Maverick Philosopher

Alluding to Leo Strauss and Tertullian, I have often commented on the tension between 'Athens' (philosophy) and 'Jerusalem' (religion). It is a fruitful tension, I think, one partly responsible for the vitality of the West. The absence of a similar tension in the Islamic world helps account for its inanition. (See here for a sample.) The nonexistence of philosophy in the Islamic world in recent centuries is also part of the explanation of the fanaticism of so many Muslims. Philosophy has a civilizing influence. It induces a healthy skepticism. It shows one just how little one knows. Could someone who had really internalized the intellectual ethos of a Bertrand Russell or an Immanual Kant become a homicide bomber? (Or do you prefer the PC term 'suicide bomber?' See here.)

But my topic is a different tension. I now introduce 'Benares' to stand for meditation and the mystical path to the Absolute. It was in Benares, India that the Buddha became the Buddha. Or so the story goes.

If the tension between Athens and Jersulaem is that between reason and faith, what is the tension between Athens and Benares? It is the tension between disciplined thinking and disciplined nonthinking. There are of course problems of terminolgy here, as everywhere, since 'thinking' can be used in different ways. So let me limn the contrast another way: it is the tension between disciplined discusivity and disciplined nondiscursivity, between the mind operating discursively in a disciplined way and the mind operating nondiscursively.

I arise at 2:30, and my appointed meditation hour runs from 4 to 5. Trouble is, it is very difficult to tear myself away from the scribbling and reading that occur while I get stoked up on the caffeine necessary for a good session on the mat. ('Session' from L. sedere, to sit.) Thus I'm caught between Athens and Benares, caught, for example, between working out an argument to show that Geach is wrong to oppose the Hume-Brentano-Gilson thesis on existence, and honoring my commitment to start meditating at 4 AM.

The good life requires both philosophy and meditation, but to switch between them is no mean feat.

As for supersition, consider the case of a believer who places a plastic Jesus icon on the dashboard of her car. It seems clear than anyone who believes that a piece of plastic has the power to ward off automotive danger is superstitious. A hunk of mere matter cannot have such magical properties. Superstition in this first sense seems to involve a failure to understand the causal structure of the world or the laws of probability. A flight attendant who attributes her years of flying without mishap to her wearing of a rabbit's foot or St. Christopher's medal is clearly superstitious in this first sense. Such objects have no causal bearing on an airplane's safety.

But no sophisticated believer attributes powers to the icon itself. The sophisticated believer distinguishes between the icon and the spiritual reality or person it represents.

Well, what about the belief that the person represented will ward off danger and protect the believer from physical mishap? That belief too is arguably, though not obviously, superstitious. Why should the Second Person of the Trinity care about one's automotive adventures? Does one really expect, let alone deserve, divine intervention for the sake of one's petty concerns?

But what if the icon serves to remind the believer of her faith commitment rather than to propitiate or influence a godlike person for egoistic ends? Here we approach a form of religious belief that is not superstitious. The believer is not attributing magical powers to a hunk of plastic or a piece of metal. Nor is she invoking a spiritual reality in an attempt to satisfy petty material needs. Her belief transcends the sphere of egoic concerns.

2. The next grade up is petitionary prayer for spiritual benefits. At this level one is not asking for one's daily bread, but for acceptance, equanimity, patience, courage, and the like in the face of the fact that one lacks bread or has cancer. "Thy Will be done." One asks for forgiveness and for the ability to forgive others. One prays for a lively sense of one's own manifold shortcomings, for self-knowledge and freedom from self-deception. One prays, not to be cured of the cancer, but to bear it with courage. One prays for the ability to see one's tribulations under the aspect of eternity or with the sort of detachment with which one contemplates the sufferings of others.

3. Higher still, I should think, is prayer that is wholly non-petitionary. At this level one asks neither for material nor for spiritual benefits. One form of this is prayer is sheer gratitude for what one has. Prayer as thanskgiving. Beyond this there is prayer as pure aspiration, as a straining of the soul upwards. A pure spiritual seeking, ascending, soaring. One seeks to elevate oneself above one's perceived infirmity and wretchedness. One seeks to rise above the paltriness, crudity, baseness of one's usual thoughts and emotions. Not a petitioning, but a self-elevating and a leaving of oneself behind.

4. Prayer as aspiration may then lead on to forms of meditation proper and perhaps infused contemplation. At the stage of meditation the soul enters mental silence and rests there having abandoned all petitioning and aspiring. Oneis no longer working but resting in mental silence. Within this silence one perhaps receives mystical grace which comes from without the mind.

5. I don't know quite what to do with Weilian prayer. See Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, Routledge 1995, p. 19: "A method of purification: to pray to God, not only in secret as far as men are concerned, but with the thought that God does not exist." Is this the purest form of prayer, prayer bereft of every petition, bereft even of the hope of attaining anything at all, or is this form of prayer but an expression of Weil's extremism?

An obsessive doubter and debunker, U. G. Krishnamurti is a bit like the atheist who can't leave God alone, but must constantly be disproving him. U.G. can't leave the enlightenment quest and 'spirituality' alone. It's all bunk, he thinks, but he can't be done with it. Buddha, Jesus, and the rest were all just kidding themselves and misleading others. But U. G. can't just arrive at this conclusion and move on to something he deems worthwhile. For he is an 'anti-quester' tied to what he opposes by his self-defining opposition to it. Curiously perverse, but fascinating. He is a little like the later Wittgenstein who, though convinced that the problems of philosophy arose from linguistic bewitchment, couldn't move on to something worth doing, but instead obsessively scribbled on in any attempt to show a nonexistent fly the way out of a nonexistent fly-bottle.

U. G. can't seem to take seriously any experience. Each is just an experience. None is revelatory or finally veridical. Religious and mystical experiences are no different than sexual or drug experiences. Before any experience can put him in contact with any reality, his skepticism dissolves it. "Just an experience! What do I need more experiences for!"

This raises the question of where philosophy begins and where it ends. On the base conception of the Ordinary Language philosophers, philosophy begins in linguistic confusion and "bewitchment" (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #109) and ends in platitude. For a classical philosopher, however, it begins in wonder as both Plato (Theaetetus St. 155) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 982b10) maintain.

But where does philosophy end? For Aquinas it ended in mystical experience and the silencing of the discursive intellect. So on one view worthy of being called classical, philosophy begins in wonder and ends in silence. 'End' is to be understood not as mere cessation, but as completion or fulfillment.

To put the contrast in another way, for the Ordinary Language philosopher, philosophy begins with a confused attempt at Cave transcendence and ends with acquiescence in platitude, the flatness of ordinary talk and ordinary practice. For one sort of classical philosopher, philosophy begins in the Discipline of the Cave and ends with the Transcendence of the Cave.

In the case of Aquinas, the discursive quest achieved completion in mystical intuition of the Absolute. How decide between these competing conceptions of philosophy's Alpha and Omega?

At the end of the day, the only answer may be that of J. G. Fichte: Was fuer eine Philosophie man waehle, haengt davon ab, was man fuer ein Mensch ist. (Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, 1797) "The kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of human being one is." And the kind of man one is depends on the sorts of experiences one has had. Even before Aquinas had the experience that put an end to his straw-threshing, he had -- I would surmise -- numerous partial mystical glimpses of a Reality beyond the sense world, glimpses which, together with his reasonings, convinced him of that Reality. They illuminated his discursive activities until the moment when the definitive experience put an end to them, bringing them to fruition.

But for someone who has never had mystical experiences, or who has had them but dismissed them as mental abberations, the temptation will be to think that Aquinas' straw is not straw because it is an empty conceptualization lacking intuitive filling, yet pointing to That Which would fulfill it, but because it is gibberish pointing to nothing at all.

A much more difficult practice is to enter into it with cool detachment. Coitus reservatus, for example. But it is no more difficult than playing blindfold chess, which is not that difficult. One experiences the sensations attendant upon sexual intercourse while remaining indifferent to them: one regards them as mere sensations. (In my lexicon, coitus reservatus requires non-ejaculation, whereas coitus interruptus allows it, but outside the partner.)

Could one take it one step further and ejaculate with detachment? This is hard to imagine, but conceivable. After all, Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita was enjoined by Lord Krishna to kill with detachment. Try to imagine looking a man in the eyes and then running him through with a sword, all the while preserving one's equanimity. If it is possible to kill with detachment, then it is possible to ejaculate with detachment.

What could it mean to ejaculate with detachment? One would experience the sensations attendant upon the outflow of seminal fluid while viewing them as mere sensations. One would not lose oneself in them as is normally the case, but hold them at mental arm's length, or, to change metaphor, peer at them from within the fastness of the inner citadel. One would remain unattached. Like the chess master who keeps the draw in hand, one would keep one's ataraxia in hand.

Am I talking nonsense? (I promise to get back to my debate with Phil the Stoic on the manifold senses of 'nonsense.')

With this clarification in mind, we are ready to appreciate a passage from Paul Brunton:

All thinking keeps one’s awareness out of the Overself. That is why thinking about the Overself merely produces another thought. Only in the case of the sage, who has established himself in the Overself, is thinking no barrier at all. In this case, thinking may coexist with the larger awareness. So it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker. Of course, the way to do this is through the practice of meditation. (Inspiration and the Overself, p. 144)

Roughly, Brunton’s Overself is something like Emerson’s Oversoul. One can think of it as the consciousness that is presupposed by all conscious encounter with objects. No matter what object one is aware of, there is a distinction between the object and the consciousness or awareness of it. This is so even when the object is oneself. My body, its parts and its attributes can appear to me as objects, and the same is true of the mental contents (memories, sensations, etc.) accessible through inner sense. But these objects making making up the empirical self cannot appear unless they appear to consciousness. This consciousness, however, does not appear, or at least does not appear as an object. It is not however nothing: it is the transcendental condition of anything’s appearing in the first place.

At this point various philosophical questions can and must be asked. But for present purposes let’s suppose that they can all be answered and that the notion of transcendental consciousness, in some version or other, is epistemically in the clear.

We can then define meditation as the attempt to come to a non-objective or non-dual awareness of the transcendental awareness which is the everpresent condition of anything’s appearing in the first place. As Brunton points out, this cannot occur by thinnking about the Overself. For such thinking merely produces another thought-content, another proposition, about the Overself. We end up objectifying what is in truth the subjective condition of all objectivity.

This is part of the problem with philosophy as a discursive activity. It produces thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts. But we ought not be satisfied with mere thoughts; we ought to be satisfied only by the Reality to which thoughts point. What we want is the Real, not more and more thoughts about the Real. And this is why the mystical objection to philosophy will always carry some weight.

So the mystical paths need to be explored by those concerned with a balanced approach to the ultimate truth. From this I conclude, in agreement with Brunton, that “it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker.” That is to say: although it is necessary to hone the discursive intellect to the sharpness of a razor, it is not sufficient. One must also learn how to silence and transcend the discursive intellect – but ewithout denigrating it or failing to appreciate its proper sphere of application, as some exponents of Asian philosophy unfortunately do.

If we use ‘philosophy’ in a broad sense to denote not merely discursive theorizing but also the attempt at wisdom and insight, then one problem with academic philosophy is that it promotes the hypertrophy of the discursive faculty to the atrophy of the intuitive.

Part of Tolle's message is sound and important: we cause ourselves unnecessary mental suffering through our incapacity to live in the present. We foolishly burden ourselves with regrests and fears. We allow idle and useless thoughts to cloud the serenity of the moment.

As one who has meditated daily for many years, I agree that our minds are often out of control, that this is a bad state to be in, and that spiritual disciplines are necessary to put us aright. I agree that mental quiet is a blissful state and one that can be attained, or at least touched upon, by resolute meditation practice. See also here.

But as a philosopher, I find much to object to in the way the New Age types present the ancient perennial wisdom. One problem is the anti-intellectuality of so many of them. Disciplined nonthinking (meditation) is as important as disciplined thinking, but the latter IS important, a point not appreciated, or not properly appreciated, by Tolle and so many others.

Then there are the dubious claims they make and the 'arguments' used to support them. (There is also the bad faith of arguing while claiming that one is not arguing. They want to have it both ways. They want to give arguments, but without taking the trouble to present decent arguments. And when you point to them that their arguments are no good, they reverse course and say that it is not about arguments or that you are hung up in 'linear thinking'or "You haven't grasped the essence of what I am saying because you are trying to understand it mentally. The mind cannot understand this. Only you can." )

On p. 41, Tolle tells us that "Nothing exists outside the Now." The reason for this is that:

Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. (41)

There is a sense in which the premises are true. Past events, at the time of their occurrence, were present. And future events, at the time of their occurrence, will be present. But these are trivial conceptual truths. The past was present, the future will be present, and the present is present. But from these conceptual truths one cannot infer the unreality of past or future events. But this is what Tolle wants us to conclude. "Past and future obviously have no reality of their own." (41)

Not only is this not obvious, it does not follow from Tolle's premises. It is true that past events, at the time of their occurrence, were present. Thus the events of 9/11 were present on 9/11. But how does it follow that these events have no reality of their own, that they exist only as the objects of present memories?

Tolle appears to be assuming, without any justification, that the present alone is real. This may be the case, but it needs defense and is far from obvious. We will have to discuss it further in a separate post. I would also add that it is not clear that the mystical experience that Tolle describes on pp. 1-2 supports his presentist assumption.

A. Some will say that mental quiet is a merely subjective state with no soteriological import at all. Supposing a resolute meditator works himself into a blissful state of mental tranquility, why should that be taken to be a state of enlightenment or salvation or contact with ultimate truth? Why is it not just a highly unusual subjective state that few attain? Mental quiet on this approach is a non-intentional mental state, one that is not of or about anything. Lacking object-directedness, non-intentional states lack a necessary condition of having a truth-value. So if mental quiet is a non-intentional state, questions of veridicality cannot arise. One could not suppose that someone in this state possesses any insight into anything transcendent of the state. Mental quiet is an intensely blissful state, but not one revelatory of anything external to one’s egoic consciousness. Thus it does not reveal a non-egoic source of egoic consciousness, nor
another egoic consciousness such as God.

A*. On an extreme version of (A), both the seeking of and the reposing in mental quiet is escapist: not only does it not put us in touch with reality, it leads the meditator into a state of self-indulgent dreaminess that shuts out reality. The difference between the A-position and the A*-position is that according to the former, achieving mental quiet does not help in the quest for enlightenment/salvation, while according to the latter it positively hinders the quest. A traditional religionist might take this line, maintaining that mental quiet and the mystical states that sometimes arise within it are ‘of the devil,’ a ‘snare and a delusion,’ and that the true path to salvation is via faith, or faith plus works, or faith plus works within an authoritarian structure such as the Roman Catholic Church.

A**. On an even more extreme version of (A), the charge of escapism is buttressed with the further claim that there is is no possibility of enlightenment/salvation. So it is not just that mental quiet is no help in its attainment, or that it hinders its attainment, but that there is nothing to attain. Ideological bedfellows as unlikely as Marxists and Randians would join in taking this A**-line and would denounce mental quiet as an opiate.

B. Although mental quiet is not a state of contact with the saving or enlightening power, it is a necessary condition of such contact: One cannot achieve contact without first being in the state of mental quiet.

B*. A more robust cousin of (B) maintains that mental quiet is sufficient for, though not identical with, contact with the saving or enlightening power.

B.** A less robust cousin of (B) has it that mental quiet is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of contact with the salvific power but is nonethless conducive to such contact in the sense that it raises the probability of such contact. B** allows the contact to be achieved even by someone who has never engaged in any formal meditation practice, or one who has but has never entered mental quiet. There is a passage somewhere in al-Ghazzali where he points out that a person who climbs to the top of a minaret is more likely to feel a cooling breeze than one who remains on the ground. Similarly, the gusts of divine favor are more likely to reach one who has made the right preparations, entry into mental quiet being one such preparation. This image suggests that salvation cannot be caused by the seeker, but must be graciously received. ‘Own-power’ is not enough; ‘other-power’ is needed. Mental quiet is thus a state of mental receptivity or passivity, a state of interior listening in which one opens oneself to a possible communication from beyond one’s egoic consciousness.

C. On a third main approach, mental quiet is identified with enlightenment/salvation. Achieve one and you achieve the other.

Let me conclude by giving my provisional answer to Ryan’s question. As I see it at the moment,(B**) is the best explanation of the relation between mental quiet and salvation/enlightenment. (C) can be rejected quite easily. I suspect that Ryan, given his naturalism, will plump for one of the versions of the A-approach.

I will use ‘meditation’ to cover both the attempt to achieve mental quiet and the resting in it once it is achieved. Mental quiet is an intense state of wakeful consciousness and is not to be confused with any sort of unconsciousness. What’s more, it is a positive state of consciousness, and thus not a mere absence of ‘mental noise.’ Ordinary mind is characterized by ‘mental noise,’ by the presence of a relative chaos of memories, expectations, perceptions, imaginings, trains of association, emotional responses built upon the foregoing, and much else besides. Ordinary mind is undisciplined mind. It is mind dis-tracted. Training in logic, and indeed the systematic study of any subject, introduces discipline whose fruits are concentration and order. The result is disciplined thinking. The disciplined thinker thinks to some purpose, putting his mind to work on well-defined problems. This is one step beyond ordinary mind. Meditation, however, is disciplined non-thinking. Meditation is two steps beyond ordinary mind. Concentration is developed and put to use, but not for the sake of precise and orderly sequential thinking about some object external to thinking, but to dis-cover the root of all thinking, that which is transcendentally-ontologically prior to all thinking.

“Man is a stream whose source is hidden.” R. W. Emerson) In terms of this simile, the meditator is one who attempts to swim upstream, against the outbound current of thought, in order to arrive at the hidden source of the thought-stream. This arrival is a return, a return to what one is in one’s root and essence. By contrast, and continuing with the simile, the disciplined thinker allows himself to be carried downstream but controls his movement by means of canoe and paddles, while the person of ordinary mind goes with the flow letting himself be swept away and delivered into the diaspora of worldly distraction and Pascalian divertissement.

Thinking is discursive; meditation non-discursive. Discursive procedures include: subsuming particulars under concepts; affirming, denying, and entertaining propositions; constructing arguments from propositions; analyzing concepts, propositions, arguments; drawing distinctions; comparing, contrasting, synthesizing; making inferences, framing and testing hypotheses, etc. Meditation may start with these procedures, but the goal is to bring them to a halt, but without falling back into ordinary distracted mind, or into any state of mind in which discipline and focus is provided by worldly objects rather than by the mind itself. The person of ordinary mind has mental discipline imposed upon him by external events and other people; the meditator seeks a state of sovereign self-discipline.

The proximate goal of meditation, then, is to focus the mind so as to touch upon, and then abide in and enjoy, mental quiet.

Why Meditate?

Meditation is hard work, demanding time and daily commitment. It is an ‘unnatural’ activity in that it involves ‘swimming upstream’ as per the Emersonian simile. Changing the metaphor, it is an attempt to counteract the centrifugal tendency of the mind. Why do it? To invoke a third metaphor, why try to tame the wild horse of the mind? Since it demeans meditation to think of it as a mere relaxation-technique, I mention only to set aside such reasons as stress-relief and the lowering of blood pressure. There are at least three serious reasons to meditate, falling under the rubrics tranquility, inquiry, salvation.

Tranquility. The first serious reason is to gain control of one’s mind. One day a person realizes that mastering one’s thoughts is better than being mastered by them. Tired of being assailed by pointless memories, fears, worries, negative and useless thoughts generally, one sets out to do something about it. The meditator discovers that the mind has a wonderful power to regulate itself, to detach itself from thought-pollutants and withdraw within what could be called the Inner Citadel. Like the Stoic in quest of ataraxia, the meditator seeks imperturbableness, freedom from avoidable suffering. One seeks to develop a calm, deliberate, measured response to the flux and shove of life.

Inquiry. A second serious reason is to inquire into the mind’s essence. Now the goal is not tranquility so much as it is insight. The aim is understanding over pacification. What is consciousness in its own nature? Is it merely a diaphanous medium through which things appear? A mere “wind blowing towards objects” (J.-P. Sartre) ever evacuating itself so as to reveal what is other than it? Is it nothing in itself, being only the revealing of objects? Or does consciousness have a hidden nature that can be discovered only by ‘swimming upstream’? Does intentionality (object-directedness) characterize every form of consciousness, or are there non-intentional (but also non-sensuous) states of consciousness wherein the mind abides in itself? Is there a depth-dimension, normally hidden, that can be penetrated?

Third-person approaches to mind, through behavioral or brain studies, are important but cannot give any real insight here. What is needed to is a first-person approach. Introspectionist psychology and phenomenology advance part of the way in this direction, but they continue to operate within subject-object duality. Can we execute a sort of transcendental-phenomenological re-duction ( L. re-ducere, a leading back) to the originary source of subject and object? Maybe, maybe not. But to explore this, the only appropriate method would be some kind of deep meditation technique. In short, meditation is a tool of inquiry into the nature of mind. Although it must be balanced out by other tools, it is an indispensable tool. Someone who claims to be serious about understanding the mind, but refuses to meditate I would dismiss as unserious. If this entails my dismissal as unserious of almost all contemporary philosophers of mind, then so be it. Analogy: You say you are serious about oceanography, but you refuse to descend into the depths? Then I say you are not all that serious. You don’t want to see with you own eyes what is down there.

Salvation. The human predicament – and it is indeed a predicament – is clearly unsatisfactory: Sarvam Dukkham as the Buddhists say. It is also clear that no social or political action can ameliorate things in any fundamental way, which is not to say that piecemeal improvements by social and political means cannot and should not be made. Now anyone who accepts these two points may well wonder whether there is a Way Out of the human predicament. To investigate this, a retreat within would seem to be indispensable. Meditation can thus serve a soteriological purpose.

Leaving the royal compound, prince Siddartha encountered suffering, old age, and death. A world containing such things shocked him as profoundly unsatisfactory. Resolving to get to the root of the matter, he took up meditation and ascetic practices. Some say he achieved the ultimate insight and became Buddha, the Enlightened One.