I’ve been reading an article about a school of Islamic mystical philosophy called “unity of existence.” Their position on the nature of existence is neither entirely monist nor entirely dualist, but rather something in-between.
The starting point of their position is that, in our conventional perception of reality, we tend to see lots and lots of discrete things or forms, i.e. multiplicity. Metaphorically speaking, we are seeing the images of things in the mirror of the Absolute.
However, it’s possible for someone to have a mystical experience wherein their ego-consciousness is completely annihilated. Upon returning from this experience, their perception has become the reverse of the conventional perception, i.e. they see the image of the Absolute in the mirror of the multiplicity of forms.
In the first case, things obscure the Absolute. In the second case, the Absolute obscures the multiplicity of things.
Finally, the person with deepest insight – a true metaphysician worthy of the name – is capable of experiencing both forms of awareness simultaneously, i.e. they can perceive the multitude of forms as articulations of the Absolute, *and* they can perceive the Absolute as reflected in the diverse forms of the world.
Also, this school maintains that the Absolute is real, and the world of forms is not real. But, at the same time, the situation is not quite that simple. The forms are real in a conditional or dependent way, inasmuch as they are manifestations or crystallizations of the Absolute.
Writers of this school are fond of using metaphors to describe the situation. For example, an individual person is like a drop of water that had always viewed itself as a discrete drop of water. Then one day, the drop suddenly discovers that it’s part of the ocean.
Another relevant metaphor is waves on the surface of the ocean: People become fascinated by the waves, i.e. the phenomenal world, and attach all kinds of importance to the waves, without it ever occurring to them that the waves themselves are just articulations of the vast, underlying ocean.
In other words, the world around us is essentially a dream or a mirage. Nevertheless, at the same time, it still possesses some shadow-like realness.
To add a further wrinkle, it is only when the Absolute comes into juxtaposition to the phenomenal world that it makes sense to talk about Allah or God. Now, to say that God is somehow contingent seems surprising. However, we can think of the word “God” here as a relational concept: “God” is what the Absolute becomes as soon as the Absolute is set off in relation to the created world. Without the world, all that exists is the all-embracing, all-inclusive Absolute, i.e. the ocean of existence.
For this reason, Islamic mystical tradition understands God to have explained His motivation for creating the world by saying (paraphrase): “I was a hidden treasure and wished to be known.”
acilius
believer1
lefalcon
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
Panther Red 
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008VThunderLad wrote:
Do you have a link or a dry turd about this subject? I’m fascinated by discussions of consciousness.
It’s one of those common experiences that we are mostly clueless about.
This speaks to thought-cud upon which I chew occasionally: that religion and faith and perhaps the
paranormal belong to a class of experience which has no actual connection to absolute reality but
is nonetheless a potent, perceivable realm for humans.
“God only when there’s something to be God of” is in line with strands of Gnostic thought which
describe a universe filled with an infinite God containing all things that strives to know itself.
Because it is already infinite and good, its only route to greater self-knowledge is through the
spontaneous creation and reassimilation of both temporal existence and evil.
Self-conscious beings with free will within the proscribed (but somewhat arbitrary) temporal world
are here, then, to instantiate all possible things for the glory and fulfillment of the universe/God.
I’ve always found it fascinating that this view lends itself to amorality and even immorality as
necessary and almost excusable – as if one could hold up the 7-11 and scream “I’m doing this
for God!” at the police, and mean it! Certainly it makes sense, on this path, that a watchful God
may be watching us in order to verify what is good and evil. Judgment still may be intrinsic (or should
I say extrinsic?) to a world with free will.
Also fascinating is a strand Philip K. Dick picked up in several stories wherein God is “blinded”
or held prisoner in a sense by his own creation of evil. Only through progressive cycles of
advancing self-knowledge can the universe recover and God be released from his self-imprisonment,
culminating in a God who knows more of itself than ever. Cycle repeats! Sorry about all those wars
and episodes of Law & Order…
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahdat_al-wujud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulla_Sadra
Dried turds, I’m fresh out…but you might look at the two links above.
I was thinking about your remark that religion/faith may have no correlation to absolute reality.
Not only do I think that’s possible, I sort of assume it to be the case.
As Max Weber famously proclaimed, human beings are suspended in webs of meanings
that they themselves create. I think religions represent an effort to freeze-frame or crystallize
an essentially fluid experience/awareness. We use language and discursive thinking in an effort
to “capture” some understanding about the ground of existence…an understanding that can never be
captured in words. It’s like describing a rainbow from a B&W photo: The description does truly
approximate the image of a rainbow, at least to some degree,
while nevertheless entirely missing the “point” of the rainbow.
Especially, fundamentalistic forms of religion tend to be trapped at this level of linear, literalistic consciousness.
Or whatever!
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008VThunderLad wrote:
One of the fundamental issues I have with organized religion is the requirement of submission
to human authority in the process. Really, many people (and when I say “people,” I mean odious,
proselytizing, obnoxious American Christians) don’t seem to give a ficus about your core beliefs
or lack thereof. They want you to agree to join their particular sect and group and
tumble under the thick blankets of conformity with them, because it enhances their status within
their own particular group of hierarchy-sensitive primates.
Does any of that make sense in terms of a universal spiritual force that presides over the entire
universe? Is G– nervous or insecure to the point that he insists on various groups beating up
other people who don’t believe?
Humans are so fallible I can’t really believe any of them have successfully transmitted the word
of G– in any meaningful way. Why should I believe any of them? Because they say “well, we’ve been
selling this for a long time.” As if a label reading “Since 1879” means a particular jam company is really fucking
awesome at making jam. It becomes a confidence game to get me to believe.
What a pain in the ass. All these religious freaks forcing me to jack things like cucumbers and
pineapples, while proclaiming the whole affair a profound display of worship!
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008Acilius wrote:
that’s fascinating. the idea that the forms are real, not in themselves, but only in their relationship to the Absolute reminds me of Neoplatonism. i never got very far with Neoplatonism- my knowledge of the subject consists of the chapter on Plotinus in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, about five pages of the Enneads, and a few scattered references here and there. anyway, the school of thought you describe sounds kind of like what I can remember from those few pages.
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008Yes I agree with some of these proselytizing Xtians, and this holds true for any number of other
religious communities: it’s not so much that their beliefs are actively and flagrantly implausible
(tho’ they may be, at times). Rather, the problem seems to be the sheer randomness of what
they’ve chosen to seize upon as absolute truth.
For example, Muhammad is declared to be just an average guy, like you (dual) and me.
Far be it from Muslims to glorify *their* central figure in the manner of, say, Xtians…
with their fancy “son of God.”
Then you discover that because Muhammad held the status of prophet, he therefore was
completely infallible…and any possible mistake he may have made during his life was somehow
corrected prior to his death. Well that type of infallibility and perfection sure don’t sound too “human”
to me. In fact, there’s even a tale in Islamic tradition of how two angels performed almost of a sort of
spiritual surgery on Muhammad and removed the dark essence of baseness and evil from his heart.
OK fine…but isn’t that then tending toward making him into rather a supernatural or superhuman
figure who most emphatically is *not* just like you (dual) and me?
That’s only one small example of something that someone might find hard to swallow,
and of course such examples could be multiplied by the zillions.
On the other hand, I came across something interesting lately in some “New Age” literature,
where the writer suggested that religious practice and ritual is useful for “re-claiming our faith,”
as he expressed it. By which he means that human beings automatically and naturally
have faith and belief…but the question is, what do you invest your faith in?
And the answer is, in a system of self-understanding or “residual self-image”
(to use “Matrix” terminology), i.e. a narrative about “who I am” that is largely based in our
conditioning and programming going back to childhood. However, this narrative or “dream”
in which our faith is invested, is massively grounded in lies and misapprehensions.
Therefore he offers the solution of dismantling the structure of lies and thereby releasing our faith,
which can then be re-invested in a new, more positive narrative or “dream.”
Since dismantling this structure is so difficult, we can gain assistance from participating in a
religious community and its rituals.
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008Acilius wrote:
this writer you quote sounds a lot like a Quaker. they tend to believe that each individual human is born with a capacity for mystical knowledge; that this knowledge is “inner,” hidden in the individual and not directly communicable to any other individual or to any collectivity; that activities groups undertake are “outer” and are valuable only as a means for advancing individuals towards mystical knowledge; that if “outer” forms of activity do not promote this advancement of individuals, that they are not to be regarded as having religious significance; that activities which do not have religious significance should be designated as such and should not be allowed to interfere with activities that do promote the advancement of individuals towards mystical knowledge; and that communal worship, therefore, should be extremely simple in its requirements, extremely flexible in its format, and extremely decentralized in its recognition of authority.
even though i spend a substantial number of hours each week in a Quaker meetinghouse, i’m not convinced of any of this. that’s why i’m not a member.
i don’t know whether there is any such thing as mystical knowledge; i’m inclined to believe that there is not. i don’t know if it is possible to draw a very sharp line between on the one hand “inner” experience, that is, private mental experience, and on the other hands the visible actions of bodies. i don’t know if an individual human being is really all that substantial an entity when you disregard the characteristics and habits that that individual acquired as part of a group. i don’t know how it is possible to compute the likelihood that a given set of ritual observances will promote the advancement of a number of individuals towards spiritual enlightenment, or how to use that computation to decide whether that set of observances should be discarded.
if i did become a believing christian, i’d probably have to start going to the episcopal church- they don’t draw such a sharp distinction between “inner” and ‘”outer,” they don’t propose a permanent revolution in liturgy and church polity, and they don’t demand that every christian be a prophet in the making. i’d be in trouble- i like the people at our meeting, i enjoy participating in its activities (charitable, recreational, educational, and religious activities,) and brooke is a convinced Quaker. also, as an institution the protestant episcopal church in the US seems to be disintegrating. and there’s a lot of work involved in attending an episcopal church, a lot of speaking in unison, reading from multiple books, standing up and sitting down, marching around, etc etc etc.
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008Interesting connexion to Neo-Platonism. Tho’ your knowledge of Neo-P may have limits,
you’re lucky insofar as you apparently know what it is. My main encounter was in the form of
a book, read during high school, by Classicist REX WARNER…made me feel like a wreck, worn.
The book included a section on Neo-P or Plotinus and/or a lengthy excerpt drawn from the Enneads.
I remember that it was just agony to get through…and after reading it, I immediately forgot its entire contents.
However I am a big fan of the interface between mysticism and philosophy.
And I’m fascinated by the notion of mystical experience: I assume that such experiences are possible and real,
simply because I can’t think of any other way to explain why people over time would’ve produced all these
mystical treatises.
Assisting John Houseman with a “treastise,”…
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008VThunderLad wrote:
I’m fascinated by mysticism, philosophy, religion and oddities like UFOs because they are a part
of reported human experience even though many or most people would agree they may be completely
unreal (ie., not subject to strictly objective observation or proof).
Perhaps these are all artifacts of the mechanical processing of our biological systems fixed
in a universe of unvarying rules. Though uncontrolled, bellicose flatulence, as of that from
a filthy animal or Senator, can generate supernatural levels of fear and trauma, it’s only a well
understood, objectively physical process from the end. Tell that to the schmuck in the gas plume though!
The best credentialed and most interesting UFO researchers (Hynek, Vallee, and other thorough skeptics)
arrived generally at the same answer after years of study: whatever UFOs are, they are probably not
physical extraterrestrial craft piloted here from distant stars. The phenomenon is strikingly linked with the
entire field of human folklore about little people, fairies, hairy man-apes, ghosts and goblins. Perhaps it’s
an external force but it sure seems to be a projection of the human mind. Yet there is limited but solid
evidence that the experiences are very real for some folks, and some aspects do have an impact in the
physical world.
Whatever the objective truth, I generally think it’s more interesting, when someone claims to have
spoken with a burning bush or met an alien with a “tree-like” appendage, to ask “what does that mean to you?”
rather than “how can you be sure it was as big as a tree?”
lefalcon
/ October 11, 2008Acilius wrote:
arthur clarke wrote a book of essays called 1984: Spring: A Choice of Futures. i wish i still had it because of one piece in particular. he describes about 11 UFOs he’d seen in his lifetime, each of them as impressive as any of the other “close encounters of the first kind” i’d ever heard of. he said that he thought any reasonably observant person could expect to see about the same number of UFOs in a lifetime. then he gave scientific explanations of each of his sightings that exhausted all of the apparently anomalous observations without bringing in any exotic phenomena.
acilius
/ October 13, 2008This topic reminds me of an idea I’ve been thinking about for a few years. Christians tend to say that God is the ultimate truth. That is to say, that Truth is a person.
Yet we know that there is more than one kind of truth. So for example Goedel’s theorem shows that the truths of aritmetic cannot be reduced to the truths of logic. If Truth is a person, then, it must have more than one personality. The idea of the Trinity makes it possible for Christian theologians to accept the implications of Goedel’as theorem and still personalize Truth.
It sounds like thinkers of this school also anticipated Goedel by a few centuries. Instead of saying that God has many personalities, they decline to identify him with truth and leave truth as an abstract relation, not a person.
acilius
/ October 14, 2008it’s been a long time since i’ve paid any attention to metaphysics. i’ll try to shake the dust off my memories of the subject and come up with something to say.
let’s see… time. what about time? st. augustine said that God is outside time, inasmuch as time is a measurement of change and God is changeless. i always envision augustine’s God as the author of a comic strip. the reader imagines the events of in the strip’s story to unfold panel by panel. the author may sketch the story out that way, but is likely to work on the panels out of sequence. the finished strip suggests a sequence of events to the imagination, but the physical strip itself is one object, one slip of paper marked with ink or one portion of a screen marked with pixels. likewise, from the viewpoint of augustine’s God all temporal events coexist and are visible together. events occurring later in time do not change His character, because they are already available to Him. He has already determined His relationship to them.
the Absolute sounds like it would also have to be outside time. if i understand you correctly (a big “if,” since my knowledge of metaphysics is scanty and my understanding of islam is nil,) the school you are discussing seems to be saying that God emerges from the Absolute in virtue of the relation of the Absolute to the created world. so, if we imagine “the Absolute” as Charles Schulz, we imagine “God” as “the author of Peanuts.” i take it the “unity of existence” thinkers believe that creation took place in time. if so, does God exist within time? or, if the Absolute exists outside of time, is its relationship to time and all of the events that take place within time a single, immutable relationship? and does God therefore have an eternal existence as an aspect of the Absolute? so that, while the actual Charles Schulz had existence for some time before he became the author of Peanuts, the Absolute would never not have been God?
lefalcon
/ October 15, 2008Time is apparently an illusion. Past and future are abstractions, mental constructs. The world of phenomena is in a state of constant flow and flux. Even an apparently static object, like a rock (or if you’re a New Englander, a stone), is actually constantly metamorphosing, from moment to moment.
I’m not sure, however, how to answer the following question: If the rock changes from one moment to the next, doesn’t that imply linear time? Isn’t the rock’s current, changed state contingent upon a prior state of a moment ago? Otherwise, how can the rock be presently changed, if there is no past in reference to which it could’ve changed?
I have no idea.
I guess to answer that question, I would need to have my ego-consciousness annihilated in the vast cosmic ocean…or read another article. And during the coming week or so, one of those appears a bit more feasible than the other.
acilius
/ October 15, 2008“I would need to have my ego-consciousness annihilated in the vast cosmic ocean…or read another article. And during the coming week or so, one of those appears a bit more feasible than the other.”
I cab sympathize. The whole time I was in grad school, the idea of reading another article always seemed to be just this side of conceivable. Meanwhile, the whole envronment I was in seemed designed to annihilate my ego-consciousness as quickly and completely as possible.
lefalcon
/ October 18, 2008Just wanted to indicate that, as I discourse on this topic, I’m not speaking about something of which I’m deeply knowledgeable but rather I’m merely dipping into a collection of some articles by a Japanese scholar named Toshihiko Izutsu and paraphrasing some of the stuff I just read. The last thing we talked about was the issue of time and how this mystical-philosophical school would account for it. Here is my understanding.
One of the formative figures in this type of mystical philosophy, Aynul Qudat al-Hamadani, dealt with this issue of linear time vs. the timeless present, in the following fashion.
Linear time is perceived in the dimension of reason and the senses. In this mode of perception, people use words like “before” and “after.” Philosophers and theologians talk about the creation of the world as situated in time, because they are operating in the dimension of reason.
Al-Hamadani discusses another dimension, that beyond reason. This is where mystical experience enters the picture. In the dimension beyond reason, it becomes clear that every individual thing is being infused with its existence by the Absolute. For example, a piece of wood exists at a given moment, because its very existence is informed by the Absolute. At the next moment, the piece of wood is newly invested with its existence. In short, all of creation is constantly being re-made or re-born, in each new instant.
Now it could be objected, doesn’t the dimension beyond reason still allow for linear time? If the piece of wood is constantly being re-created in every successive moment, wouldn’t that succession of consecutive wood-creations constitute linear time?
But the issue is this: We’re talking about a dimension that lies beyond discursive reasoning, beyond the powers of the mind to conceptualize and explain. I’d venture to say that the notion of the wood being endlessly re-born in every passing second, is simply a way of formulating what is happening in terminology that the mind can grasp.
acilius
/ October 23, 2008Fascinating. Inspired by my image of Saint Augustine’s God relating to the universe as the author relates to a comic strip, I envision the successive recreations as panels arranged in space around that author. Just as misleading and incomplete an image, I’m sure.