Session 3The 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 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 OptionsSeparate-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”
Metaphors We Live By:We See the World through Our
“Lens”
Metaphors We Live By:We Live Together in “One World”
Metaphors We Live By:We Live Amidst “Many Worlds”
“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
The Transcendent MysteryIn the Language of Sacred Symbols
Session 3The Transcendental Horizon:
-A Spectrum of Attitudes-
1. Credulous2. Affirming3. Ambivalent 4. Doubtful5. 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
CONTEMPLATIONThe Way of Inward Solitude
CONTEMPLATIONThe Way of Inward Solitude
COMMUNIONThe Way of Sacred Romance
COMMUNIONThe Way of Sacred Romance
UNIONThe Way of Mystical Ecstasy
UNIONThe Way of Mystical Ecstasy
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.
Compulsive Addictions:The “Shadow Side” of Transcendence
Drugs Alcohol Food Sex
Money Power Politics Religion
Clothes/Cars
Gambling Sports/Games
Radio/TV
Phone/Texting
Internet Work Relation-ships
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
From the time they were children, some persons possess an acute sense of the Infinite & the Eternal, of the Ineffable & Sublime Mystery of Reality.
They are not ultimately concerned with representational words but with presentational presence, with “inner knowing” (gnosis) & primal experience.
BEINGNou
n
PROCESSVerb
X
“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”
Profane power is: Sacred energy is:
MechanisticCoerciveForcefulSpeedy (Chronological)Diminished by being sharedDivisiveCompetitive
PurposefulAlluringEroticPatient (Kairotic)Increased by being sharedUnitingCooperative
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
Primal Peoples’ Phenomenological Cosmogony:Above -Infinite-Invisible-Eternal-Heaven
Human Being: “Between-ness” Below-Finite-Visible-Temporal-Earth
Eastern Wisdom Traditions
Western Wisdom Traditions
1. Being, Consciousness, Bliss2. Non-attachment, Mindfulness, Compassion3. Yin, Yang, Tao
1. Justice, Mercy, Humility
2. Faith, Hope, Love; Light, Life, Love
3. Submission, Passion, Ecstasy
Hindu Transcendental Ideals:“Being, Consciousness, Bliss”
Shankara: Union with the One Transpersonal Absolute
Ramanuja: Communion with the Divine Lover and Creative Source
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
The Buddhist Transcendental Ideals:Non-Attachment, Mindfulness,
Compassion
The Taoist Transcendental Ideal
The Taoist Transcendental Ideal:“The Great Integrity”
YIN in the Integral Tao YANG in the Integral Tao
Feminine Masculine
Night Day
Moon Sun
Passive Principle Active Principle
Intuition Logic
Cold Hot
Soft Hard
The Taoist Transcendental Ideal:Re-Imagined as Emergent
Planetary Holism
YIN PHASETribal SocietiesEpoch I
YANG PHASECoercive CivilizationsEpoch II
INTEGRAL FUTUREPlanetary HolismEpoch III
Magic Folk, Aesthetic, Commercial Arts
Life as Art
Work Labor, Exercise, Sports, Dance
Integral Movement
Incipient PhaseBirth of Humanity
Caste/Class PhaseTechnological Revolution
The Great IntegrityRebirth of Humanity
The Jewish Transcendental Ideals
The Christian Transcendental Ideals
The Platonic Transcendental Ideals
Four Spiritualities & Temperaments:Religious & Secular Forms
NF: Intuitive–Feeling:Oceanic Idealist: “Harmony”The Way of the MysticSecular Poet
NT: Intuitive-ThinkingEthereal Rational: “Unity”The Way of the SageSecular Philosopher
SP: Sensing-Perceiving:Volcanic Artisan: “Devotion”The Way of the ShamanThe Secular Artist
SJ: Sensing-JudgmentTerritorial Guardian: “Works”The Way of the ProphetThe Secular Reformer
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.
“Immanence Without Transcendence”
in the Post-Modern Secular Age Post-Modern Secular “Immanence
without Transcendence” Post-modern constructivism seeks to live
without any Grand Narrative or Theory of Everything, only an endless varieties of versions of “reality” and “truth” that have local culturally constructed meanings but no universal claim to truth or significance.
Such abstract concepts and reifications as “Reality” and “Truth” are simply words we made up and then “conflated” with real objects of experience. “Reality” and “Truth” are “useful fictions.”
Two Movements of Transcendence
Eros: Desire Agape: Sacrifice
Affirmation: FullnessSelf-ExpressionEgoistic: What I WantCreativity: Look What I Made!Desire: Enjoy the Good LifeHedonic Pleasure: Savor LifeSeeking Life: PotentialityTransference: Attachment
Renunciation: EmptinessSelf-SurrenderAltruistic: What Others NeedCompassion: How Are You?Duty: Serve a Greater PurposeHeroic Suffering: Save OthersAccepting Death: LimitationTransfiguration: Letting Go
Wisdom Is…Reverence for Life!
Wisdom Is…Reverence for Life!
The Transcendental Horizon
Q. What does the Transcendental Horizon mean you?
Q. Why does it matter, or not matter, in today’s world?
Q. How do people recognize and cultivate the transcendental horizon?