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Session 3 The Transcendental Horizon. A Brief Interlude. Comparing Passive and Active Learning American Education, Community and Culture Active Learning: “Coffee & Conversation” Active Learning: “Music for Morning Meditation” The Three Horizons: Family Resemblances Within Them
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A Brief Interlude • Comparing Passive and Active Learning • American Education, Community and Culture • Active Learning: “Coffee & Conversation” • Active Learning: “Music for Morning Meditation” • The Three Horizons: Family Resemblances Within Them • The Three Horizons: Possible Relations Between Them • Metaphors We Live By: Horizon, Frame, Lens
Passive and Active Learning “What I hear I forget. What I see I remember. What I do I understand.”
Transforming the American WayEducation, Community and Culture • We live in the American culture of “utilitarian values” and “rugged individualism.” Vance Packard has called us “A Nation of Strangers.” • Even our educational settings are often constructed in a such a way as is aesthetically sterile and individually autonomous. Everyone is “bowling alone.” • We need to re-imagine education to foster the values of friendship, conversation, collaboration and community within highly creative and engaged learning environments.
Encountering the Three Horizonsof Insight, Knowledge and Experience “FAMILY RESEMBLANCES” WITHIN EACH HORIZON Grand Fathers & Grand Mothers. Fathers & Mothers. Parents & Children. Brothers & Sisters. Nieces & Nephews. Blended Families & Adopted. Remember: “Families squabble!” T H N
Interlude:Possible Relations Between the Three Horizons Some Relational Options Separate-But-Equal (Dualism). Integral (Neutral Monism) T is Prime Reality (Idealism). N is Prime Reality (Materialism) We Don’t Know (Agnosticism). H Is What Matters (Pragmatism) T H N ? ?
Metaphors We Live By:We See What’s On Our “Horizon”“Umvelt” as One’s Limited Perceived Reality
Metaphors We Live By:We See What’s in Our Perceptual “Frame”
“One World” or “Many Worlds?” • So do we live in “one world” or “many worlds?” • A “literalist” who doesn’t hear these as metaphors will insist that “logically” only one of them can be true, and will thus argue against those who take the alternate view. • By contrast, one who hears these two ideas as metaphorical rather than literal ways of speaking will see that both of them can be true within their own linguistic and cultural contexts. They welcome paradox!
Session 3The Transcendental Horizon:-A Spectrum of Attitudes- • Credulous • Affirming • Ambivalent • Doubtful • Skeptical
The Psychology of TranscendenceContemplative, Romantic & Ecstatic Moodsof Solitude, Communion & Union • Contemplative (cool): meditative, silent, still, tranquil, reflective, mindful, illumined, awakened, observant, sensitive, perceptive, reverent, sacramental, sacred • Romantic (Warm): tender, intimate, wistful, exotic, elegiac, longing, yearning, melancholic, rhapsodic, idealistic • Ecstatic (Hot): joyful, transported, transfixed, amazed, rapturous, euphoric, elated, enchanted, exhilarated, blissful, delirious, exulting, felicitous, intoxicated, jubilant
THE YOGIC PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT“Chakras” & “Kundalini”
Wild Poets of Ecstasy:An Anthology of Ecstatic Verse,by D. J. Moores • Celebrating ecstasy in its many varieties: intense bliss, soul-lifting rapture, communion with nature, spiritual illumination, ego-transcendence, mind-stilling peace, wild eroticism, perceptual estrangement, overpowering joy, self-renewal, moving aesthetic responses, peak experiences, oceanic movements, sacred encounters, and consciousness expansion, as well as life-affirming emotions such as awe, wonder, gratitude, and most important of all – love.
The Natural Mystic? • Some people seem to be born with an intense need for such primal experiences as contemplation, romance and ecstasy, that is, of solitude, communion and union. • Other people may appreciate these primal experiences if and when they come, but give less attention and priority to them. • Still others, like Freud, are deeply skeptical and suspicious of such primal experiences, associating them with infantile regression, wishful thinking, irrational escapism and psychological neurosis.
“Mystic” by Another Name? • There are those who walk and talk like a “mystic,” but they reject the name. For them it has negative connotations. • There are not only transcendental mystics who perceive a “higher dimension” of reality beyond the finite human and natural physical worlds. • There are also “humanistic mystics” and “natural mystics.” • There are even some mystics who combine all three horizons, and even the fourth horizon of technology.
Mystic, Humanist and Scientist? • One can be a mystic, transcendentalist, contemplative and ecstatic, and still be a multi-disciplinary “polymath” who is fluent in higher education and the liberal arts. • Some people are able to combine the transcendental, naturalistic and humanistic horizons of insight, knowledge and experience while respecting their different assumptions, methods and approaches to the polyvalent nature of reality.
Trapped by Our Reified Language?Living with Contextual & Multivalent Meanings • We get trapped by our literalizing, de-contexualized and reifying use of abstract language. • Abstract words like “transcendental,” “humanistic” and “naturalistic” are historically situated and culturally constructed. Each has “multi-valiant” uses and meanings. • Abstract conceptual words typically have a variety of both denotative and connotative meanings.
The Integral-Pluralist Vision:“God” = GXD = Infinity = Mystery They are not ultimately concerned with representational words but with presentational presence, with “inner knowing” (gnosis) & primal experience. From the time they were children, some persons possess an acute sense of the Infinite & the Eternal, of the Ineffable & Sublime Mystery of Reality. BEING Noun X PROCESS Verb
“The Perennial Philosophy,”by Aldous Huxley • “The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being — the thing is immemorial and universal.”
Naming the Ineffable Mystery:“God-Talk and Sacred Nonsense” • The Tao (that Cannot Be Named). Quantum Leaper. Particle Rancher. Wave Rider. The Universally Local Network. The Single Tree and the Wind that Moves It. The Singular Multiplicity. The Great Hologrammer. The Lord of Fractals. The Cosmic DNA. Information Central. The Big Blossoming (Big Bang?). The Alpha and Omega helix. The Eternal Temporal Mobius Strip. The In-Dwelling Aphrodisiac. The Universal Object Subject of Our Affections. The Care-ful One and Many. The End (Telos) of Every Love Story.
Naming the Ineffable Mystery:“God-Talk and Sacred Nonsense” • The Sympathetic Participant in All suffering and Delight. The Knower, the Known, and the Knowing. The Verb That Activates All Other Verbs. In-dwelling Spirit. The Womb of Becoming. The Eternal Not Yet. The Ever-Evolving One and Many. The Beginning Without Ends. The Source and Sorcerer. The Black Hole Where Love Embraces Death. The All-Inclusive None and Void. The Subject that Encompasses All Predicates. The Cosmic Web Master. Weaver of the Warp. Central Casting’s Cosmic Host,
Elemental Emotionsand Icons of the Mystery • Wonder/Awe. Gratitude. Anxiety/Dread. Joy. Grief/Mourning. Reverence. Empowerment. Potentiality, Purpose, Vocation. Empathy/Compassion. Sacred Outrage. Hope. Trust. Humility. (Sam Keen) • Love. The Thou. Joy. Suffering. Evil. Pardon. Crucial Moments. Nature. Silence. Propitious Places (R. Panikkar)
Profane Power & Sacred Energyby Sam Keen, “In the Absence of God”
The Transcendental Horizon:Key Concepts • Transcendent: “Above & Beyond” Physical, Emotive, Rational Realms Immanent: “In and Through” the Physical, Emotive, Rational Realms • Ineffable Mystery: “Via Negativa” – “Inner Stillness & Living the Questions” • Revelation & Illumination: “Via Positiva” – “Outer Witness & Inner Light” • Metaphysical Ideals: Beauty, Goodness, Truth; Light, Life, Love; Justice, Mercy, Peace; Being, Consciousness, Bliss, Yin, Yang, Tao... • Ontological Categories: Inside & Outside, Individual & Collective, Above & Below, Far & Near, Before & After, Primordial & Consequential
The Search for “Transcendence” in the Ancient Religious Traditions
Hindu Transcendental Ideals:“Being, Consciousness, Bliss” The goal of life is to merge and become one with Being, like sugar dissolving in water. The goal of life is not be become sugar that dissolves but taste sugar in intimate communion Shankara: Union with the One Transpersonal Absolute Ramanuja: Communion with the Divine Lover and Creative Source
The Buddhist Transcendental Ideals:Non-Attachment, Mindfulness, Compassion
The Taoist Transcendental Ideal:Re-Imagined as Emergent Planetary Holism
Four Spiritualities & Temperaments:Religious & Secular Forms
The Search for Immanent-Transcendence in the Post-Religious Modern Secular Age • Modern Secular “Immanent-Transcendence” • These surrogate “Gods” may function as “Immortality Projects” • Nature, History, Humanity, Reason, Romance, Community, Sensuality, Sexuality, Imagination, Creativity, Will, Courage, Education, Science, Technology, Music, Poetry, Art, Freedom, Democracy, Capitalism, Socialism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Money, Status, Power, Fame, etc. • Secular Modernism seeks a Grand Narrative not through Religion and Mysticism but through Science and Philosophy.
