D: The "I" is the SPACE in between the sections. It is that which consistently evaluates and recomposes the aspects of the sections WITHOUT itself being recomposed…

and

D: How do I describe the experience of the aspect of oneself that TRANSCENDS any activity of the dianoia? EO and Loder talk about "imageless" experience or "emptiness." This is the reality I'm trying to speak of...so how would I call it? How do I describe being present WITHOUT any type of discursive use of memory or imagination...basically, the deepest states of prayer?

T: Short answer: I have no idea, since I have no idea what you mean.

For a longer answer let me take the illustration you posted to frame my own answer.

I don’t think you CAN describe an experience which is void of ALL the aspects and capacities you say are incidental to the true self (doing, thinking, feeling, sensing, wanting). I know your metaphysics, so I know you believe “feeling” is an irreducible/constitutive part of experience per se. So I have no idea what Loder or the EO or you mean by “a conscious experience” void of all thinking and feeling. In what sense does such an experience fulfill a logos for created being? In what sense COULD it? In what sense could a God who is unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction alllllll the way down his infinite soul even conceive of conscious being fulfilled in him and sustained by him which is wholly absent of all perception and enjoyment of aesthetic satisfaction? I don’t even know how to talk about what you’re trying to describe.

This is the problem. It sounds like you want to say the true “I” is the space in between the five functions, and that this “imageless experience of emptiness” is somehow the goal (God forbid), the very logos, of human being. I think you have to abandon the heart and soul of Greg/CH’s aesthetic/process metaphysic to imagine such a thing.

I think saying the true “I” is the space between those five functions and not to be identified with the amalgamation of any particular slice of those five taken together, can be a helpful way to avoid reducing the self to the content of those five. But I don’t think it’s helpful if you mean that “space” can be experienced (i.e., the “I” fully realized in Christ) apart from those five faculties. There is no created HUMAN “I” apart from the exercise of those functions. You can only experience your identity in Christ, free from the constraints of the content of any particular historical slice of those functions THROUGH THOSE FUNCTIONS surrendering themselves in their historical particularity to Christ.

Not sure that helps. Bottom line: The experience of fulfilled human being is the fulfilling of one’s logos, and to say that this is an experience of pure consciousness which is the space between the natural capacities of human being itself (thought, feeling, perception, etc.) is a) utterly contradictory to Greg’s/CH’s metaphysics, b) a denial that God as unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction is the ground of all being (How could God function as the fulfillment of that which he is not himself?), and c) beyond all meaningful discussion.

The best thing you can do is say Greg was completely wrong (i.e., aesthetic satisfaction is not a necessary feature of all experience, since you’re suggestion an experience which is void of such satisfaction) but that you have no way to argue it, then just chill out in the truth of your own experience of it.

Tom

(I think that's probably most of your problem: the word "feeling".  All I am talking about is emotional reality experienced self-reflectively, NOT "prehensions" ala process thought)  Surely, you don't believe that Greg would say that all things that exist cognate and emote, simply because he says that all reality "prehends" as some level...right?

And the main thing: The "I" using the five functions is NOT--I repeat--NOT to be completely identified with a particular personality amalgam allowable by the five functions.   That's enough of a paradigm shift for many, I'm sure...

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/6/2012 11:56:28 PM (GMT-6)

The true "I"--the comtemplative I that Merton talks about--is simply NOT any particular human personality amalgam taken on by the ego.  That is the egocentric "hall of mirrors" that we fall into.  "Dwayne Polk"--the personality amalgam I am now using--is NOT the absolute center of who I am.  Our true "I" what grounds and necessarily uses the ego as it "blazes" new neural pathways in genuine freedom and creativity empowered by "the Power that created it."

Perhaps this is why in Christ, there is neither male nor female?

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/7/2012 12:31:59 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/7/2012 12:13:36 AM (GMT-6)

Loder specifically calls this Holy Spirit/human spirit relationality the "new being in Christ" in Knight's Move.  And this "new being" is NOT to be completely identified with a historically-held personality amalgam.

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/7/2012 12:41:57 AM (GMT-6)

D: How would YOU describe what the mystics speak about when they talk about the "stillness", "emptiness", or the "imageless" mind? … Where being is seen to be distinct from thoughts and emotions. You describe that experience within Greg's metaphysic. But STAY TRUE to what the mystics say about the experience, ok?

T: Dude, you’ve had that experience and you know Greg’s metaphysic. So I’ll let you describe it. I don’t think I’ve ever had the experience you’re talking about. I feel like I’ve had moments of standing inside my truest self in Christ, but it was anything but void of emotion. I’d say pure emotion describes it better than anything.

D: (I think that's probably most of your problem: the word "feeling". All I am talking about is emotional reality experienced self-reflectively, NOT "prehensions" ala process thought)…

T: I’m not talking just about prehensions either. I’m talking emotional reality experienced self-reflectively too (at least that expresses what I'm after too).

D: Surely, you don't believe that Greg would say that all things that exist cognate and emote, simply because he says that all reality "prehends" as some level...right?

T: Right. But he would say that self-conscious, personal beings cognate and experience in terms of aesthetic satisfaction. Do you have that in your experience of the space outside of feeling?

D: And the main thing: The "I" using the five functions is NOT--I repeat--NOT to be completely identified with a particular personality amalgam allowable by the five functions.

T: I agree that much would be a big step for most.

D: I am saying that the power of the "I" is NOT found in the five functions and it TRANSCENDS yet USES the five functions. And this TRANSCENDENCE of the five functions can be experienced, via nepsis and hesychia.

T: I honestly don’t know where the power of the “I” is located. I agree the “I” is not identical to the amalgamized ego-construct. But neither do I think the “I” can exist or experience apart from SOME concrete socialized construct. It’s a bit like the difference between the composition of the Mona Lisa and its constitutent mediums (paint, oil, resin, and canvas). I’ll agree the Mona Lisa qua personal composition/expression transcends its constituent mediums. It's not identical or reducible to its constituent mediums. But I’ll also say that apart from those mediums you don’t have any composition or art or aesthetic anything at all. No paint, no canvas, no color? No Mona Lisa. It's just an illustration of course...

For me, D, the logoi of created, embodied sentient beings express God’s will and purpose FOR our doing, feeling, wanting, sensing and thinking. They are God's intentions FOR those capacites, not for the space between them even if the true created person who does, and wants, and thinks, and feels is not reducible to the contingency that qualifies all free expression. This is what separates us I think. For me to suggest our logoi are fulfilled and experienced apart from our wanting/desiring, thinking, feeling, etc., is meaningless talk. If that’s what the EO has in mind then I don’t know what they’re talking about. I suggest that the logoi are God standing IN OUR thinking, feeling, doing, sensing and wanting and saying “Think this, feel this, do this, sense this, and want this.” I hear you saying our logoi are God standing in the space between our thinking, feeling, doing, and desiring, etc., and saying … well, I’ll let YOU tell us what God is saying in that space apart from all thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, etc.

You seem to be positing as fulfilled human/personal existence a conscious experience void of aesthetic satisfaction (at the very least). I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to express that in terms of Greg’s metaphysic because I don’t see any room in his metaphysic for it. An experience in which there is no wanting present, no desiring present, no thinking present, no feeling, no elation, no wonder, no awe. God wants that for us?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 1/7/2012 1:06:24 AM (GMT-6)

The closest I can get to expressing what you might have in mind—in terms I can conceive, is the human experience of itself in terms of divine transcendence, which for me means that our desiring, feeling, thinking, and doing become how and where we experience the uncreated desiring, thinking and feeling. We experience the transcendent ground of our being in terms of an ineffable desiring, thinking and feeling, not in terms of their absence. To say we can have an experience which is void of thought and feeling is not to transcend thought and feeling. It's just to negate them. Or in other words, to say we are most fulfilled in the space between our wanting, thinking, and feeling is not to transcend our wanting, thinking and feeling; it's to say that our wanting, thinking and feeling are not means of participation in divine transcendence, and that's a denial of the gospel. In my view, one transcends them by means OF them.

Like I said on the phone. Consider the question of how one could express the experience of sweetness in discursive terms. One can’t. There are no propositions that can mediate or contain the EXPERIENCE of sweetness. It’s ineffable. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also thought; i.e., that one can experience sweetness as aesthetic satisfaction apart from a functioning intellect which shares in making the enjoyment possible. Intellect ‘thinks’ this enjoyment in its own way. If that’s “beyond thought” enough for you, then we can find a way to agree. But if you mean something more, I can’t help ya.

In my mind, we experience God as ground of our being in a way that transcends our desiring, thinking, and feeling AS we desire God in a way that perfectly satiates desire while leaving us desiring more; a fulfillment which is anticipation, and so a desiring which is not desiring and a not desiring which is desiring; and by feeling an such unspeakable emotional elation which is always simultaneously full and yet self-surpassing because it's ever-abounding in God, and thus a feeling which is not feeling and a not feeling which is feeling--all in all a fulness which is both perfect rest and unending traversal of feeling and thought.

Hope that helps.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 1/7/2012 9:24:34 AM (GMT-6)

The original version of this page can be found at : http://www.opentheismboard.org/default.aspx?f=10&m=106177

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Tom:
The closest I can get to expressing what you might have in mind—in terms I can conceive, is the human experience of itself in terms of divine transcendence, which for me means that our desiring, feeling, thinking, and doing become how and where we experience the uncreated desiring, thinking and feeling. We experience the transcendent ground of our being in terms of an ineffable desiring, thinking and feeling, not in terms of their absence. To say we can have an experience which is void of thought and feeling is not to transcend thought and feeling. It's just to negate them. Or in other words, to say we are most fulfilled in the space between our wanting, thinking, and feeling is not to transcend our wanting, thinking and feeling; it's to say that our wanting, thinking and feeling are not means of participation in divine transcendence, and that's a denial of the gospel. In my view, one transcends them by means OF them.


I believe that the following things are involved in a human being living out their "eschatological essence":

Human immaterital aspect (A)

Human material aspect brain (B)

Human ego functioning (F) from bi-polar assymetrical relational unity of (A) and (B)

Human personality amalgamation process (P) from (F)

All that I am saying Tom, is that the human being, via deep, non-discursive stillness, silence, concentration, can experience it's own immaterial aspect that it is continually "gifted" to it by God. This produces an effect like unto Sat-chit-ananda...which, in turn, has an effect on our ego defenses and how they operate. It's like this process...

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/8/2012 7:15:25 AM (GMT-6)

Posted By : Tom - 11/13/2007 2:52 AM

EPIK: What if human self-relational unities (human "selves") are ego peripheries within all humans (ego formation is part of human nature) that develop relationally with the divine self-relational unity, the Divine Ground/Center of Personhood, the Logos...which is ALSO within all humans?   Tom: I can live with that, yeah.   -------------------- EPIK (after Tom/Greg exchange): Tom, all we have to say is that the non-divine self-relational unities (non-divine "selves" ) are the emergent properties of the Self-Relational Logos formed from contingent relational matrices of God's Uncreated Energies which are in inseparable unity with, but not identical to, the Logos.  You said before, Tom, that as long as the emergent property could be considered relatively autonomous from the Divine Disposition (where the "sin" of the human disposition could NOT BE DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTED to the Logos), you were cool, right? So, you should be cool with this.   Tom: I think so. (I said all that?)   ---------------------   EPIK: Basically what I hear you saying here, Tom, is that you are willing to go with human self-relational unities being EMERGENT PROPERTIES of contingent relational matrices of God's Energies. Would I be right on that?   Tom: Yeah. But I prefer ‘emergent realities’, because we’re not just properties. The word “property” got carried over from the thing about Aristotle.

 Just a flashback...

Posted By : One Love - 8/4/2010 10:58 AM

The best analogy I have for this is as follows: Let's say that each cell and organ in your body, Tom, had not only it's own level of subjectivity, but also had the capacity for self-reference...being able to relate itself to itself such that it could see itself distinct from it's environment, the body. Basically, the cell would be AWARE of being a cell and being a part of a larger self-referencing reality: the organ. The organ would be AWARE of being an organ and being part of the self-referencing reality: the system. And each system (cirulatory, skeletal, etc) would be aware of itself and it's context: the body. Now your body is TRANSCENDED by the incorporeal aspect (your "soul")  of your human hypostasis, which also has capacity for self-reference as it related to the body as a whole, each system, each organ, and each cell. We'd actually say that your incorporeal aspect GROUNDS the subjectivity felt in each "whole" within your body. Imagine that each cell would self-reference in it's relationship the one incorporeal aspect in the body in an I-Thou manner...and vice versa. It seems obvious that the subjective experience of each cell would NOT be reducible to or identical with your soul's subjective experience. If the self-referential cell excreted some material, your soul would not say "I, the soul, excreted material from my cell wall." Nor would the cell, say "I, the cell, sustain the whole body." However, it would be undeniable that the cell's self-consciousness would be inseparable from the consciousness infused in the body by the soul, such that it would have no consciousness without the soul. So.... Let... human cell = individual human mind/brain relational unity, setting of personal consciousness and unconsciousness organ/systems = setting for collective consciousness and unconsciousness body = humanity as a whole non-corporeal grounding of body = God the Son as "Adam Kadmon" This means, Tom, that God the Son as "Immanuel" would NOT have a first person experience of being a sinner...nor would a non-incarnate human mind/brain relational unity have the conscious first person experience of being GOd.  At the same time, the CONSCIOUSNESS of the non-incarnate human mind/brain relational unity is the SAME field of consciousness as "Immanuel."  Multiple self-referencing persons in a SINGULAR field of consciousness, who is ALSO personal. Something else.  If each self-referencing cell in the body were to practice "unknowing" and "silence", how would differentiation within the consciousness field take place?  It couldn't be by any cell wall differentiation or anything. Making sense?

Posted By : One Love - 8/4/2010 6:12 PM

...   The idea is that Christ is the "Oversoul" of all creation. The following picture is Alex Grey's "Oversoul". See the similiarity?   Anyways, you never answered my question, homie. Does it make sense? Hehe.

Posted By : Tom - 8/4/2010 6:15 PM

Yes, of course it makes sense! Just don't show any pastors that picture when you apply for a job hommie. Ha! T KIXYTΘEMTA

The only thing I'm trying to show is that my thoughts on this matter have been QUITE consistent!

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/8/2012 8:56:18 AM (GMT-6)

Come own, somebawdy!

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/8/2012 8:48:23 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/8/2012 9:16:48 AM (GMT-6)