I am still interested; are there other folks out there?Bob Holland
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship Discussion Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/2110188742.9836293.1491226503467%40mail.yahoo.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
I am still interested; are there other folks out there?Bob Holland
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship Discussion Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship Discussion Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/59827d8b-d013-41a3-8773-f4807ea838d5%40googlegroups.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship Discussion Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
Joseph, can you perhaps say something on the typical mainstream Christian attack on the gnostics - that somehow they are "dualistic" setting up matter and spirit as irrevocably opposed?I've never understood that criticism, as it seems to me that gnostic writings like the gospel of thomas are radically embodied, understanding "knowledge through identity" as reflecting the "always already" Oneness of body, mind and Spirit.
On Mon, Apr 3, 2017 at 12:44 PM, Joseph Rowe <neoan...@gmail.com> wrote:
Greetings, Bob Don, and others... it's been a long time since I visited here, but I'm still very interested, and glad to see this new, easier-to-use format.
I'd like to share an experience in communication of a very difficult philosophical notion, traditionally almost impossible to define, but made unexpectedly clear and elegant by the insight, and innovative language of Franklin Merrell-Wolff.
Recently, while visiting the SF Bay area, I was kindly invited by Sagrada, an Oakland bookstore, to give a talk about gnosticism, in relation to the Gospel of Thomas. I knew that one of my main problems would be how to clear up the considerable confusion about the meaning of that word — which, like the word gnostic, is derived from the Greek word gnosis. But what is gnosis? And who are the gnostics? How are they different from mystics? I knew in advance that I had to first clear the ground, by distinguishing between the more ancient, universal, and authentic meaning of gnostic, from the (usually capitalized) Gnostics, who constituted a very diverse religious-philosophical movement, during the centuries before and after the life of Jesus, and centered mostly in Alexandria, and the eastern Mediterranean. These so-called Gnostics were primarily characterized by a type of belief-system, and often a very provocative mythology, which (however picturesque and fascinating to many, including Jung) has little or nothing to do with gnosis in its original sense. Henry Corbin, the great French philosopher of comparative religion, maintained that a gnostic could be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or totally secular — and he went on to say that when two true gnostics meet, they recognize each other immediately, cutting right through the Gordian knot of differences of religion, culture, and even of language. The term mystic is much broader, and vaguer — all gnostics are mystics, but that doesn't say much, because most mystics are not gnostics. But even Corbin had a hard time saying what gnosis is, other than pointing out that it comes from the same Indo-European root as the Sanskrit jñana. As most people on this forum probably know, jñana was the spiritual path of Shankara, and Dr. Wolff considered it to be his own, as well.
Mulling all this over before the workshop, I opened my copy of The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object, for the first time in years. Turning "at random" to the discussion of aphorism 54, I stumbled upon the clearest, simplest, and most elegant definition of gnosis I've ever seen: Knowledge through Identity ... (also known as Introception).
What a discovery. Far more than just a skillful means of communication, or yet another vain attempt to speak the unspeakable, it dissolves masses of philosophical confusion with one stroke, and invalidates irrelevant, fatuous questions (of the sort, "But how do you know? What is your evidence?" etc). Of course the phrase Knowledge through Identity cannot be truly understood by someone who has never experienced gnosis, or at least had a taste of it. But it can at least trigger, or awaken a subconscious recollection of it... and perhaps serve as a kind of beacon-reminder, quieting the discursive, chattering mind, bringing it back to the silent ground of consciousness-without-an-object, where gnosis already IS.
On Monday, April 3, 2017 at 8:35:04 AM UTC-5, Robert Holland wrote:I am still interested; are there other folks out there?Bob Holland
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Franklin Merrell-Wolff Fellowship Discussion Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/6c9ab768-2912-427f-8377-00ef5ca758ae%40googlegroups.com.
1. Separative knowledge by indirect contact is the ordinary, sense-based knowledge that we have of the physical world around us. Sri Aurobindo calls it separative because it goes with a clear sense of separation between the observer and the observed. He calls it indirect, because it is dependent on the physical senses. A tremendous collective effort goes at present into the development of this type of knowledge, and as it is the bedrock of science and technology, it plays an ever-increasing role in our society. It is this type of knowledge that makes the continuous stream of ever more fancy gadgets possible, and perhaps as a result of this, there is an increasing tendency to think that this is the only type of knowledge that really works and is worth cultivating.
2. Knowledge by separative direct contact has a much lower status both in contemporary science and society. When applied to ourselves, it is known as introspection, the knowledge we acquire when we try to look pseudo-objectively at what is going on inside ourselves. In this type of knowledge, the usual sense-organs are not needed and in that sense it is direct, but it is still separative because we try to look at what is going on inside ourselves “objectively”, that is, as if were looking at ourselves from the outside. Psychology cannot do very well without introspection, as it is the simplest, and in some areas only way to find out what is going on inside one’s mind, but it is notoriously difficult to make reliable. Classical behaviourism tried for many years to avoid it entirely, but at present psychology is making an extensive use of self-reports based on introspection. We will see later how the Indian tradition has tackled the difficulties inherent in introspection and we will discuss some of the methods it uses to enhance introspection’s reliability. I am inclined to think that these Indian methods are not only logically impeccable, but also indispensable if we want to take psychology forward.
3. Knowledge by intimate direct contact is the implicit knowledge we have of things in which we are directly involved. When applied to ourselves it is known as experiential knowledge. Sri Aurobindo calls it again direct because the sense organs are not required, and by intimate contact because one knows the processes that are taking place not by looking at them from outside, but by being directly with them. When I’m very happy, for example, I need not observe myself to find out whether I am happy or not. If I would look at myself in a (pseudo-) objective manner, through introspection, I would say something like “Hey, I’m happy”, and this would imply a certain distance from the happiness. But I can also stay directly with the happiness, and exclaim, in full identification with my feelings, “What a great day it is!” If I do the latter, I also know the state I am in, but not in a representative, objective manner. I know then what I am as if from within, through a direct intimacy with the inner state or process.8 It might appear as if the introspective mode of knowing oneself goes more with the mind, while experiential knowledge, knowledge “by being with”, goes more with one’s feelings and body-sense, but this is not always the case: When one fully identifies with one’s thoughts, for example, there is a mixture: the thought itself belongs most likely to the realm of “separative knowledge”, while the implicit, pre-reflective self-awareness of “being busy thinking” belongs to the realm of “knowledge by intimate direct contact”. Knowledge by intimate direct contact is used in many forms of therapy and all kind of psychological training programmes, but till now it does not seem to have received the theoretical attention it deserves.
4. Knowledge by identity is for Sri Aurobindo the first and most important of these four types of knowledge. In the ordinary waking state it is, however, hardly developed. The only thing we normally know entirely by identity is the sheer fact of our own existence. According to Sri Aurobindo it does play, however, a crucial role in all other types of knowing. In experiential knowledge (type 3) this is clear enough, as here we tend to identify with our experience. In introspection (type 2) it is less immediately apparent, as we do not fully identify with what we see, but try to observe what goes on inside ourselves, in as detached and “objective” a manner as we can muster. Still, in introspection we recognise that what we look at is happening within our own being. In sense-based knowledge (type 1) the involvement of knowledge by identity is the least obvious, but even here knowledge by identity does play a role in at least two distinct ways: The first is that even though we normally feel a certain distance between ourselves and the things we observe “outside” of us, we still see them as part of “our world”, we feel some inner, existential connection between ourselves and what we see. The degree of this sense of connectedness may, of course, differ. On one extreme, there are the mystics who feel in a very concrete sense “one with the world”; on the other extreme, there are forms of schizophrenia, in which hardly any connection is felt between one’s self and the world; the ordinary consciousness wavers somewhere between these extremes. The second manner by which knowledge by identity supports all other forms of knowledge is not through this existential sense of connectedness, but through the structural core of their cognitive content. According to Sri Aurobindo, the information the senses provide is far too incomplete and disjointed to create the wonderfully precise and coherent image that we make of the world. He holds that there must be some inner knowledge, some basic “idea” about how the world should hang together, that helps to create meaning out of the raw impressions, which our senses provide. According to the Indian tradition knowledge by identity can provide this as it is the core-element of all forms of intuition,9 and, as such, the source of the deep theories about reality that guide our perception, the fundamental rules of logical thinking, a large part of mathematics, and the ability to discriminate between what is true and false, real and unreal. Once fully developed and purified, Sri Aurobindo considers it the only type of knowledge that can be made completely reliable. Within Indian philosophy it is known as the knowledge of the Self, ātmavidyā, which contains the largely subconscious link that exists between our individual consciousness and the cosmic consciousness that sustains the manifestation as a whole.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/6c9ab768-2912-427f-8377-00ef5ca758ae%40googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/c6cf3ba2-e059-48aa-a1e1-83e440af1716%40googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to fm-w+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to fm...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fm-w/146a7072-4162-4cc0-a3c4-1b972911d979%40googlegroups.com.