and Maslow also emphasize the aspirational process in their theories
• Aspiration is central to the mythos of self-improvement, aligning with psychological and philosophical perspectives

Nature of the Relation — Aspirational:

• The relation between the self before and after the aspirational process is characterized as aspirational by Callard
• Aspiration is a form of rationality and is constitutive of the ongoing process of becoming rational
• Including the aspiration to rationality in the concept of rationality avoids self-refutation and aligns with the Platonic idea of the deep interpenetration of love and reason

In Part 48, we’ll go deeper into the symbolism of the divine double, and integrate it with the process of aspirational rationality that is so central to self-transcendence. We will then look closer at the work of Jung.

Part 49: Corbin and Jung

The Paradox of Self-Creation:

The notion of the divine double and aspiration brings up a problem we need to resolve — the paradox of self-creation. The appreciation that S2 has is bound to perspectival and participatory knowing of which S1 is ignorant.

Strawson’s work emphasizes two requirements that are needed for self-creation:

1. One requirement is a continuity requirement. There has to be something deeply continuous between S1 and S2. Because if they are not the same self, then it’s not an act of self-creation (S1 = S2)
2. There has to be real novelty between them or else there is no creation involved. If S1 just develops a skill or ability they already have, that is not real novelty. That is just more of the same. That’s quantitative development, not qualitative development

Strawson argues this is self-contradictory and self-paradoxical.

Two options: deny the self or emphasize continuity without real novelty (Rousseauan romantic). Strawson says you have to make such a choice because self-creation is itself self-contradictory.

But Callard says this is all a mistake.

What breaks this is that the relationship between S1 and S2 is one of non-logical identity.

A better way of describing the relationship is S1 does not receive nor make S2, but participates in S2’s emergence. S2 emerges out of S1 to the point that S1 disappears into S2. We participate in an emergence.

So, aspiration is Callard’s name for that process by which S1 participates in the emergence of S2 out of S1 such that S1 has disappeared into S2.

Reformulating The Problem Between S1 And S2:

But a problem remains: S1, in some important sense, causes S2. My actions now are necessary and perhaps, in some important sense, sufficient for setting forth a course of development that is going to result in S2.

However, while S1 is temporally prior to S2, S1 normatively depends on S2. All of S1’s actions only make sense, can only be justified once S2 comes into existence

There is a temptation to be teleological and think S2 preexists S1 (this might be coming out in the divine mythos).

The Aspired-To Self

Causal Power and Normative Authority:

S1 possesses the causal power, while S2 holds the normative authority

• Relating to the aspired-to self involves a non-logical identity between the present self and the future self, not logically accessible
• Representation of the future self serves as a symbol in an imaginal sense, not imaginary
• This non-logically identical relationship is participatory, aiding in the transformative process

Corbin’s point is that this is a symbol — not in the imaginary sense but in an imaginal sense.

It’s a kind of relationship that between things that are non-logically identical, it is not something that is processed in a purely logical fashion. It is a representation that is participatory and it’s supposed to help to actually afford you going through the transformative process.

My representation of the aspired-to self is it’s a symbolic self that I can internalize into my current self anagogically.

Internalization is something other than you, yet it becomes something that is completely identified as you.

The Divine Double:

The divine double is both you and not you — an advanced other internalized into oneself, eventually becoming you.

It enables internalization from a more encompassing frame into the current frame, simultaneously shining into the current frame and drawing you out into the more expansive frame.

The divine double engenders a transframing, transforming both the agent and the arena.

The agent and the arena are simultaneously transformed. So, the divine double shines the greater frame into the current frame, but it also draws you out by the way it withdraws into the more encompassing frame. It gives you a sense of the closing into your relevance, but the opening into the greater self.

Sacred Second Self and Soul:

The concept of the sacred second self introduces the idea of having a soul, representing the soul one aspires through and to.

Transitioning to Jung’s work, the notion of a relationship to a sacred second self-aligns with the traditional understanding of the soul.

The reason the soul is raised is to transition to another on of the prophets — Carl Gustav Jung. because this notion of a relationship to a sacred second self, that is perhaps what we were always talking about when we invoked the word soul, is central to Jung’s work.

Carl Gustav Jung and Individuation:

Jung’s text addresses the meaning crisis and emphasizes the need for a real relationship with the sacred second self in responding to it — Modern Man In Search of A Soul

Individuation and Psyche:

• Jung’s notion of individuation is notion of development and a notion of self-transformation and a notion of how to fundamentally respond to the meaning crisis
• Jung expresses individuation as a psychological process. This is more clear when comparing to Freud (work by Storr, and Ricoeur)

Freuds Psyche:

• Freud has a hydraulic model of the psyche. So, the psyche is basically a Newtonian machine, like a steam engine. Things are under pressure and the pressure has to be relieved and it drives and sort of pushes various processes into operation.

Jung’s Psyche:

• Jung replaces that hydraulic metaphor with an organic metaphor. He sees the psyche as a self-organizing, dynamical system, ultimately as an autopoietic being
• Individuation as this kind of organic self-organizing — organic self-organizing process that you neither make nor receive, but you participate in

This takes us to Archetypes.

Archetypes:

The archetypes are the formative founding patterns of the psyche.

These are the structural functional organizations by which the psyche self-organizes. The archetypes are therefore very much psychological versions of the Platonic form.

The archetypes are not images. You have to take the images and treat them in an imaginal fashion, not as imaginary things you possess in your mind, but as imaginal things that are leading you into the aspirational process of individuation.

They are virtual engines that regulate the self-organization of what is salient to us.

The Ego vs. the Self:

So where is the SSS in this? This comes to Jung’s separation of ego and self.

The ego is the virtual engine that regulates the self-organization of the conscious mind.

It is the virtual engine regulating the self-organization of the psyche as a whole. The self is the principle of autopoiesis itself. It’s the ultimate virtual engine that constellates all the other virtual engines so that the psyche can continue its process of autopoietic self-organization.

It is the archetype of the archetypes. It’s like Plato’s notion of the good, which is the form for how to be a form. The eidos of the eidos

Simultaneous Functionality and Development:

In a self-organizing system, functionality and development are merged.

The system develops by functioning and functions by developing, creating an aspirational quality.

Interacting with Archetypes:

Individuals can interact with archetypal symbols, such as the hero or shadow archetype.

This interaction can be internalized, shaping the way the ego self-organizes and contributing to the dialogue between the ego and the self.

Individuation of the Ego:

The individuation of the ego occurs through dialogue with the sacred second self.

This anagogic and resonant dialogue alters the ego’s perspectival knowing and participatory being.

The imaginal serves as a mediator between the ego and the self.

Inflation occurs when the ego pretends to be self-sufficient and attempts to assume the complete role of the self, hindering the ongoing process of individuation.

Criticism Of Jung:

This converges of a criticism Buber made of Jung.

Buber criticizes Jung for understanding these processes as intra-psychic rather than transjective. The absence of a representation of transjective relationships prevents Jung from addressing existential modes (having vs being) and the mystical’s disclosure of the depths of the world.

The mystical doesn’t just disclose the depths of the psyche. The mystical also discloses the depths of the world in an integrated, coordinated fashion.

Jung is helping us link Corbin and Buber with the addition of the psyche.

In Part 50, we will look at two people that integrate these three: Paul Tillich and Barfield.

Part 50: Tillich and Barfield

Tillich and En-couragement:

Tillich is deeply influenced by Jung and Heidegger and writes ‘The Courage to Be’ as a response to the meaning crisis.

For books on integrating between Jung and Tillich: ‘The Psyche as Sacrament; Paul Tillich, Carl Jung, and the Recovery of Religion’.

In the courage to be he is evoking a kind of existential courage that ultimately allows us to confront and overcome meaninglessness in its depth. This process of encouragement

Courage involves within it that central feature of wisdom, which is seeing through illusion into reality. The courageous person sees through the illusion and the distortion of fear or distress to what is truly good and acts accordingly.

Faith As Ultimate Concern:

So, what is this seeing through (seeing to the depths)?

It through Tillich’s notion of faith. Tillich’s notion of faith is not the assertion of propositions to believe. Tillich understands faith as ultimate concern.

His notion of idolatry is to treat something that could be a symbolic icon through which you articulate and develop your ultimate concern. You transform that into idol, an object to have and possess to control and manipulate. And you, thereby, are using the machinery that it’s appropriate for ultimate concern for something that is not ultimate.

What is ultimate concern?

Well, when you’re concerned about something, you care about it, but you’re also coping with it. You’re committed to it. You’re involved in it. It encompasses you, even though you are being involved in and through it. It is deeply perspectival and participatory. And it is aspirational, and it is open ended. It points towards the inexhaustibleness of the ground of being.

It is related to Heidegger’s notion of Dasein.

This leads into Tillich’s notion of God — which is transgressive of classical theism in important ways, without it being identifiable with atheism in important ways.

Tillich’s notion of God:

So, Tillich understands God as an icon, as opposed to an idol. As an imaginal symbol for the ground of being. God symbolizes the ground of being and therefore God is no kind of being. There is a no-thingness to God, God is no kind of thing. And any attempt to reify to think of God as a thing is, for Tillich, a form of idolatry.

God is the ground of the meaning making, of reality and of the relationship between them. And any attempt to limit God to any one of these three components, just to the meaning, just to the reality, just to the relationship between them is, for Tillich, a profound kind of idolatry.

If we participate in an aspirational trajectory motivated by ultimate concern, this puts us into a resonant relationship This gets to what is known as Tillich’s method of correlation

Method Of Correlation:

Method of Correlation is that there is always this ongoing tonos: between existential questioning and what Tillich calls revelation the way the depths of reality reveal themselves. These are resonating with each other.

Essential Questioning and Revelation:

• There exists an ongoing resonant fitting and mutual fitting togetherness between essential questioning and revelation
• This method has been misconstrued by interpreters as propositional theology

Depths of Reason According to Tillich:

• Tillich refers to the depths of reason as that which makes reasoning possible
• This encompasses the entire machinery of relevance realization, involving an ekstatic relationship where individuals stand beyond themselves
• The depths of reason extend beyond the psychological understanding, reaching into the grounding depths of rationality

Symbol in Corbin’s Imaginal Sense:

• Corbin’s concept of the imaginal symbol stands between the depths of reason and the depths of reality
• In the psyche, the depths of reason are experienced as ekstasis, signifying self-transcendence and a movement beyond the individual self.

Crucial Role in Aspiration:

• The depths of reason, as experienced through ekstasis, play a crucial role in aspiration
• Genuine transcendence involves authentic self-transcendence, moving beyond the limitations of the self

He talks about the depths of reality being miracle and mystery — this can be paralleled with Heidegger’s notions of shining and withdrawal.

The method of correlation is basically anagoge between the ekstasis, as we resonate with the depths, the grounding and formative depths of reason are resonating with the grounding informative depths of realness and they are anagogically cycling together.

Tillich, Symbols, and Realization

For Tillich symbols have a surplus of meaning. There is a moreness to them. If they’re not resonating with moreness, they’re not symbols. They have a numinous character grounded in the resonant depth of mind and reality, and therefore symbols are deeply transformative.

How is this transformative power of the symbol realized?

It’s realized in the relationship between the existential self and the essential self

This is the relationship of the current self, the self in existence to the sacred second self. The essential self is the self in the fullness of being that is capable of recognizing through conformity, the fullness of being in the world.

This relationship between the existential self and the essential self is aspirational.

The essential self is ahead of the existential self, not causally, but normatively (S1 and S2).

Tillich’s book on Agape (Morality and Beyond)

So this aspirational, transformative journey of encouragement gets us to confront seriously meaninglessness.

Tillich goes through aspects of the meaning crisis and how in the ancient world we confronted our finitude of being. In the protestant reformation we confronted guilt. In the current period we confronted despair. And following this trajectory Tillich leads to a position beyond all three + further responses by postmodernity

The No-Thingness Of God

The no-thingness of God coming to really encounter the no-thingness of God is central to this notion of faith.

The no-thingness of God takes into itself the nothingness of meaninglessness and it overcomes it.

The no-thingness of God has a transformative power over the nothingness of despair. So this is the notion of a fundamental aspect, identity shift.

(This is discussed in length in After Socrates, and Nishitani’s Religion and No-thingness)

You come to see the no-thingness of God — you come to experience it as the inexhaustible creation of meaning. It is an inexhaustible fount of meaning cultivation. It is the ground of meaning intelligibility, the relationship between.

When we identify with it, we gain the competence, the ability to aspect shift the nothingness of meaninglessness so that we come to see it instead as pointing to its ground, which is an inexhaustible source of meaning cultivation that cannot be drained dry by our despair.

There is a fecundity at the level of fundamental framing and the way it’s coupled to being that cannot be drained dry by despair. When we stop trying to push away the nothingness, but have instead an imaginal relationship to it and move through it anagogically in an imaginal fashion with the nothingness of God, then we overcome meaninglessness.

Like the Necker cube it is an aspect shift.

This fundamental aspects shift in which the nothingness of despair is transformed into the revelation of no-thingness as inexhaustible being meaning.

Tillich and Jung:

Tillich sees the process of individuation similar to Jung, but always puts that into creative tension with participation (the participation with being).

He relates this to neither The autonomy of reason 3mphasized in the enlightenment nor what he calls a heteronomous or sometimes he even uses the more religious term, the demonic imposition of authority from without

Tillich sees this overcome in what he calls Theonomous

Which literally means God-ordered, God-governed. God here means the ground of being, the ongoing Epek-tasis of the inexhaustible, the affordance of ongoing transframing.

So, what we see here is transjectivity, the sacred second self. We see the anagogic ascent joining reason and revelation together, and the fundamental aspect shift, and gnosis.

He qualifies this whole process as the process in which we are responding deeply to the meaning crisis. He calls this as a realization of the God beyond the God of theism.

Non-Theism Of Tillich

This is the non-theism of Tillich. Non-theism is a position that tries to transcend theism and atheism.

Non-theism is the rejection of the presuppositions that are shared by both theism and atheism.

These are either accepted or denied by the atheist and theist but they both acknowledge they are debating about it.

1. God is the Supreme being
2. God is accessed primarily or even solely through belief

(The theist and the atheist agree to this. They just disagree about whether or not there’s really any access to be found. The non-theist rejects both of these)

3. Theology and anti-theology do not require transformative anagoge

(All you need to do is have possession of the propositions and be able to infer the correct implications. Thereby losing everything that we’ve been talking about in these last four parts. The theist and the atheist agree with that proposition, the non theist rejects it.)

4. Sacredness is personal or impersonal

The theist and the atheist disagree about which one of those to pick. The theist says it’s personal. The atheist says it’s impersonal.

The non-theist rejects that. The non-theist rejects that sacredness is personal or impersonal. Rather because the non-theist rejects the Cartesian grammar that drives it. The non-theist argues that sacredness is transjective participatory. It is aspirational.

Critisicm of Tillich:

He’s giving us guidance on how to live, how to cultivate courage and faith. He does not offer practices of transformation.

Owen Barfield:

This notion of deep symbolic participation that is translated into practices, I think goes to the heart of Owen Barfield’s work.

Three books on Barfield: Lost Knowledge of the Imagination by Lachman; The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. Best book: Owen Barfield: Philosophy, Poetry, and Theology by Di Fuccia

Barfield is influenced by gnosticism and Rudolf Steiner. He is influenced by Neoplatonism through Coleridge. And early romantics like Schlegel.

The early romantics emphasized the infinity: the infinity of reality

The Infinity Of Reality:

This is the inexhaustibleness, the inexhaustible moreness. the idea is that the inexhaustible moreness is that which continually draws us, constantly draws us and affords us into self-transcendence

Schlegel notes it is: the finite longing for the infinite.

Our always finite, our always framed, longing for the transframing that discloses, but never completely discloses the combinatorially explosive inexhaustible moreness of reality, and simultaneously discloses the ongoing capacity of relevance realization to adapt to that in a coupled manner.

We experience and participate this in creativity of flow. To find sacredness in the flow of self-transcendence within creativity. This is called Poesis.

Poesis As Ekstasis In Creativity:

There’s an ekstasis within the creative — there’s an ekstasis in creativity. There’s an ekstasis in creativity found within poetry and the poetical aspects of everyday language that can reawaken us to this kind of connectedness. A connectedness that experiences as sacredness.

Final Participation:

Back to part 1–25, Barfield is explicit that we had original participation and then there’s the division, which is the meaning crisis.

His view was we need to move towards final participation as a response to the meaning crisis

Final participation is a recovery of participation integrated within the gains of the rational sciences.

This means the recovery of the perspectival and the participatory ways of knowing and also an exploration of the a science of meaning cultivation (something Barfield does not do explicitly) .

How does that participatory and perspectival participation fit into our scientific processes, our scientific way of being?

This is what is being done with the work of relevance realisation and it being put into discourse with spirituality, symbolism, sacredness, and these great prophets of the meaning crisis.

The vocabulary, the grammar, the framework of relevance realization and how it can be developed to talk about spirituality and sacredness can be put into deep dialogue with Heidegger. Deep dialogue with Corbin. Deep dialogue, with Jung. Deep dialogue, with Tillich. Deep dialogue with Barfield.

And also afford deep dialogue, critical but creative dialogue, between them and afford a potential synoptic integration.

All of this is what is meant by awakening from the meaning crisis. We need to get back in touch with the being-mode, integrated into our new world view — and dynamically developing relevance realization to adjust to changes in the agent-arena relationship and cultivating meaning.

“That you for your time and attention.”