The Most Deeply Distorted and Misunderstood Intuition of All

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Of course this means that “that which is First”, however it may be named or described or even countenanced as being beyond any name or description, is profoundly “global” in scope and jurisdiction. For no matter how divergent and pluralized narratives of “what is First” may be, the very Idea of what is Absolutely Original reveals itself in such an over—poweringly potent logos that it commands the mind to recognize and acknowledge its absolute universality, its infinite unitivity, its abysmal originality. For this reason, competent reflection on this Absolute First entails that it must be infinitely Univocal, hence absolutely Universal in scope and power. So the depth of this First cannot but be infinite in its Presence, and this immediately entails that it is the ground and source of all possible worlds, all forms of life, of nature and culture, of evolution and history, of religions and philosophies, the very origin of discourse and natural reason.

This Idea of an Infinite, Original, Universal and Univocal Principle that is the ground and source of all that exists, the generative force of the universe, the foundation of all lifeworlds, the common ground of all religions and cultures, the active rational principle of all thought and language is the single most important idea affecting the human condition. Our wellbeing essentially turns on minding this Idea rightly. It is the Infinite Word that the great world religions have sought in their irreducible diversity to express and celebrate. It is the Rational Principle that diverse philosophical traditions through the ages have sought in pluralistic grammars to articulate. And if there is a Universal Logos that is ecumenical and global and the common ground of our humanity between cultures and worlds, then it is of the utmost importance to give this question our primary attention and deepest critical scrutiny.

So let us query and interrogate this alleged Idea. Why must there be an “Absolute”? Suppose we deny that there is anything ultimate, first, infinite. What if we outright reject the idea of any “universal logos”, or “primitive univocity”? Why not join those skeptics who affirm that these matters are simply off limits and beyond our human capacities? In any case, why can’t there he a plurality of “absolutes”, a rich diversity of “first principles” a multiplicity of “origins”? Why can’t there be irreducibly diverse rationalities? Why must we favor “unity” over plurality and absolute difference? Could we not favor a rich multivocity and plurivocity over any alleged “univocity”? And why should we countenance any origin at all, any first? any foundation? Isn’t it best after all that we abandon once and for all the myth of origins and foundations?

Of course these queries have been raised over and over in different contexts through the ages. And it is vital both to press these challenges and to respond to them effectively. There have been an interesting diversity of strategies to establish an “Absolute First”. In Judaic origins, for example, it has been hailed as one of the great advances for humanity to recognize that “God is One”, to awaken to the truth that the Divine Name is One, having absolute and universal jurisdiction. The Hebrew Logos is revealed as requiring an ultimate faith to be consummated. Again, in Greek origins we find Socrates—Plato pressing rational discourse to its limits in the transcendental universal form of Goodness, the form of all forms, beyond knowledge and truth. Here in the Greek Logos it is argued that the life of reason gets its light from this ultimate and absolute condition that can he realized only through the highest rational intuition.

Further, Aristotle, in his masterful transcendental inquiry into What is First, absolute first principles, recognized that in approaching First things it is highly naive to use mundane thinking and logic. It shows naivete to presume that First Principles can be queried or proven in conventional logic since the Absolute Conditions make discourse itself possible, make all proof, arguments, queries and rational discourse possible. Any would—be skeptic who would radically question what is First always places himself or herself in a self—deconstruction or incoherence in her questioning, in her participation in discourse. Aristotle rightly observed that in order to formulate and express any intelligible thought whatsoever itself presupposes, hence confirms, the First Principle of thought, language, being. And Plato and Aristotle broke new ground historically in inaugurating a formal science of the Universal Logos of natural reason, a birthing of first philosophy.

As we scan diverse global traditions of first philosophy we readily see characteristic patterns in responding to those voices that would query or deny the Absolute. In the Hindu discourse of Advaita (Non—dual) Vedanta, for example, we find Sankara arguing for the immediate disclosure of Absolute Brahman, the non dual First Principle, in every thought, experience or utterance. Here in the meditative dimension of Logos we find that Brahman is immediately revealed in every thought, and it is the egocentric mind that eclipses itself from realizing this meditative insight. Of course the diverse traditions of meditative Logos concur that how we conduct our mind is all—important in realizing the profound Unity and Infinition of What is First. There is a certain consensus that egocentric reason is inherently pathological, self—divided, and self—eclipsed from rightly encountering the logos of awakened intelligence.

Thus, in certain traditions of Buddhist dialectic it is found that the Buddha’s essential insight turns on recognizing that human existential suffering arises from egocentric minding which eclipses natural intelligence from awakening to the Universal Law (Dharma) which is the expression of Absolute Emptiness (Sunyata), another classic face of Logos. Only by going through a profound meditative therapy, a deep and rigorous discipline of right minding, can we overcome the powerful pull of egocentric life and enter the path of right thinking and awakened living in the presence of the Law of Logos.

We can of course go on with this inventory of diverse strategies in the global evolution of Logos in dealing effectively with What is First. The main point here is that in attempting to approach and effectively think ultimate transcendental matters it is all-important how we conduct our mind and thinking. And it cannot he presumed that our mundane or conventional habits of thought, or our egocentric ways of minding can coherently query or deny or reject the absolute conditions that make all thinking and discourse possible. Indeed, diverse traditions of first philosophy concur that a profound reorientation in the conduct of mind, in how we think, is essential in rigorously approaching the transcendental First. While naive everyday thinking is out of touch with the Law or Logos that makes it possible, awakened, reflective minding centers in this Law and every aspect of existence is thereby dramatically transformed and illumined in the presence of Logos. So the most important factor in considering Absolute conditions is to be keenly mindful of how we are conducting our thinking.

Keeping this in mind let us probe more deeply into the alleged “First”. Wherever we may be situated in thought it is clear that we can never think away conditionality, being conditioned. It is true that naive egocentric minding deludes itself into thinking it can exist in itself absolutely, that it can be self-existing and independent. But it is immediately evident that it could not even have this illusion without the work of Unity, Difference and Relationality. For anything, to have identity it must exhibit the power of self-unity through the ever changing differential flow of time, it must re-iterate through process, hence it is profoundly relational. For to be a “self’ in the first place, to have any thought at all, to say “I”, presumes dependency on the power of unitivity, the possibility of something being self-identical, one and the same, through the differential power of time. Without this creative relational power of Unitivity nothing could be. There would be no Univocal “I” in the first place, and hence no univocal thoughts, words, concepts, language. “I” could not get started, nor any alleged act or production of this “I”. Without the presumption of Univocity thinking
and language could not get started, could not work. Everything would pulverize and dissolve before “it” could get started. In this way we begin to see the immediate working of Absolute Unitivity in every moment.

We must remember that naive egocentric reason cannot, in its own terms, think or encounter this Absolute Unitive condition of its deepest being and thinking. And as awakened reason opens to this presence of Logos it becomes clear that this Power of Absolute Unitivity is profoundly Relational, inter—relational, differential. This means that the Absolute condition cannot be “finitized”, contained, fixated, reduced, identified, objectified, reified. It is the egocentric reason that finitizes whatever it touches, including its artificially constructed “infinite”. This is why repeatedly in the global evolution of thought competent minders of the First have discovered and insisted that it must he Infinite and Unitive and the Univocal source of all reality. The Absolute cannot he “pluralized” because that would artificially and incoherently delimit it by an external and independent “other”, and this is self—contradictory to the Univocal power of the Absolute which makes the very idea of “plurality”, “diversity”, “difference”, “the other”...possible. Any thesis of plurality or original difference presumes Univocity. In this way the absolute condition of Unitivity immediately leads to Infinitude, which in turn implies an infinitely unified domain of reality—that reality must be a Unified inter—relational field. Logos entails a Universal Unified Field, for no field whatsoever could establish itself apart from Logos rational power and jurisdiction.

This is why it is naive and self—defeating to attempt to assert that
absolute difference, multiplicity, plurality is ultimate, and not unitivity or
Unity. In the Hebrew Logos, when it was discovered and declared that “God is
One” this was indeed a great advance in the science of the global Logos since it
recognized that What is First, The Absolute, the Divine Word, must be Unitive
and not pluralized. In the Greek Logos, when it was seen that there must be an
ultimate Universal Form of all forms, the form of Goodness, as the condition of
being and knowledge, this too tapped the foundational power of Logos. In the
Hindu Logos when the deepest meditative insights into the Absolute First,
Brahman, revealed that it must be infinitely non—dual (advaita) in every way,
implying a Unified Field, this too tapped and revealed vital resources of Logos.
In Buddhist disclosures of ultimate reality as Absolutely Empty, beyond all
egocentric dogmatizing and ontologizing, beyond all egological names and forms
and descriptions, this too opened depth insights into Logos. In this breakthrough
into the field of Logos it is found that there is a Universal Law, the Law of
dependent co—arising, wherein all things arise in mutual co—determination. This
advance tapped the relational nature of Logos, recognizing that non—dual Unity is
profoundly inter relational, again implying a primordial Unified Field of Logos.
In Chinese explorations into What is First we find classic disclosures of
the Logos of Tao, the Tao of Logos. Here too it is found That the Primordial Presence is Nameless, prior to unity and plurality, one and many, the original source of all opposites, the origin of all that exists. Here again it is confirmed that the primordial Unitivity of Absolute Logos is the ground of both unity and multiplicity, of identity and difference, the very origin of the possibility of polar oppositions. This historic development of the grammar of Tao reveals classic features in the logic of Logos showing that the First naturally plays out as the inter-relational unified field of reality.

These selected examples in the history and evolution of Logos help us to see how the absolute unitivity condition leads to a higher technology of minding in which inter-relationality is primitively given. We now see that the power of Unitivity is infinitely laden with multiplicity and diversity. The Absolute condition of Unitivity implies Infinition, which implies Relationality, which implies Inter-relationality, hence diversity and multiplicity. This is the original self-differential power of Unity: Infinite Unitivity implies creative differential expression: the Infinitude of Logos means irreducible diversity and plurality. So Unitivity is originally Relational, and the greater the diversity and multiplicity, the greater the presence of Unity. In this respect Alterity is the creative power of Unitivity: this is why relationality and inter-relationality is the essence of Unity. Thus, multiplicity and diversity and plurality do not compete with Unitivity, but are the off-spring and evidence of the play of Unitivity, the very signature of Logos.

Once we begin to awaken to this Infinition of Logos, which has been the main lesson in the global evolution of cultures, it appears silly, even trivial, to have to labor to show that Logos, What is First, must be Infinite, Unitive, Univocal and Universal. For it is so simple and obvious that Infinite Logos must be universal in scope and jurisdiction, that it could not be ultimately multiple and pluralistic. That the Infinite Word must be “global” and holistic is such an immediately given intuition in our rational awareness that it appears tautologous and redundant to have to say it. And yet, this ultimately simple truth has been deeply suppressed and repressed, the most deeply distorted and misunderstood intuition of all. The failure of egocentric cultures to see clearly that we, in all our religious, ethnic, cultural and ideological diversity, immediately derive from the same living source, has been at the core of continued abysmal violence and inhumanity through the ages. Becoming clear on the Infinitude of Logos is essential in recognizing that diverse religions, in their irreducible differences and plurality, arise from a common ground and express a common Truth. Logos is the very source of diverse worlds, the ground of religious and cultural pluralism, the foundation of truth, dialogue and discourse between worlds.

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