DECEMBER 2003 
AFTER DAMASCUS


{A} After Damascus:
{B}  It is MIND that moves between science, mysticism, and experience.
{C} Scientists, Mystics and the Ground of Faith
{D} Prof R.M. Cocks discusses the philosopher Ken Wilbur, and "The Death of Metaphysics"
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS:
Letter from  Richard Cocks PhD about no longer being a Holist
1 After Damascus:
"I understand that Professor Ecks is writing his autobiography."

"Really? What is he calling it?"......... "The Life of Jesus."

A jest of course. Attempted biographies of Jesus so often
 give more insight into the mind of the author, than into
 that of Jesus.

Perhaps more than forty years elapsed after the resurrection,
before the gospels were written. Given that there were no
stenographers around when Jesus spoke, it was inevitable
that  followers of Jesus told the story of his life and teaching
 in the light of his effect on their lives. They told this story
through the filter of their personal histories and beliefs, and
 in the light of their various understandings of the reading
of Scripture that took place every Sabbath. In a sense they
were producing their own autobiographies. Jesus no doubt
 had had a profound effect on their lives, and no doubt many memories were vivid, but it remains true that we see him through their eyes. Even so, their testimony to the Christ encounter nevertheless has helped change the world.
 
As the centuries passed, succeeding generations of Christians attempted to interpret the Christ encounter in the light of philosophies and world-views prevailing at the time.
Then as now, they felt the need to make sense of things. But often rival interpretations  occasioned bitterness and division between differing groups of Christians, as can still  be the case today.

This bitterness and division should have taught us to treat our explanations somewhat lightly, and to focus more steadfastly on the Christ encounter, and on our relations to others, and to life.

"No man is an island": every word we utter, every thought in our heads, has come from our interchanges with others of the tribe and society which produced us. Yet we cannot  content ourselves with the second hand, we must experience for ourselves.

When persecutor Paul had first hand experience of Christ on the road
 to Damascus, his reaction was drastic:

"When that happened, without consulting any human being, without
 going up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me, I
went off at once to Arabia . . Three years later I did go up to
Jerusalem to get to know Cephas. I stayed with him for a fortnight
, without seeing any other of the apostles, except James the Lord’s
 brother. What I write is plain truth; before God I am not lying."
Gal. 1.17-20.NEB (We can note that Paul in all his letters, has
 nothing to say about the life and teachings of Jesus, except his
account of the Last Supper and the story of the cross. That the
Good News spread so successfully in all those years before the
gospels were written, is a strong reminder of the primacy of the
Divine Encounter, and that records of past events, even those of
the life and teachings of Jesus, are secondary. They are secondary,
 but to us essential, if we are to locate the Good News in history.)

He was later to devote much of his writing considering his Christ
encounter, in the light of the writings of Judaism in which his
consciousness had been formed. But first things came first.

John’s Gospel and letters were perhaps written 40 years after
 the last of Paul’s letters. But even though he presents much
teaching that he ascribes to Jesus, parts of John mirror Paul’s
 attitude: Listen to the testimony of others, but your own
experience of Christ is what counts. That is explicit in 1John1.1:
 "It was there from the beginning; we have heard it; we have
seen it with our own eyes; we looked upon it, and felt it with our
 own hands; and it is of this we tell. Our theme is the word of life.
 This life was made visible; we have seen it and bear our
testimony; we here declare to you the eternal life which dwelt
 in the Father and was made visible to you."


3  It is MIND that moves between science,
mysticism, and experience.
      In his article, Science, Spirit and Reality, Leo Hobbis writes:
"I contend that neither science nor theology is taking sufficient account of
 the role of mind, and that if they were to do so the discussion could move
to the more fertile ground to be found in the relation between science and
 the human spirit.

The need for this discussion was apparent to William James, the great
 psychologist and philosopher, when just over a century ago he wrote to
 a friend:

The … fountain-head of all religions
lies in the mystical experiences of the individual…,
All theologies and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary growths superimposed; and the experiences … belong to a region deeper, & more vital and practical, than that which the intellect inhabits.
For this they are also indestructible by intellectual arguments and criticisms.
I attach the mystical or religious consciousness to the possession of an extended subliminal self, with a thin partition through which messages make irruption.
We are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a sphere of life
larger and more powerful than our usual consciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continuous.
They … help us to live,…[they give]… invincible assurance in a world beyond the senses,
they melt our hearts and communicate significance and value to everything  and make us happy.
…Philosophy and theology give their conceptual interpretations of this experiential life.
      The farther margin of the subliminal field being unknown,
       it can be treated as by Transcendental Idealism, as an Absolute mind
 with a part of which we coalesce,
or by Christian theology, as a distinct deity acting on us.        Something,
 not our immediate self, does act on our life!

Frontispiece to Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol 9, No. 9-10, September/October 2002.
Special Issue ‘The Variety of Religious Experience: Centenary Essays’, Ed Michel Ferrari.

James subsequently proposed as science of religion which
he called 'radical empiricism’. This would be based on human
experience as opposed to theological doctrine. Such an approach
 is open to us through the study of mind."
         
What Mind actually does
Think about what actually happens in our minds when we think :
 you are wondering about the relationship between science and
mysticism.  Your mind moves you from the thought of science to
 that of mysticism. You then think about having a cup of tea.
Fragments of church teaching come to mind, questions about
your own personal spiritual experiences and how they square
with your understanding of church teaching, wonderings about
 what other people might think of your thoughts, and so on, and
 for ever.  Our minds all too easily can flit from point of view to
point of view.  

When we are confused, it is good to remember that the mind
is in charge. It is free to attend to, or not to attend to, beliefs
 and attitudes of others. It is free to experience the inner and
 the outer for itself, and to reflect on these experiences.

Our minds appear to be flitting from one thing to the next.
But we know that we, or our minds, can take charge, nobody
 is compelling us to think anything.  We can treat science as a
 tool we can use for thinking, which we can pick up and put down.
 We can see literature and the arts, as tools to be picked for the
 mind's purposes, and then put down.  We can see religion, the
Bible, and the Church similarly as tools, to be picked up and
put down. We can see our life at work as a tool for the mind's
experience, (as well as the source of food and sustenance).
We pick that up, and put it down.
Our minds can change focus also at will: we can focus in the
mystical holistic mode, we can focus on the see and touch,
or in the imaginative world. The Mind can focus very differently
 in trance, in dream, and when it has some kind of awareness,
which for want of a better word, we can term "paranormal" 

This is why, even if empiricism is always and lamentably
tending toward ‘sensory empiricism,’ many mystics speak of ‘mystical empiricism,’
meaning direct mystical experience, using ‘experience’ in the wider
and truer sense of ‘immediate awareness’ and not just ‘immediate
sensory awareness (which is why so many mystics insist on calling
 their endeavors experiential, experimental, and scientific in that sense).

And here, too, mental experience can get into trouble, because it can use
a mental symbol, such as the mental experience of the word ‘G-o-d,’ to
stand for the spiritual experience of direct illumination (for example),
and so here again it is caught in “mere abstractions”: it is using mental
experiences to try to cover experiences that aren’t in themselves mental.
These “representations” then become “mere metaphysics,” and since the
 time of Kant, we all know that is a very bad idea: it won’t hold water,
which is to say, it hasn’t any experiential grounding: this type of “mere
metaphysics” is simply empty categories devoid of true knowledge,
which is to say, devoid of true experience.

However, since Kant doesn’t acknowledge spiritual experience, he therefore
 thinks metaphysics per se is dead, which is the point at which
Schopenhauer, among others, leveled a devastating criticism of Kant (and
the point where Katz’s neo-Kantian argument also collapses). Kant
demonstrated that mental symbols without experiential grounding are empty:
 but the real conclusion of his argument is that all future metaphysics
must be experiential—that is to say: experimental, grounded in direct
awareness and experience, coupled with validity claims that can be
redeemed in the experiment of contemplation, and grounded in the three
strands of all true knowledge accumulation: injunction/paradigm,
apprehension, and confirmation/rejection.

Virtually every thinker from Kant onward (and following his pioneering
lead) has announced “the death of metaphysics” and the “death of
philosophy”—from Nietzsche to Heidegger, from Ayer to Wittgenstein,
from Derrida to Foucault, from Adorno to Lyotard. And in the sense of the
“death of empty categories,” I agree entirely. But he real prolegomenon to
any future metaphysics is, not that the endeavor is altogether dead, but
that the real metaphysics can now, finally, get under way: actual
contemplative development (grounded in genuine spiritual experience) is
the future of metaphysics.

Thus, Kant’s attempt to “abolish knowledge [representational metaphysicsl
in order to make room for faith” (in God), should be completed a la
Nagarjuna: abolishmg mere symbols and concepts (abstract or
representational metaphysics) in order to make room, not for faith in God,
but for direct experience of God.

The point, then, is that we want to take the best of empiricism in
general: genuine knowledge must be anchored in validity claims of evidence
and experiential grounding; and we then add what should have been obvious
all along: there is sensory experience, mental experience, and spiritual
experience (holarchically interwoven, so that, for example, mental
experience provided by culture mediates and colors, but does not create in
toto, sensory experience and, should it occur, spiritual experience). We
then add one final point: don’t confuse these types of experience, and
don’t use the categories of one to cover the others (category error).

Thus, the “death of metaphysics” correctly means the death of using mental
experiences (symbols) to stand for spiritual experiences, and the real
birth of genuine metaphysics means: discover those spiritual experiences
directly (and communally shared m a sangha of intersubjective discourse of
checks and balances, and thus thoroughly grounded in validity claims).
(706-707, SES, Ken Wilber)]

What would you say to the criticism that while synchronicity may involve
an interior illumination, it does not seem to involve any particular
permanent interior transformation.  The meditators say that in early
stages of meditative practice psychic experiences are common, but one
should put them to one side and continue evolving, transforming one’s
consciousness from psychic, (gross, bodily, somatic) to subtle, (dream
sleep) to causal, (dreamless sleep) to nondual. One’s lifeworld will be
transformed likewise. Anyone at any level of consciousness can have peak
experiences, but the trick is to inhabit the level one has experienced,
and not merely be a tourist.  Each developmental stage must be attained
and then transcended, just as you must have images and symbols, before
 one can use concepts, and one must be able to perform concrete
operations, before formal operational thinking can occur. No skipping
allowed. Fortunately, however, complete mastery is not necessary
 at each level. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to be literate and verbal.

One other point that Wilber makes that I like is that anyone at any level
of development can have peak spiritual experiences, since these
experiences are always potentials of the human psyche.  However, these
experiences get interpreted at whatever level of development one is at. So
if one is at the mythic level of development one will imagine that the
experience means that God is on your side and he approves, and you
 should continue to stick it to the infidel.

You can also have uneven development; e.g., high cognitive, low moral,
medium emotional, pitiful spiritual, etc.. And any combination thereof.
The Nazis had fairly high cognitive rational, pitiful moral development.
But you can’t have high moral development without reasonably high
cognitive development because it is only through rational thought that one
can see things from someone else’s perspective and see things from their
point of view, frequently at one’s own expense.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITORS:
Opinion, personal stories, quotes.

Letter from  Richard Cocks PhD about no longer being a Holist.
Thanks to [the philosopher Ken] Wilber, I am now officially not a holist.  Wilber convincingly argues a point that I had already considered, and that is that holism, politically, is consistent with totalitarian states.  As I say I had been aware of this and it seemed likely to me that that was why Heidegger could become a fascist.

For the first time in a lecture the other day I used the term 'holist' in a negative sense.  The preferred notion is 'whole/part.' Wilber correctly says that emphasizing one at the expense of the other is disastrous.  As I say, I had been aware of this, but wasn't quite sure what to do about it.  
Maybe I could say that I was a holonist? Holons being always whole/parts simultaneously.When I think of myself as a holist, I think of the universe as an interconnecting whole with myself being a part of it.  But this is no good
because such a notion doesn't take account of depth.  Holons are nested in other holons in a holarchy i.e., subatomic particles are holons, nested in atoms.  From subatomic particle's perspective, the atom is the 'outside.'
The atom is an emergent phenomenon.  These give rise to molecules, then cells, then organisms, then biosphere, noosphere, theosphere.
Developmental evolution goes in the direction of greater depth, less span.
 Where something is on the holarchy is not arbitrary. There is a simple test, and it is what would happen if something disappeared? If there were no molecules, everything above molecules would disappear, but atoms would remain untouched.  Atoms have a greater span and are more fundamental than molecules, but they have less significance because they have less depth.

Individuals and populations have the same depth.  If you took either side away, both would disappear.  Individuals and populations occupy the same level. I think when I am imagining holism I am really thinking of the same levels or lower.  But we are not included in the material universe, the material universe is included in us. We include subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organism, biosphere, noosphere, theosphere, but atoms and dead matter don't include us. I tend to think of the universe as stars and planets, but stars and planets are much more fundamental than us, and therefore much less significant.  We depend on them, therefore they are at a lower level of emergent complexity than we are.  The biosphere is a lower level than noosphere.  We are not included in the biosphere, the biosphere is included in us, as one of our levels.  Without the biosphere, the noosphere would disappear, therefore the noosphere is a higher level. (The level of mind, or nous).  As I say, to test what level  something is, just imagine if it disappeared. Higher levels depend on lower levels.

It sounds counterintuitive, but it identifies what is wrong with at least my version of holism.  That by seeing oneself as part of the physical universe, one is going precisely in the wrong direction.  One is engaging in reductionism, going the wrong way down the evolutionary ladder.

Holism has a flattening effect and also is potentially fascistic.

Wilber also suggests not merging matter with the mental. He points out that the reason people have wanted to do this is because of an apparent conflict between matter and body. (Not matter and mind).  The conflict is that physics seemed to indicate entropy and a downward spiral, the universe is winding down.  And biology, seemed to indicate evolutionary development, a winding up in the direction of ever increasing emergent complexity. The answer in the past has been to assimilate body to matter reductionistically, or matter to mind, in the fashion of the idealists, George Berkeley and whoever. But recently, systems theory, chaos theory, dynamic systems theory, and so on have been pointing to chaotic systems that actually become ordered, like a mass of water forming a perfect spiral going down a pipe (or I would think, planets and stars emerging out of cosmic dust). This provides the link between matter and body where the arrows are going in the same direction (they are both winding up).

So you don't need to think of the universe as a mental phenomenon to overcome reductionism.  In fact, matter and mind are both the product of spirit, and matter and mind both lead up to spirit as conscious of itself (in a Hegelian fashion).

Whole/part thinking is really the position I have been searching for.  It is important to have one's integrity, autonomy, agency, (part), so that one is not a mindless conformist with no life and moral position of one's own.  But we also need connection, relations to others, for meaning. In the past women have tended to emphasize connection at the expense of having a life of their own, and men have emphasized autonomy at the expense of relationships. Men and women, while retaining our distinctive styles and tendencies could do with adjusting these tendencies so that women have more autonomy and men relate better, and this is what has been going on with feminism and the new 'sensitive' male.

Politically, if you emphasize the whole too much, then you say the individual only has value as he/she contributes to the whole, and no intrinsic value, which is obviously unsatisfactory. In holarchic thinking, holons have both value in themselves and as they contribute to a larger whole. This would make democracy look like a necessary compromise between parts and wholes.
One thing that I find a bit disconcerting is that holons go up and down infinitely. (There is no ultimate whole ever - yesterday becomes part of tomorrow's whole, for instance). Somehow at both ends of the scheme is supposed to be Spirit (at the highest level, where spirit becomes self-aware, and at the lowest, where spirit slumbers in nature and is the ground of all being, but isn't a being itself.)

I haven't figured out where God fits in here, although he could play Aristotle's role of being the ultimate chaotic attractor, pulling us in the direction of higher development through gentle persuasion toward love.
 Wilber does seem to go along with Aristotle that every potential is attempting to reach its own perfection as an acorn is heading in the direction of an oak, with a mature, flourishing oak tree representing its spiritual perfection. With humans, there seems no upper limit until we are reunited with the ground of all being, which is also the ultimate destination of all being.