Reflections on an Experience of the Eternal
In this reflection, I outline
some variations of mystical experience, with partly analyzing the content of one
of my own, trying to show that in residing day and night in the experience
and being transformed by it, we open up into a clearing in which we would
reconnect our existence and ethical comport to the eternal. This is the emergence of a faith, which is itself
based on a yearning and longing of a prior seed. I try to show only through this faith, we can and ought to suspend
ourselves in the experience of negative theology, which basically means to
resist the idolatry of identifying the eternal in the temporal, to make
ineffable God sayable, or to reveal the essence of that which cannot be
revealed in the rigid container of an identity.
I allude to its ethical signification at the end of this reflection.
The structure of this note is
like this: First I discuss the relation
between ineffability (un-say-ability) of the eternal and the intelligibility of
mystical experience and the relation of these both to faith. I will bring quotations from the negative
theology of different mystics and hope to show how they make the experience intelligible
or “show” without violating its ineffability.
I believe they can succeed in this practice by cohering their shattering
experience within the historical tradition of religious experiences. Second, I will briefly discuss early
Wittgenstein’s understanding of the mystical and how it manifests itself (become
intelligible) while it is not sayable.
Third, I will briefly compare Popper’s falsification theory with
mystical falsification of the temporal-natural world and will show how they are
fundamentally different. Fourth, I will
refer back and analyze my own experience and ponder its meaning and
significance for me (how it is intelligible for me), without claiming that the
eternal experienced as such can be settled once for all in any worldly
discourse.
Ineffability
and Intelligibility of Mystical Experience
I experience the eternal. What does it mean? Is it intelligible? If someone told me this little sentence ten
years ago, I would chuckle and say, “oh, I do too, because I know I will
die.” Words barely express the meaning
that I intend by “I experience the eternal.”
What is “the eternal”? Is it God?
Is it the universe? Is it
alive? Is it a person? Is it the supreme reality? Is it an escape? A word without reference? A word without sense? Do I have any image of what it could be? What do I mean by saying “I experience the
eternal”?
Then I start to delineate it, not
because I enjoy language games. It is
because of the experience itself. I have
something to say, and it is not to reveal the essence of the eternal, but
because of an urge, a ruminated digested urge, to give a helping hand and to
save before passing away. I know the
experience alludes to something ineffable.
But ineffability of what? Of the
variable Z? Or the constant P? Ineffability refers to something and here it
is the eternal or God. So to say the
eternal or God or Dao is ineffable, it doesn’t mean it is chaotic, meaningless,
absurd, or non-existence. It means I
can’t fathom it. The word “eternal” is
the limit of language, though not the limit of experience or thoughts. By saying that “I experience God”, I don’t
mean I see God with my eyes or hear God with my ears. At the same time, it is not completely
separate from my eyes and ears. In this
context, negative theology comes to help.
I try to explain an experience while I try to resist identifying the
object of experience with anything, as it is no-thing. Negative theology holds us in the experience
of union in love, without trying to pin down the eternal in a temporal idol:
[In the following, I change all
the pronouns to “God”—as identifying God as female or male or even a person
like human beings while God is love and aware and present and creator is
defying negative theology.]:
“The more God is in all things, the
more God is outside them. The more God is within, the more without.” (Eckhart)
“Only the transcendent, the completely
other, can be immanent without being modified by the becoming of that in which
it dwells. The Perennial Philosophy teaches that it is desirable and indeed
necessary to know the spiritual Ground of things, not only within the soul, but
also outside in the world and, beyond world and soul, in its transcendent
otherness 'in heaven.'” (Huxley)
“The simple, absolute and immutable
mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that
silence which reveals in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest
obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and, though beyond touch and sight, it more
than fills our unseeing minds with splendors of transcendent beauty. . . . We
long exceedingly to dwell in this translucent darkness and, through not seeing
and not knowing, to see God who is beyond both vision and knowledge by the very
fact of neither seeing God nor knowing God. For this is truly to see and to
know and, through the abandonment of all things, to praise God who is beyond
and above all things. For this is not unlike the art of those who carve a
life-like image from stone: removing from around it all that impedes clear
vision of the latent form, revealing its hidden beauty solely by taking away.
For it is, as I believe, more fitting to praise God by taking away than by
ascription; for we ascribe attributes to God, when we start from universals and
come down through the intermediate to the particulars. But here we take away
all things from God going up from particulars to universals, that we may know
openly the unknowable, which is hidden in and under all things that may be
known. And we behold that darkness beyond being, concealed under all natural
light.” (Dionysius the Areopagite)
“It is not easy to try
to say what I know I cannot say. I do really I have the feeling that you have
all understood and shared quite perfectly. That you have seen something that I
see to be most precious – and most available too. The reality that is present
to us and in us: call it Being, call it Atman, call it Pneuma … or Silence. And
the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering
the natural capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than
breathing), we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be
explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground
of Love for which there can be no explanations." (Thomas Merton)
"What if someone said to an embryo in
the womb, “Outside of your world of black nothing is a miraculously ordered
universe; a vast Earth covered with tasty food; mountains, oceans and plains, fragrant
orchards and fields full of crops; a luminous sky beyond your reach, with a
sun, moonbeams, and uncountable stars; and there are winds from south, north
and west, and gardens replete with sweet flowers like a banquet at a wedding
feast. The wonders of this world are
beyond description. What are you doing
living in a dark prison, drinking blood through that narrow tube?” But the womb-world is all an embryo
knows. And it would not be particularly
impressed by such amazing tales, saying dismissively: “You’re crazy. That is
all a deluded fantasy.” One day you will
look back and laugh at yourself. You’ll
say, “I can’t believe I was so asleep! How
did I ever forget the truth? How
ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness are anything other than bad
dreams.” (Rumi)
“All that the imagination can imagine
and the reason conceive and understand in this life is not, and cannot be, a
proximate means of union with God.” (St. John of the Cross)
“Jejune and barren speculations may
unfold the pictures of Truth's garment, but they cannot discover her lovely
face.” (John Smith, the Platonist)
“In all faces is shown the Face of
faces, veiled and in a riddle. Howbeit, unveiled it is not seen, until, above
all faces, a man enters into a certain secret and mystic silence, where there
is no knowing or concept of a face. This mist, cloud, darkness or ignorance,
into which he that seeks thy Face enters, when he goes beyond all knowledge or
concept, is the state below which thy Face cannot be found, except veiled; but
that very darkness reveals thy Face to be there beyond all veils. Hence I
observe how needful it is for me to enter into the darkness and to admit the
coincidence of opposites, beyond all the grasp of reason, and there to seek the
Truth, where impossibility meets us.” (Nicholas of Cusa)
“I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then
laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then
tender like the evening star. He said, ‘You’re not mad enough. You don’t belong
in this house.’
I went wild and had to be tied up. He
said, ‘Still not wild enough to stay with us!’ I broke through another layer
into joyfulness. He said, ‘It’s not enough.’ I died. He said, ‘You are a clever
little man, full of fantasy and doubting.’
I plucked out my feathers and became a
fool. He said, ‘Now you are the candle for this assembly.’ But I’m no candle.
Look! I’m scattered smoke. He said, ‘You are the Sheikh, the guide.’ But I’m
not a teacher. I have no power. He said, “You already have wings. I cannot give
you wings.’ But I wanted his wings. I felt like some flightless chicken.
Then new events said to me, ‘Don’t
move. A sublime generosity is coming towards you.’ And old love said, ‘Stay
with me.’ I said, ‘I will.’ You are the fountain of the sun’s light. I am a
willow shadow on the ground. You make my raggedness silky.
The soul at dawn is like darkened water
that slowly begins to say thank you, thank you. Then at sunset, again, Venus
gradually changes into the moon and then the whole night-sky. This comes of
smiling back at your smile.
The chess master says nothing, other
than moving the silent chess piece. That I am part of the ploys of this game
makes me amazingly happy.” (Rumi)
“As the Godhead is nameless, and all
naming is alien to God, so also the soul is nameless; for it is here the same
as God.” (Eckhart)
“God being, as God is, inaccessible, do
not rest in the consideration of objects perceptible to the senses and
comprehended by the understanding. This is to be content with what is less than
God; so doing, you will destroy the energy of the soul, which is necessary for
walking with God.” (St. John of the Cross)
“To find or know God in reality by any
outward proofs, or by anything but by God as such made manifest and
self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For
neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any
otherwise knowable in you or by you but by their own existence and
manifestation in you. And all pretended knowledge of any of these things,
beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is
only such knowledge of them as the blind man has of the light that has never
entered into him.” (William Law)
Wittgenstein
Showing and Saying
In the Mystic Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:
“Let
this be my prayer; but do thou, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of
mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the
intellect … and all things in the world of being and non-being … The higher we
soar in contemplation the more limited become our expressions of that which is
purely intelligible … We pass not merely into brevity of speech, but even into
absolute silence, of thoughts as well as of words… . We mount upwards from
below to that which is the highest, and according to the degree of
transcendence, our speech is restrained until, the entire ascent being
accomplished, we become wholly voiceless, in as much as we are absorbed in God
who is totally ineffable.” (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24116-the-mystical-in-wittgenstein-s-early-writings/)
As
well, while early Wittgenstein discerns “sense and nonsense” based on factual
and non-factual
[which later Wittgenstein critically modifies], he “does not, however, relegate all that is not inside the bounds
of sense to oblivion. He makes a distinction between saying and showing which is made to do additional crucial
work. ‘What can be shown cannot be said,’ that is, what cannot be formulated in
sayable (sensical) propositions can only be shown. This applies, for example,
to the logical form of the world, the pictorial form, etc., which show
themselves in the form of (contingent) propositions, in the symbolism, and in
logical propositions. Even the unsayable (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic)
propositions of philosophy belong in this group—which Wittgenstein finally
describes as ‘things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest.
They are what is mystical’ (TLP6.522).” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#SensNons).
So, how
can we speak about a mystical experience?
Arts and poetry are important mediums of conveying or showing religious
experience, and not all arts or poetry but the sacred ones based on the
experience. On the other hand, one might
try to give a sense of mystical experience by delineating it in negative theology.
The foundation of this delineation in order to hint at
the experience of God is first that one’s referential totality (worldhood of
the world) and existential certainty are being shattered by the experience to
the extent that one cannot form an absolute regular perception of the temporal
and normal as usual. I went through a couple of years depression after my own
experience. Why? It shattered all my philosophical
presuppositions and “faith” according to which I was gauging critically philosophical
and scientific discourses. This break
down of the ordinary every day faith
in deduction and induction (that
things will happen as they are and, for example, the sun will rise tomorrow) is
the precondition of an exit from the temporal and the usual into the ineffable eternal.
By the erosion
of everyday faith in uniformity of nature, causation, and the laws of reason,
reason has to bent itself to incorporate coincidentia
oppositorum and the seemingly “paradoxical” in itself. Reason hence doesn’t vanish but has to
transcend the limits of logic (principle of identity and the law of
non-contradiction); not an easy task.
But only through this breakdown case, one can hold opposites of immanent
and transcendental God, the self and the other, “identity” and “difference”,
negation and affirmation, inside and outside the world, the temporal and
eternal, together in complete meaningful equilibrium in negative theology.
Popper’s Falsification Principle
One
might argue that this breakdown case of the regularity of nature and so called
laws of reason is similar to Popper’s principle of falsification, in which one
breakdown case in experience is enough to falsify a scientific theory, for
example, if one white crow be seen, my theory that all crows are black will be
falsified. In the case of mystical
experience, the theory is the principle of sufficient reason, which has been
shattered by the mystical experience. In
a sense, the experience had falsified the tyranny
of the principle of reason (deduction) and regularity of nature (induction), and
set it as one way of perceiving the
world.
However,
this experience doesn’t discard reason altogether into irrationality but opens
up a space for a new “faith” (). But in order the new faith, the faith in the
eternal and the ineffable God to emerge in me, I had to let go of my absolute faith
in reason and sciences and the temporal as such for the time being. The experience of the paradoxical opened a
breach between temporal and the eternal for me and cleared a space for faith in
God. Through
this faith all negative theologies can make the experience of ineffable God intelligible.
Yes, in
this respect, one may argue that mystical experience has some similarity with
Popper’s falsifiability principle (), in which the faith in the eternal emerges or enhances in falsifying the
temporal. However, both Popper and the
mystical experience are intelligible based on some faiths in the intuition and
perception of their own understanding of the experience, which becomes more and
more coherent and intelligible by referring to their own specific tradition. In the case of Popper’s rational criticism,
it goes back to the history of rationalism and scientific discovery, and in the
case of mysticism, it incorporates thousand years of religious experiences and
scriptures. The major difference between
Popper’s falsification theory and mystical falsification of the temporal is
that, in the first case falsification can be repeated and tested by anyone, but
in the case of mystical experience, one has to rely on one’s personal
experience (self-certifying), which will potentially fall apart, if one doesn’t
relate to and communicate with similar experiences by other mystics, and if one
is not guided by God to confirm that experience by the tradition of religious
experiences and scriptures from the time immemorial.
We should keep
two things in mind. First, Popper has already
“faith” in deductive and inductive reasoning.
He has faith in causation, uniformity of nature, and the laws of nature
and the possibility of achieving or approximating truth is sciences, which against
its background the theory of “falsifiability” makes sense. He contends:
“Critical
rationalism recognizes the fact that the fundamental rationalist attitude
results from an (at least tentative) act of faith -from faith in reason.
Accordingly, our choice is open. We may choose some form of irrationalism, even
some radical or comprehensive form. But we are also free to choose a critical
form of rationalism, one which frankly admits its origin in an irrational
decision (and which, to that extent, admits a certain priority of
irrationalism). The choice before us is not simply an intellectual affair, or a
matter of taste. It is a moral decision (in the sense of chapter 5). For the
question whether we adopt some more or less radical form of irrationalism, or
whether we adopt that minimum concession to irrationalism which I have termed
'critical rationalism', will deeply affect our whole attitude towards other
men, and towards the problems of social life.” (Karl Popper, The Open Society
and Its Enemies, vol. 2, pp. 231-232).
As well,
negative theology, though it deals with ineffable, it is intelligible against
the background of the clearing of “faith in the eternal” through the experience
of the break-down of the temporal and re-connecting to thousands year tradition
of religious experience.
An
Experience of The Eternal
I try to explain an experience,
my experience, and I use history of mysticism and religions and philosophical
conceptual analysis to do it. I know
that I couldn’t have been able to experience the eternal in the way I do now,
in this profound and puzzling way, if I was not exposed to
religio-mystico-philosophical discourse.
Something in “knowing” affected my “being” though it didn’t determine
it. The knowing is the discourse on the
experience of God or the eternal and an element, a string, in its texture. But this textile consists of so many other strings,
colors, and elements. Indeed, knowing as
a mode of being came to affect my being, and my being in experience of the
eternal seeks to say knowingly what this experience is or how it feels, “knowing”
that it is ineffable, meaning we can’t fathom it, not that it is utterly
unintelligible.
If I didn’t experience the
mystery, the riddle of a direct miraculous intervention of a power who
addressed me in a peculiar way and in a puzzling expression, I wouldn’t say now
with a sense of coherency and faith that “I experience the eternal”. And I don’t mean that everyone experiences
the eternal the same or has to wait for the experience to say so. Things happen in a multitude of peculiar
and unpredictable ways. I just talk
about my own experience, while I find it commanding that everyone thirsts and
yearns and longs for experiencing God in their own way. Hereby, I talk about my experience—“I” not
important in this discourse-- to make “an” experience of the eternal
intelligible though I know its essence is ineffable.
Before this miracle, I had
philosophical ideas about time and eternal, now I use it as a transformation of
consciousness. One significance of this
miracle was that it broke my normative sense of the world and the
temporal. It shattered everything that I
thought I knew. After that decisive
experience, in the course of ten years thinking, reflecting, studying,
conversing, teaching world religions and philosophy, something in my perception
changed. I clearly realized a different
sense of perception of the ocean and trees, of people, animals, and
insects. How can I experience the
eternal or God in the temporal or oceans, trees, people, animals, and
insects? The world is the same, we all
have a shared world, we look at the same water, bay, lake, river; people are
the same; animals and insects have been there all along. What has changed? Now, the religious and mystical literature
from which I learned during years of teaching world religions makes sense. I, my ethical structure, my inner
disposition, my internal conflicts, my disconnect in hedonism or nihilism from the
world, my falling in scientific reductionism of seeing in trees chlorophyll and
photosynthesis only, in animals multicellular, motile (moving), eukaryotic organisms of
Metazoa only, and disconnect from eternity within and without, all make sense.
Then I was startled in joy to see the seed of eternal is
uncovered, discovered, recovered in me.
It brought this shocking insight that the seed of eternal is real and it
is in everyone, every human being, and in every living being in a different
way. I was shocked in knowing-feeling
it. This is faith. This is love.
Now I had to be careful because every single face potentially carries
the eternal God. Now love your enemy and
repel evil with good make sense and it is so difficult to do it. And I don’t claim I am there yet.
Then to make sense of this experience of God, I use some
guideposts, lines of division, to make the experience intelligible to me to
give fruits. For example, I talk about
“temporal” and “eternal”. If I am
touched by God, how do I know it is God and not some alien force? How do I discern it from the host of
superstitions and ghost stories, alien stories, self-projections? Thousand years of scriptures are the
guidance. I couldn’t make the experience
intelligible, which means, I couldn’t discern it from ghost stories and alien
stories, without immersing myself in thousands year religious traditions.
The experience clearly and loudly said: “I am here, I am
omnipotent, everything is in my hands, and there is a direction for all, from
beast to the divine.” But it didn’t tell
me anything about what it is or who it is.
And I use temporal and eternal (similar to Huxley and so many others)
for simplicity to make my point. I call
it “eternal” because it is a limit experience and limit-expression-word, which says
my source is alive, cares about us;
teaches us; it exists, which is the
foundation of my and everything’s being, and it is ineffable and it is in us, in each one of us, as present, not
identity. It is not in the world and it
is in the world, it is both immanent and transcendental. I call this coincidentia oppositorum.
I was disowned from the eternal in me and in the world when I
was materialist, physicalist, and atheist.
I didn’t believe there is any world beyond the sensible and
observable. I believed there was no God
or eternal, these were all names, I was a crude nominalist. The only existing things were verifiable and
testable objects based on senses and direct or indirect observation. I used to draw a line between sensible and
nonsensible. As now I might be inclined
to draw a line between temporal and eternal.
But this is a line to see the differences that belong to each
other. When I am released from my
everyday thought, I see eternal in temporal.
My spirit-brain-soul-body ascends to the eternal. I see eternal in water of the Bay, lake,
river, and oceans. I feel eternal in
trees, and silhouette of light around objects, through the medium of my own
life. Through the medium of my own
ascendance to the divine, being touched from within to without, I see God in
every single human face and all living beings.
Everywhere I look I see the face of God.
And by practice I am sure this can become permanent state of mind. I am not yet there.
But if you ask me “what is this eternal? What is this God?” I don’t have propositional knowledge of it:
it is ineffable. But I have faith in it,
in the sense I breathe it; it has turned me inside out; I fell in love, in huge
yearning and longing white hole of love.
It is the nexus of my intelligibility of the world and it is nonetheless
not sayable in its essence. I can talk
about it as I was talking so far, but I can’t tell you what its essence
is. I can’t fathom it. I am careful not to identify it with the
temporal. I am careful not to say God is
me, this symbol, or anything embodied. I
am careful not to confine the eternal in the temporal. Because the temporal, what we see and
experience every day, is an emanation of God, not God itself. When we identify God in temporal (as Huxley
rightly put it), we fall into idolatry.
If we identify a statue or the sun or moon as God, then we cut off
ourselves from eternity. Even if we see
the presence of eternity in a person or in the temporal world, as I said I can
see the eternal in humans, trees, and oceans, it doesn’t mean they are the
“same”. This is a conceptual leap. It is difficult for us to attain this
equilibrium due to our principle of identity and the law of non-contradiction
in logic. This is a reason that the
divine becomes ineffable and we can “show” it through the mystical expression
“conicidentia oppositorum”. Heidegger
gave a simple expression to it. We
should be able to imagine or feel “identity” and “difference” as being
suspended simultaneously as belonging together in their very existence, not
that one is prior to the other, or try to reduce one to the other. In this expression, I have my own “identity”
which is not sustainable without biosphere, and it is different from biosphere,
and all these differences are sustainable in the eternal God and different from
God, but they belong together and the relation of belonging is
asymmetrical. We belong to God but God
doesn’t belong to us. This writing
belongs to me but I don’t belong to this writing, and if I worship my own
creation, then I will bow down to my own thoughts and will forget my calling.
Everything is emanation of God, and no single thing is identical with God. If I bow down to a symbol, it is because I
acknowledge God’s presence in that symbol not that it is identical with
God. If I love you, or love life, trees,
oceans and insects, because everything is originated from and smeared with the
eternal, not that it is identical with eternal, to the extent that one can say,
“I love the relation of love in loving you and in loving you I experience love
and God”. Hence, love becomes the
ineffable sign of God in its very existence.
God is love, the giver. And if God withdraws fully, everything falls
apart.
Then the ineffable insight comes that I don’t belong to
myself alone, I don’t exist on my own alone, that my difference in identity is
a belonging to the difference, that I am,
I exist, in not being separate from biosphere, in not being separate from you,
in not being separate from God. I speak
in you, and you speak in me, and we are different in our belonging
together. And the whole time speaks in
us, the whole tradition, the origin and the source speak in us, while we are
different in our selfhood. We are not
sufficient unto ourselves and our essence is an emanation from that primordial
and everlasting presence, who lovingly holds us in existence and teaches us to
love, to come back to God’s bosom, to love God with all our heart and all our
soul and all our being, and we, not God, will be sustained in this love.
Huxley and thousands year religious tradition repeatedly
remind us that we should not identify the temporal with the eternal. In Tractatus,
Wittgenstein contends:
“The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In
the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it
no value exists -- and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any
value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what
happens and is the case… . It must lie outside the world.” (Tr. 6:41)
“The solution of the riddle of life in space and time
lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution
of any problems of natural science that is required).” (Tr. 6.4313)
“How things
are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God
does not reveal himself in the world.” (Tr. 6.432)
Why is it so important not to identify anything in the
world with the eternal? Why is the
history of religions and negative theology a constant rebel against
idolatry? Why is the history of
philosophy a constant rejection of solidification of the eternal in
metaphysical notions such as substance, causa
sui, or an anthropomorphic God? Why
should we reside in ineffability of God?
What is its value? What is the danger of idolatry of our gadget-technology, and worshipping the ideologies
of the Anthropocene?
I finish this reflection by bringing up these
two interconnected notions: the problem of congealed identity; and the problem
of ethical fall. Wittgenstein has a
clear insight that the root of our ethics reside in the eternal, not in this
world. We have had enough historical
experience to reflect on our human made ethical doctrines. All our hedonism, stoicism, utilitarianism,
will-to-power of the autonomous subject, moral realism, pragmatism (ethics is
what works!), historical ontology, aesthetic of existence, ethical relativism,
and nihilism allude to the ultimate failure of grounding our values in this
world. The dream that “a secular
society would be a more enlightened, peaceful and just society,” in the course
of two centuries turned into a nightmare: two world wars, cold wars, mass
industrialization and consumerism, colonization and modern slavery, moral
decadence, animal factories and destruction of environment, extinction of 20%
of species, and the prospect of human made global warming, droughts and floods
which are likely to bring about mass extinction.
This notion is related to
our immemorial religious experience to fight idolatry. We are now our own idols, we worship our
works of hand and our own thoughts and sciences and robots. The idolatry of indoctrination and politics of
identity, whether in religious bigotry, or in our racist, imperialist,
nationalist, neo-liberal, Marxist, and sexist ideologies is killing us. The disconnection of our ethics with the
divine and our worshiping our own self, ego, tribe, or exclusive values are
killing us. In the next reflection note,
I will write about how the plagues of idolatry of politics of identity and
ideologies (a congealed self) and the disconnection of the ethical from the
eternal are related to each other, and how these two tendencies are destroying
us.
I finish this reflection
with a quotation from Russell Nieli’s review of Atkinson’s The Mystical in Wittgenstein's Early Writings:
“At one point Atkinson breaks his own rule of
"not drawing upon the writings of mystics to support the claims
contained" in his book, and finds a comparison between the Tractatus and
the "negative theology" of the Pseudo-Dionysius very helpful in
understanding the "negative metaphysics" of Wittgenstein. He writes:
In Chapter 5 of [the] Mystical Theology Pseudo-Dionysius
states, in a passage similar to Wittgenstein's, that the Supreme or Pre-eminent
Cause of all that one perceives is not any one thing… . Rather than stating
what he believes are the attributes of the Supreme Cause, Pseudo-Dionysius
offers a list of negations of 'what cannot be spoken or grasped by
understanding' … The first purpose for drawing a comparison between
Pseudo-Dionysius and Wittgenstein is to show precedence for applying a method
of doubt or negation to a mystical end that lies outside time and what can be
said. The second and more important purpose for drawing a comparison between
these two philosophers is that Pseudo-Dionysius defines the problem that lies
at the heart of the tension between the mystical and language. The mystical,
according to Pseudo-Dionysius, can only be known in its absence, because it
cannot be expressed in language. (p. 124)
Here is revealed both the truth and untruth of
Atkinson's Wittgenstein interpretation. While it is undoubtedly true that the
Pseudo-Dionysius, like Wittgenstein, believed that what is beheld in higher
levels of mystic transport cannot be expressed in language, at the same time
the Pseudo-Dionysius also believed -- again like Wittgenstein but this time
contrary to Atkinson's understanding of Wittgenstein -- that higher level
mystic-ecstatic experiences are not experiences of absences but of overpowering
encounters with a Higher Presence. Further, this Higher Presence is made
manifest in a rapturous-ecstatic experience that carries the experiencer beyond
the realm of normal reality and beyond the capacity of speech to express.
This is paralleled in Wittgenstein's "Lecture on
Ethics" when Wittgenstein distinguishes a "natural" and a
"supernatural" order, and makes clear his belief that the foundations
of both ethics and religion are supernatural, not natural, and that the ethical
and religious are contained in a divine-transcendent Beyond of all inner-worldly
content and structure. The experiential foundations of ethics and religion,
Wittgenstein suggests in the "Lecture," involve "what is
intrinsically sublime and above all other subject matters." He goes on to
explain:
[But] our words used as we use them in science, are
vessels capable only of containing and conveying meaning and sense, natural meaning
and sense. Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only
express facts, as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water [even] if I
were to pour out a gallon over it… . I can only describe my feelings by the
metaphor, that, if a man could write a book on ethics which really was a book
on ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in
the world. (LE, p. 7)
Wittgenstein has tried to capture here something of
the overpowering majesty and sublimity of the kinds of noumenal experiences he
alludes to in the "Lecture" -- a majesty and sublimity that is not an
absence but a Presence so overpowering and mind-boggling that language cannot
contain it (just as a teacup cannot contain a deluge of water poured over it).
There is also the sense in Wittgenstein's "Lecture" that even to try
to describe the experiences that confer "absolute ethical value" may
border on hubris or profanation since piety demands of man an appropriately
silent humility in the presence of what is intrinsically sacred and sublime.
Like Wittgenstein, the Pseudo-Dionysius clearly has a
dual order or two-realm understanding of God and the world (though his
reality-picture is much richer and more multi-layered than Wittgenstein's), and
he leaves no uncertainty that this is a truth contained in the mystic rapture
itself. In earlier chapters of the Mystic Theology this mysterious,
unknown Syrian monk writes the following:
Let this be my prayer; but do thou, dear Timothy, in
the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and
the operations of the intellect … and all things in the world of being and
non-being … The higher we soar in contemplation the more limited become our
expressions of that which is purely intelligible … We pass not merely into
brevity of speech, but even into absolute silence, of thoughts as well as of
words… . We mount upwards from below to that which is the highest, and
according to the degree of transcendence, our speech is restrained until, the
entire ascent being accomplished, we become wholly voiceless, in as much as we
are absorbed in God who is totally ineffable.” (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24116-the-mystical-in-wittgenstein-s-early-writings/)
“
In
the Tractatus Wittgenstein’s logical construction of a
philosophical system has a purpose—to find the limits of world, thought and
language; in other words, to distinguish between sense and nonsense. “The book
will … draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the
expression of thoughts …. The limit can … only be drawn in language and what
lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense” (TLP Preface).
The conditions for a proposition’s having sense have been explored and seen to
rest on the possibility of representation or picturing. Names must have a bedeutung (reference/meaning),
but they can only do so in the context of a proposition which is held together
by logical form. It follows that only factual states of affairs which can be
pictured can be represented by meaningful propositions. This means that what
can be said are only propositions of natural science and leaves out of the
realm of sense a daunting number of statements which are made and used in
language.
There
are, first, the propositions of logic itself. These do not represent states of
affairs, and the logical constants do not stand for objects. “My fundamental
thought is that the logical constants do not represent. That the logic of
the facts cannot be represented” (TLP 4.0312). This is not a
happenstance thought; it is fundamental precisely because the limits of sense
rest on logic. Tautologies and contradictions, the propositions of logic, are
the limits of language and thought, and thereby the limits of the world.
Obviously, then, they do not picture anything and do not, therefore, have
sense. They are, in Wittgenstein’s terms, senseless (sinnlos).
Propositions which do have sense are bipolar; they range within the
truth-conditions drawn by the truth-tables. But the propositions of logic
themselves are “not pictures of the reality … for the one allows every possible
state of affairs, the other none” (TLP 4.462). Indeed,
tautologies (and contradictions), being senseless, are recognized as true (or
false) “in the symbol alone … and this fact contains in itself the whole
philosophy of logic” (TLP 6.113).
The
characteristic of being senseless applies not only to the propositions of logic
but also to mathematics or the pictorial form itself of the pictures that do
represent. These are, like tautologies and contradictions, literally
sense-less, they have no sense.
Beyond,
or aside from, senseless propositions Wittgenstein identifies another group of
statements which cannot carry sense: the nonsensical (unsinnig)
propositions. Nonsense, as opposed to senselessness, is encountered when a
proposition is even more radically devoid of meaning, when it transcends the
bounds of sense. Under the label of unsinnig can be found
various propositions: “Socrates is identical”, but also “1 is a number” and
“there are objects”. While some nonsensical propositions are blatantly so,
others seem to be meaningful—and only analysis carried out in accordance with
the picture theory can expose their nonsensicality. Since only what is “in” the
world can be described, anything that is “higher” is excluded, including the
notion of limit and the limit points themselves. Traditional metaphysics, and
the propositions of ethics and aesthetics, which try to capture the world as a
whole, are also excluded, as is the truth in solipsism, the very notion of a
subject, for it is also not “in” the world but at its limit.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#SensNons)
Popper sets “falsifiability” as the
critical principle to separate science from pseudo-science. He rejects induction (drawing a general
principle from particular examples: All swans that I saw so far were white, so
I can inductively come to the conclusion that the next swan I will see would be
white as well.”) as the foundation of science and instead posits
“falsifiability” in its place. For example,
one can say, “my theory is that all swans are white and the condition of
holding this theory as true is that if we can empirically find a black swan, I
would conclude that my theory was false.”
“Popper accordingly
repudiates induction and rejects the view that it is the characteristic method
of scientific investigation and inference, substituting falsifiability in its place. It is easy, he argues,
to obtain evidence in favor of virtually any theory, and he consequently holds
that such ‘corroboration’, as he terms it, should count scientifically only if
it is the positive result of a genuinely ‘risky’ prediction, which might
conceivably have been false. For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is
refutable by a conceivable event. Every genuine test of a scientific theory,
then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine
counter-instance falsifies the whole theory. In a critical sense, Popper's
theory of demarcation is based upon his perception of the logical asymmetry
which holds between verification and falsification: it is logically impossible
to conclusively verify a universal proposition by reference to experience (as
Hume saw clearly), but a single counter-instance conclusively falsifies the
corresponding universal law. In a word, an exception, far from ‘proving’ a
rule, conclusively refutes it.” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#ProDem)
