Name a non-Western LHP religion that doesn't involve the intentional effort to dissolve or merge the self into some form of Universal Reality/Supreme Being / Energy/All of the Universe . . .
Hi, Alif Balaam Yashin,
My hope and intention here is to dialogue in the manner of comparing notes across paths, rather than falling into the old confrontational dichotomies.
As I see it, all paths contain LHP/RHP elements to some degree, with both rising from the one, human, nature.
The way is the Middle Way, is that of the charioteer, keeping both horses in step, in balance and in check, as it were.
Fantasy is an escape from reality. The Subjective Universe is an engagement with it.
Ah .... I'm beginning to get a sense of what you mean by Subjective and Objective.
I raised the point as to highlight a 'pitfall' as regards human nature and the psychology of human beibngs, but we need not divert ourselves here.
The Subjective Universe, however, is your lived interior reality: the lens through which you interpret, assign meaning, and act upon the Objective Universe. It includes memory, symbolism, emotional weight, and personal significance.
With you.
A house in the Subjective Universe is the real house as you experience it, the meaning, presence, and value you project onto it. Even after the objective house is gone, the subjective one can still shape your behavior, choices, and identity.
OK.
The Subjective Universe has causal efficacy. It can break the boundaries of sense-perception, reshape your responses, alter your possibilities, and transform how you interact with the world. It is a functional, operative component of consciousness, not an escape from the real, but a way of reshaping it.
Again, with you.
Here I would like to sound you out on the idea of 'self-in-relation', in the sense that there is the world 'as it is' Objective Universe (whatever that is), and the world as we perceive it Subjective Universe – and this, I think, is common to the understands of all traditions.
The question here is around the idea as the OU as causal, the SU as caused? I'm not disagreeing with your 'SU as causal efficacy', but trying to look at it from the aspect of causal in relation to the OU, if that makes sense?
No, “influencing other SUs” does not mean convincing people you’re right. It means shifting how others perceive you, which in turn shifts how they respond, behave, and interact with you. Influence changes outcome. Convincing changes opinions.
OK, I see. Again, relational. We learn about ourselves in relation to others.
I said ". . . influencing a varying number of SU's" meaning the various SU's that YOU have, not influencing other's SU's, that would be Lesser Black Majiq.
Ah, OK, got that. Again, we need not let that detain us.
You don't see the difference between experiencing one's GodSelf and experiencing a perceived external god
I rather think that depends on how we perceive both 'self' and 'God'.
I agree that by majority, the common RHP view is of God as an entity, a being, He of whom all manner of cataphatic affirmations might be declared. (I see such cataphatic affirmations evident in the more common LHP – we're both caught in a digital world awash with ill-informed and unexperienced opinion, nonsense and trivia.)
But there are the RHP apophatic negations, the 'not this-not that' statements, not so much of what God is, but of what God is not. In that view, God is neither an entity nor a being, as both of these belong to the categories of the common, material universe.
If I were to offer a view, I'd draw something of an analogy from cosmology – universal expansion – in which the horizon is ever further on. The journey into the Self, or from the Self, is something like that. We might say God is First and Final, but only in the sense that the Individual Self (the 'I' or 'Me' and, in the case of others, 'You') arises in the contingent world; the world was there before it, and will be there after its gone – thus we say the world has an objective reality 'outside' of our subjective appreciation and determination of it.
That which we call God, however, has no body, no being; is not an entity, nor a mind, nor consciousness; no centre, no periphery, no boundary ... and so on ... if anything its a dynamic, rather than a thing, but it has no parts, no movement ...
And great answers, by the way. Thanks for taking the time.
The Greater Self does not “come from” anywhere, it is emergent. It is not an external soul, not a divine implant, and not something handed down by a god or cosmology. Instead, it arises from the evolution of consciousness. As awareness becomes more complex, it begins to reflect on itself, distinguish itself from the environment, and form a stable center of identity. This emergent center is the seed of the Greater Self.
OK ... huge discussion here.
At face value, this appears to be a statement of a physicalist or materialist universe – that 'consciousness' arises purely as the result, perhaps even a by-product, of complex neural networks, and so on. One might say 'unintended by-product', but then that presupposes intention, and the physicalist universe has no room for intention, either from without, or within. Evolution is entirely haphazard and the idea of 'progress' should be seen within an over-arching context of nature happy to give anything a go, and what continues, continues ...
The Greater Self is the part of consciousness that recognizes its own separateness.
Again, at face value, here is where you depart from that physicalist universe, in that they would say that there is no 'greater self' there is just the self, and proposing a Greater Self is bordering on physicalist supernaturalism? There is no evolutionary necessity, reason or evidence for it. It's just an idealogical construct ...
It is what becomes aware of agency, intention, and the ability to act upon both the Objective and Subjective Universes. It is the Self-Aware aspect of Being.
Here the boundaries become blurred. All being is, to some degree, self aware. Not all being investigate their own self-awareness – 'the unexamined life is not worth living' as Socrates is supposed to have said. Some do examine that life, some don't. Again, it's human nature. Some travel, some are happy to stay at home. Some climb mountains ...
The Greater Self is “born” when the individual realizes they can shape meaning rather than merely inherit it. Most people live inside programmed identities, family, religion, culture.
All people do. And yes, some seek to shape rather than simply accept what life dishes out. But again, the physicalist would reject any idea of a 'Greater Self' as such. There's simply those who do, and those who don't. And all have gifts, or lack of; some are stronger or faster; more insightful or intuitive, and so on. There's nothing special going on.
The Greater Self appears the moment you step outside those structures and recognize: “I can choose what I become”, "I Am That I Am Not (IAMTHATIAMNOT)", "My Will Be Done", not (Thy Will Be Done).
I am mindful of the meeting in which the work of two artists, one Japanese, one European, were compared. Both declared that they had stepped outside the bounds or normality. Both claimed to be thinking and working 'outside the box'. Both declared themselves utterly original, without precedent.
The audience was asked to vote which artwork was which, and they were 100% correct. But this is anecdotal.
To my mind, it's a 'nature and nurture' thing. We can choose what we become within the fishbowls we are in. I can't think of anyone choosing to become something that was not already pre-existent in their experientail consciousness.
So as I see it, the Greater Self is as much an act of faith as a belief in God.
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In dialogue with a physicalist, I would simply offer that such a view does have its opponent in the scientific discourse, and that the physicalist cannot prove their position conclusively, whilst other concepts, such as panpsychism, are growing in traction, so in that sense physicalism is neither a proven thesis nor a 'fact'.
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But this brings me back to your original question:
"How does one meaningfully debate between unverifiable belief-systems when they stand on unproven metaphysical foundations?"
We need to tread carefully here, as all 'metaphysics' is in principle beyond proof. Such is implied by the term itself, as 'proofs' belong to the world of physics.
So my theism and your GodSelf rests on an 'unproven (and unprovable) metaphysical foundation' – in which case the only way one can meaningfully debate is if the other allows that foundation, if only for the sake of debate. Then, as Aquinas said, all their objections can be answered.
"If each system rests not on evidence but on faith, revelation, or tradition, then the usual tools of argument, reason, logic, and empirical proof, are already compromised."
Not really. They are if one is prepared to compromise reason and logic to affirm the system, but the traditions, those that survive, rest on sound reason, logic and rational discourse.
