Dilaogs on Habits of Mind of Prof
Antonio T de Nicholas- Part 2
Complied by Dr K. Loganthan , 2004
Dialogues on Habits of
Mind-11
This dialog is becoming
increasingly more interesting as it touches upon not only problems of the
American Undergraduate university education but also the substance of the whole
of university education applicable to all societies that are becoming
modernized. It has relevance even to ancient societies like the Indian where
innovations are called for.
Let me begin this dialog by
saying that I am in substantial agreement with our Nitin Bhai when he calls for
the introduction of Philosophical courses for: All the disciplines of the
university owe their foundations to philosophy, having been born of its
questions or of its answers. This is particularly so when in most of the
universities in the East, the first department they close down is the
philosophy department, as it happened in Singapore. I understand that even in the University of Madras that boasts of
an Advanced Center for Philosophy (but which was in reality for only Advaita
Vedanta) it has become a weak department where only some foreign students are
studying Indian Philosophy of a sort.
I want to mention some
questions the following recommendations
have raised in my mind just for further clarifications on the points
mentioned in the passages below:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Habits of Mind : Antonio T.
de Nicholas, pp 59-60
In order to
best serve the needs of education at the undergraduate level, the following
changes must occur. Namely, the curriculum of the sciences and the humanities
should be geared to exercise the mind of the students and to eventually develop
the habits of mind needed to:
1. become adept at handling the conceptual
operations of science, mathematics, physics, biology;
2. become adept at creating and judging the
“images” of the humanities, literature, art;
3. become versed in reading different
interpretations of the same events, literary theory, criticism;
4. become familiar with other cultures, their
images and nan atives.
The university
should make sure that the goals of the undergraduate education are not mixed
or dispensed as if they were delivered to professionals or graduate students.
The university should make sure that the classroom is an exercise in pluralism
of inner acts. Also, the departments should accept the responsibility of
reducing ideology to a minimum. This responsibility can only be accomplished
effectively if classroom hours are not marked to satisfy the needs of the
sciences. The humanities have other needs and other ways of occupying the minds
of the students that are not to be measured by hours sitting at a desk in a
classroom. The humanities should liberate themselves from the tyranny of the
sciences in determining the length of class hours that students and teachers
should spend together.
The university should seriously consider
the present state of affairs regarding philosophy. All the disciplines of
the university owe their foundations to philosophy, having been born of its
questions or of its answers. And that means that philosophy alone is
normative, being the only discipline completing the full circle of reflection
and justification of its own act, unlike the other disciplines, including the
sciences. This means that while the university may do all it can to promote its
participation in the culture, the university or the sciences cannot say if the
society they claim to serve ought to
use their discoveries. The discussion of the public domain and of the actual
policies of the pphilosophy. This simple truth separates the university from
being an institution at the service of truth or of power, and the same applies
to teaching policies at the undergraduate level. The physical structure of the
disciplines at this level need be less rigidly separated and more
interconnected to avoid the abuses of ideology, or the promotion of power for
its own sake. Undergraduate studies should function more independently from
the rest of the university than up to now, when they seem to be a requirement
for preparation of future graduate students toward fulfilling their required
steps for graduation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The
undergraduate education should make the students adepts at creating IMAGES of
the humanities and so forth. This is by way of relieving the mind from the
tyrannical hold of words and conceptual thinking that seek precise definitions
of various kinds and in that intolerant of meanings that sustain themselves and
refuse to descend to definitional precision. There are MEANINGS indeterminate,
imprecise, global, and ambiguous and so forth and which are usually the case
with IMAGES or ICONS that encrypt a variety of meanings into a single figure
allowing different individuals see DIFFERENT meanings in the SAME image. The
IMAGE way of retaining an understanding, by the very ambiguity and
indeterminacy it comes along with, demands the Ego that exults in analytical
thinking and seek to press all knowledge in conceptual categories, be subdued and the person holds the IMAGE in
reverence so that the hidden MEANINGS are unfolded gradually and in that way
the understanding is illuminated.
Looked
at this way this is in fact what I have been calling the Icon Thinking, the
Metaphysical Habits of Mind that have sustained the Dravidian culture (and
perhaps the whole of Hindu culture) from at least the Sumerian times.
Now our Nitin Bhai in recommending the culture of images, is he also
recommending the Icon Thinking to be cultivated along with conceptual thinking
of precision demanding Positive Thinking?
Now if it
is the case then it is clear that the undergraduates must be prepared
adequately even before they enter the universities for such a cultue. But what
institutions would develop the Icon Thinking even in childhood?
The Hindus
do this with the culture of Temples where images or icons abound and where
through various kinds of rituals, these images are also made to be held in
great reverence. The Muslims ( and some
Christians) are violently opposed to this. From my youth to this day where I am
in the early sixties, the Icon of Siva Nadarajah holds a central place in my
thinking and as I continue living thus, I also experience new MEANINGS as
already there in that Icon and which come as flashes of INNER LIGHT that
enlightens me considerably.
Now the
second point is:
3.
become
versed in reading different interpretations of the same events, literary
theory, criticism
Again I cannot but agree
with this. In fact this is the aspect that I learned as an undergraduate
student of philosophy in the University of Otago, New Zealand and for which I
remain thankful to the Western culture. Perhaps the American situation is
different.
I want to point out a
similarity here with the Methodology of Philosophic Deconstruction that has
become well entrenched at least with Saivism of the Tamils. We have the
beginnings of it in the Buddhist MaNimekalai where the heroine by way of
educating herself in philosophy, LISTENS to all the different schools of
thought though just simply dismisses them instead of deconstructing them.
However in the Jaina Classic of Nilakeci(c. 9th cent AD) this defect
is made good and we have a fully matured application of deconstruction to the
various philosophies of the times. Now subsequent to this it becomes entrenched
as the very nerve of philosophical studies among the Tamils beginning with
Meykandar AruNandi and so forth.
Now is our Nitin Bhai, in
proposing that students should be exposed to DIFFERENT interpretations and so
forth, is also recommending that DECONSTRUTION as the method of Philosophic
Thinking be introduced as well?
From:
<diotima245@aol.com>
To:
<agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com>;
<akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com>; <meykandar@egroups.com>;
<ene@egroups.com>; <kalaivani@egroups.com>
Subject:
[akandabaratam] Re: [agamicpsychology] Dialogues on Habits of Mind-11
Date:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 9:27 PM
Dear Dr. Loga
and friends:
It is indeed
a pleasure working with friends. I will try to answer to the
point in Dr.
Loga's remarks.
Ikon
thinking, the primacy of images, the language of images, etc., are
already
included in my book Meditations through the Rg Veda. Dragons, heroes, gods,
sacrifice,
movement are different stages of one transit: Asat, Sat, Yajna,
Rta., a
plurality of languages to express what is only One, tad ekam. However,
this is our
human journey. Furthermore the primacy of images has been confirmed
by modern
neurobiology by proving that all perception comes into the right
brain first,
and only later the left brain translates it into concepts. So it
should not be
a difficult argument to follow. However, all the colonial powers
were
controlled by the left brain, that they thought was the supreme and only
brain, and
not just a translating instrument, and one of several. The key
question is
how does the brain of images work. I am attaching an article on how
images
(imagined not fantasized) are made.
The second
point is deconstruction. It is an essential discipline if we are
to find
philosophical space for images, for the other, and for the fixity of
the self in Western
culture. In the case of Western culture the main discipline
to learn is
how to deconstruct oneself for this is the fix coordinate needed
in Western
Academia to talk, direct, think, diagnose, decide etc. In this sense
the West has
a lot to learn from the East and from the language of the
mystics.
Great
conversation. Thanks.
OM and SHANTI
Antonio de
Nicolas
Nitin Bhai
Meditation:
The Making of Images
By Antonio
T. de Nicolas, PhD
Introduction
From the Rig
Veda to Plato the act of imagining is the secret technology of
the mystics.
While most people use fantasy to achieve the results they
fantasize for
the sake of the subject, and theologians use concepts to claim knowledge
and revelation,
imagining has been always the technology of a few souls, from
East and
West, in their effort to repeat the divine act of creation
uncontaminated
by human faculties. For this reason and to describe what this technology
is based on I
have chosen to write this paper following the clear
descriptions
of this act as found in the writings of Ignatius de Loyola and as he used
them in the
making of his Spiritual Exercises. The reason for this choice is the
radical need
of presenting how images are made, rather than borrowed in
meditation.
It is my contention that this tradition of making images in meditation
is present
wherever meditation is practiced. It is common in Hinduism, from
the Rig Veda
down, in Buddhism, and in Christianity, as well as in other
religions.
The aim of such presentation is to show that in religious practice no
image may be
borrowed.
Meditation
Ignatius is
convinced that meditation is the road to that inner space that
may be
revealed, opened, touched, uncovered by that unique act of creation,
unique to
meditation, and by no other creature, object or sensation. Only God, he
believes,
owns the human center (Exer. 316, 322, 329, 330).But this center is
covered by a
communications system, a natural attitude, a self indulgence,
that impedes
human access to it. Ignatius' initiation into this mystery is a
definite
effort at breaking down this communication system and building a new one
through which
the soul and God may communicate. Since the external
communications
system has also, through language and its repetition, through the use of
the faculties
and the repetition of this use, sensitized the subject into a
series of
body sensations and their habitual comfort, the new system of
communications
will aim precisely at destroying, suspending, this habituation. The
exercises
start in the human body and end in the transformation of this same human
body. The
body is the primary text and primary technology, while the
discourse
about the experience is the "secondary text" and "secondary
technology."
Through the
exercises a new language is given the retreatant, a new memory and a
new
imagination. Through this retraining a new will might emerge in harmony
with the Will
of God.
Language
and the Will
The first
week of the exercises is one of trial and training. It is a time of
testing the
will of the retreatant and the body of that will. Not everyone's
body is ready
for meditation at the particular time chosen for the exercises.
Ignatius
wants to single out those who might continue and those who should
proceed no
further. Though the exercises carry so much promise they could also be
dangerous to
one's health if not done under the best physical conditions.
Ignatius says
of "those with poco suiecto (little temperament, lack of stamina
and
preparation) that "they should not proceed any further" (Exer. 18).
This first
week is one of violence to the body habits of the retreatant. He
is asked to
search for a "place" (Exer. 20) away from the ordinary place to
which he/she
is normally accustomed: the cave of Manresa, a lonely room, a
different
room from the one usually inhabited, a different house, a monastery in the
country, an
unaccustomed place, a place where the retreatant has to invent
new body
habits and where outside communications systems do not reach. The
retreatant is
also instructed about lights: less in the first and third weeks, more
in the second
and fourth (Exer. 79). The retreatant's body is subjected to
new and
calculated positions: kneeling, prostrating oneself face down, standing
with the head
bent down, pacing, walking, sitting rigidly (Exer. 74, 75, 76,
77) lowering
the eyes, raising the eyes, closing out sounds, listening to
special
rhythms as the meditation dictates (Exer. 81, 258). The whole body of the
retreatant
must be reeducated until it becomes like a repellent to the external
communications
system and habits he/she was familiar with. All gestures,
facial
expressions, bodily movements, bodily expression must be painstakingly gone
over as if in
slow motion so that the body becomes impervious to the outside
and begins to
learn the technologies of facing and gathering within.
The will of
the retreatant is now used as a surgical knife to cut some
openings into
the interior world. The whole attention of the retreatant is now away
from the
outer world even if in order to achieve this he/she must cut to
pieces, one
by one, the different lived moments of his/her life, the different
moments of a
day, of a prayer, of a meditation, of an examination of conscience,
of an act, a
look, a thought (Exer. 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 34, 38, 42, 43). But on
the trail of
these acts of the will a language is being formed: "intense pain
and
tears," ugliness and evil...of sin" (Exer. 57), compare God's attributes
to yours,
wisdom and ignorance, omnipotence and weakness, justice and
inequity,
goodness and selfishness (Exer. 59), "esclamacion admirative con crescido
afecto"
(shout with amazement and filled with a growing emotion) (Exer. 60);
self-pity, gratitude,
amazement, disgust, consolation, desolation (Exer. 62) are
the signs of
this language the will has started to create by turning the
entire life
and every minute of it into an interior timetable where only the chimes
of eternity
are heard. By the time the will becomes habituated to those
exercises
there will no longer be room for external and familiar languages. The
clock of the
"solitary region" is now running. The interior timetable now
determines
one's waking (Exer. 74), the kind of prayer, examinations of conscience
(Exer. 43)
and meditations one makes and what conversations one will bring to
the guide of
the exercise. The prayer may take various forms; it may be light
and relax the
emotions (Exer. 238), or it may focus on the seven deadly sins
(Exer. 244),
or on the three powers of the soul (Exer. 246). It may become a
meditation
which considers every word pronounced (Exer. 249), or which
concentrates
only on those points of meditation "where I felt the most intense
spiritual
feeling"
(Exer. 62). And, of course, we must not forget, a new diet has to be
included
(Exer. 84), and one should sleep with less comfort than one is used
to and cause
sensible pain to the body (Exer. 85). Even while going to sleep
there is no
stopping this clock; one should prepare oneself for the coming day
by going over
the memory-points of the meditation one is going to make in the
morning
(Exer. 73). Upon awakening, one should bring to mind what one is about
to meditate
on. The clock of the "solitary region" does not allow any external
language to
come in; there are no cracks between exercises: "no dando lugar a
unos
pensamientos ni a otros" (not to make room for this kind of thoughts or
any other)
(Exer. 74).
Spiritual
exercises, however, do not compare to any army "boot camp."
Ignatius is
very sensitive to that: "If the one giving the exercises sees that he who
makes them is
in desolation or temptation, he should not be harsh or severe
with him, but
rather gentle and soft..." (Exer.17). And if at times Ignatius
recommends
acting against natural inclinations (agere contra, do the opposite
Exer. 13,
16), as when one feels like not going the length of a whole hour in
meditation,
one should therefore at once decide to go for one hour and a half.
He also makes
the exercitant aware that all those things he/she is trained to
do are only
means to an end. One should use, therefore, those things only
"tanto...
cuanto" (as much as) (Exer. 23) one needs to in order to achieve those
ends. For in the
end the exercises are for the soul to get ready to receive the
Will of God,
not suggestions from the guide of the exercises, or confessors,
or friends,
or enemies: ...it is much better, in searching for the divine Will,
to let Our
Creator and Lord communicate Himself to the devoted soul..."
(Exer.15).
The exercises
of the will and the hint of the language that emerges builds
around the
inner space of the retreatant a scaffolding of inner habits ready to
sustain the new
emerging body of meditation. But then the drama unfolds. While
the
retreatant experiences the excitement of the new, he/she also experiences
the
bereavement of the familiar. The retreatant is not guaranteed that the
divinity may
enter the solitary space, while the familiar will no longer feel
the same. The
retreatant can never anticipate what is about to happen or even if
it will
happen. One needs to give up everything and, yet, one cannot
anticipate
that the empty spaces are going to be filled. This journey needs raw human
faith, the
exercises themselves that keep opening horizons of language, and
memory along
with its predictability. The exercise now is memory.
Memory and
Predictability
The origin of
Christianity was an experience that had already happened. It
originated
outside of time with the Trinity and entered time in the Second
Person of the
Trinity through the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption. It
is precisely
because of the fact that this experience has already happened that
for every.
Christian to know is to remember. Memory makes of Christians
communities
and religion; it is the common ground of memories, on which all stand,
that joins
them as community. Without memory Christianity could not be
articulated.
Christ had already set down the internal law of the community: "Do this
in
remembrance of me." (Luke 22, 19) And even when the Father will send, in
Christ's
name, the Comforter, the Spirit, He will do it to "bring all things to
your
remembrance" (John 14, 25). To be a Christian is primarily to live on
memory, to
turn memory around, to store memories, to turn every sign, whatever
its origin,
into a memory-point, to articulate those memories so that memory
remains
active. Those memories are the remembrance of the Will of God in
operation.
They are the memory of a past actively present and therefore, being God's
Will, with a
future. It is a memory that predictably organizes the future. But
not without human
effort and participation. Strictly speaking, the Spiritual
Exercises are
a string of memories, of memory-points. Even the exercises as
written are
not to be read for information or edification or content. Each and
every word is
slowly and carefully chiseled out so that it becomes a
memory-point
for action, or for making memory.
The journey
of the retreatant's will dividing his/her life into the search
for sins, the
day divided into exercises of the will to discover flaws, to
remove flaws,
these exercises are primarily exercises in memory: memories that
travel back
and forth, up and down, within the perimeters of a human life.
Meditation
begins by "bringing to memory" the first sin of the angels (Exer.
50); "by
bringing to
memory" the sin of Adam and Eve (Exer. 51); "by bringing to
memory"
our sins (Exer. 52), all the sins of my lifetime (Exer. 56), year by year,
place by
place, looking at the places I have lived, conversations I have had,
work done
(Exer. ibid.); bring to memory to instruct the intellect in it: "so
that the
intellect, without meandering, may reason with concentration going
over the
reminiscences (memories) of the things contemplated in past
exercises..."
(Exer. 64). Ignatius literally means, through the Exercises, "to bring all
things into
remembrance." In order to bring all things into remembrance,
however,
demands from us certain shifts in technologies. In every case human effort
is needed.
Ignatius de
Loyola shared with the other mystics of his time habits of
reading
different from ours. Early in his Autobiography (Autobiography 6 and 7) he
lets us know
how he used reading in order to fix memory points and visualize
the things
the Saints did and that he could also do. With these memories he
would then
dream of doing greater things for the service of God. In this manner
Ignatius kept
his mind well occupied. Ignatius' knowledge came through the
experience of
meditation, not through reasoning out the mysteries of Christianity.
It is true that
the Exercises use the three potencies or faculties of the
soul, but it
is through memory that they are held together, or by turning all
things into
remembrance. The flight of the soul will eventually take place through
imagining.
Turning all
things into remembrance is not an easy task, however. The
memories of
Christianity are not factual history, are not deeds humans caused on
humans or
nature. In order to turn all things into remembrance one must perform a
radical
hermeneutical act. How does one remember "the souls in hell" or the
Trinity
before Creation, or angels sinning, or how Christ used his five senses,
or even one's
own sins without a radical reinterpretation of those cognitive
ciphers in
view of the experience that already happened? Those are living
memories to a
Christian and therefore recoverable. To recall them is to call them,
and
therefore, they may be articulated in language. They are the language in
which
imagining takes place. On these memory units imagining will act. This
memory bank
is the only security the retreatant has that the system works; it is
the language
of Christianity, its communications system. It is in this sense,
of memory in
use, that memory acts with an element of predictability in the
system.
Memory, by turning back, vivifies the retreatant and guarantees the
future.
Memory mediates all human action: it is language and it is divine human
life.
Imagining
as Individual Dismemberment
Language, in
order not to be a dead language, must be used, spoken, written
down.
Memories would become dead if not activated through acts of imagining.
Contrary to
contemporary practices in psychology, where imagining is guided
so that
individuals and groups share the same image and are guided in imagining
it, or where archetypal
images are the object, goal, and the identity of
imagining,
Ignatius, astonishingly enough, leaves the retreatant entirely to
his/her
"own abilities" (Exer.18) when guiding him/her in the act of
imagining.
Ignatius
provides memory points, describes how to imagine, but the images of
imagining are
absent from the Exercises . Actual imagining is the retreatant's
exercise.
This may be understood because Ignatius cannot draw on any existing
reservoir of
images in order to correct mistaken identities. He cannot draw from
any
subjective field of images with which the subject may be more or less
familiar,
because through some of those images individuals have already
experienced
transformations, even creations. Ignatius displaces the retreatant from any
subjective or
objective pools of images and vigorously transplants him/her to
an imageless
field where the absence of images will force the exercise of
creating
them. This kind of imagining is the more powerful because it does not
rest on
images anyone ever before created. Neither the exercitant nor the world
has the
images of the exercises of imagining. The images to be born are of a
sheer power
of imagining which includes not only the act of imagining, but the
act of
creating the images.
This strategy
of Ignatius is so demanding that it rests more on the actual
technologies
of imagining than on any images. Thus his insistence on the
technology of
concentration in order to bring out the pure image, the uncontaminated
image, the
image in perfect solitude, the original image, the divine image.
The image
created in meditation is the only image that will gain currency in
meditation.
One cannot borrow it, one must create it. In this creation all other
images are
automatically excluded. The whole technology developed in the
Exercises has
one aim: the perfect image, for it is in it and through it that God's
signs will
appear. The image will turn to language and return to the public
domain.
The pure image,
the original image, will penetrate the public domain if first
it penetrates
the material body of the retreatant. This material body is
always set
facing the scene, the image, to be imagined. But this material body is
a fluid body
through imagining: a slave in the Nativity, a knight in the Two
Kingdoms, a
sinner facing the Cross; or it may change sizes if compared to
other men,
the angels, God (Exer. 58); it may become a vermin worth "many hells"
(Exer. 60);
or the temple, image of God, animated by God, sensitized by Him
(Exer. 235).
Technically,
however, this material fluid body of the retreatant, becomes
dismembered
through the act of imagining. Ignatius conceives imagining as an act
of
dismembering the senses by running them in isolation, one by one, through
the image
being made.
The
retreatant is placed in front of a scene and asked to make his/her own
"contemplacion
viendo el lugar" (contemplation seeing the place). With
exhausting
detail, he/she is asked to make up the scene; the road: how long, wide, flat
running
through valleys or hills; the cave: how big, small, how high, how
low, how
furnished (Exer.112). Imagine hell, the width and depth and length
(Exer. 65),
or imagine the synagogue, villages and castles (Exer. 91), or the Three
Divine
Persons (Exer.102), or Mary riding a donkey or Joseph pulling an ox
(Exer.110).
But for Ignatius the image alone is not the source of signs. The
image on
recall is to call it to memory. The actual birth of the signs or the
system of
signs does not take place until the retreatant proceeds, through
imagining, to
"read" the image through his own dismembered sensorium. The perfect
image, the
solitary image, the divine image is set into motion through the
sensuous
motion of the retreatant's senses as he or she runs them, one at a time,
through the
image. It takes the "reading" of the image by each sense so that it
becomes a
mediation of signs. The efficacy of the image is made possible on
condition that
the subject be kept elusively absent, as a fixed unity, in the
act of
imagining. What he or she is asked to do instead is to lend sight,
sound, smell,
touch, movement to the image. The image must be filled through the
reading of
each sense on the image. He or she vitalizes the image through his or
her
dismembered sensorium. Each sense must read the image separately; each
sense must
sensitize the image separately; each sense must read/write its
separate
movement on the image separately. What is done through visualization must
be repeated
through hearing, smelling, touching, moving. This applies to the
exercises on
hell, the Nativity, the Cross, Resurrection, in short, to any
exercises
where images are to be imagined.
It is the
exercise of imagining that makes the appearance of signs and the
articulation
of both as a language possible. Images of themselves, do nothing.
The
retreatant must exercise them by reading/writing sensation on them. In its
preparatory
stage imagining is a technology that if performed in all its
purity will
return signs and articulate itself into a language. It will also force
the sensible
signs to appear in the act of sensitizing the image of
meditation.
As a consequence and because it is an embodied technology, it will also
desensitize
the subjects to their original unities and attachments while
sensitizing
them to the new and fresh sensations. Imagining, therefore, with its
preliminary
organization of daily acts, memories and sensitizing of images, is the
primary
technology through which a language/text appears and may be
articulated.
Without this primary text written in the human body, this technology of
habituation,
signs will not appear nor the language of their articulation. The
primary
technology thus is the causal origin of the signs, the diacritical
systems of
signs, that are to be read. The reading of those signs will have several
readers: the
retreatant, his director or confessor, his spiritual guide,
whoever is trained
to read such a text. The reader must know the primary technology
and the
primary text and be an expert in reading the signs. He/she must be
able to read
them even if he/she is not the author of the primary text or the
reader/writer
of the primary technology. It is on this condition that the
primary text
and primary technology produce not only a language but also the
possibility
of its articulation, either as a private articulation to a spiritual
guide, or as
a public articulation for the public domain.
Conclusion
Though this
hermeneutical task is unfinished, it should be suggestive enough
to encourage
all those interested in deeper unities than theological
civilities to
search for a way of making possible inter-religious communities where
serious,
dedicated forms of meditation are made available to all.
Human
technologies divide into two groups: one follows the image of the
sinner-Savior
model where the individual has hardly any room to do anything on
his/her own,
for he/she is always at the mercy of "compliance" with an ethical
code dictated
by this model.
On the other
hand, there is the Avatara-mystical model, the individual uses
technologies
that infuse all his/her brains with knowledge and allows him or
her to embody
the human paradigm as it moves along. Heart Ethics is the guide
here, and the
training is geared to be able to chose from among the possible
(dharma)
facing you, the best, by habit, as Plato and Indic texts proposed before
him and is
found in the mystical literature of the Spiritual Exercises of
Ignatius and
other mystics.
Before
Ignatius wrote his Exercises Indic Tradition had already imprinted the
paradigm in
the human species with the practices of the yogas of the Bhagavad
Gita. Krisna
moves by the neural pathways of the left brain to gain distance
from Arjuna's
trauma, and on to the communities of the right brain practices,
embodying
them as he moves to the point when in chapter eleven he shows the
bewildered Arjuna
his geometries without the forms Arjuna so loved or feared, or
with the
forms already destroyed. Kalo'smi: I am Time, Krisna proclaims, I am
all a man can
be, now…And so can you if you learn to make decisions. Of
course, Indic
Tradition does not have to deal with the sinner-Savior model for in
this
Tradition, from the Rig Veda down, all the gods are "this side of
Creation,"
as the Rig Veda proclaims, and manas (the mind) is not a faculty but one
more of the
senses.
And so, in
the end, make sure your exercises correspond to your available
neural
connections and brain centers, restrain your fantasy, cancel out your left
brain until
you leave meditation and translate whatever happened there into
ordinary
prose or poetry or simple power of decision making. There are two
roads, make
sure you find the one leading to the technologies of the heart.
Bibliography
de Nicolas,
A.T. (1986) Powers of Imagining: Ignatius de Loyola, State
University of
New York
Press, Albany N.Y
(1976,8,2003)
Meditations Through the Rig Veda, Shambhala, Boulder- London,
Nicolas-Hays,
iUniverse.com.
(1990) The
Bhagavad Gita, Nicolas-Hays, York Beach, Maine
(1989,1996)
St. John of the Cross; Alchemist of the soul. Nicolas-Hays, York
Beach, Maine
(1976)
Avatara: The Humanization of Philosophy. Nicolas-Hays, Maine and New
York .
Note:
Meditations and Avatara are ready at iUniverse.com and on line.
_______________________________________________________________________________
From:
"Dr K.Loganathan" <subas@pc.jaring.my>
To:
<akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com>; <agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re:
[akandabaratam] Re: [agamicpsychology] Dialogues on Habits of Mind-11
Date:
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 9:56 PM
Dear Prof
Antonio
Thank-you for
an in depth input into Icon Thinking which seems to be quite
universal but somehow suppressed by both positive
sciences and dogmatic
religions including
the Indian variety. Perhaps there are also problems
here that we
have to take into account. Dravidian culture which has
fostered Icon
Thinking can also fail.
Let me read
this piece more carefully before I raise some questions (if
the need
arises)to further the dialogue.
Meanwhile it
will be nice if the other members also volunteer their views
as the issues
are quite general and very important.
Loga
Ignatius
de Loyola : Was he a Siva Yogi?
There are spiritual universals and as we
dig into the direct spiritual experiences of the great mystics throughout the world,
we see a striking commonality despite some differences in the language of
description. It also appears these commonalties arise only because they tear
themselves away from historical and social determinants, the tradition into
which they are born and which prejudices them deeply and delve deep into their
own BODY and reaching different brain centers experience BEING uncontaminated
by religions and the priestly tales. The following description of Ignatious de
Loyala reminded me of the Tamil Sivayogis and Baktas where mutual influences
are very unlikely. Both must be taping the same BRAIN LOCATIONS and thus
gaining experiences of a novel kind by this INNER voyage, SAY in their own
languages something the SAME.
This raises the important question: Do we require the Padres Mullahs Brahmanahs
and so forth for experiencing the true spiritual heights? I do not think we
need their services at all and in view of their tendency to ENSLAVE the mind,
we must in fact FREE ourselves from them to experience BEING directly as has
been the case with the Christian Ignatious and the Saiva VaishNava Baktas of
India.
Now let us
what Prof says below:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Language
and the Will
The
first week of the exercises is one of trial and training. It is a time of
testing
the will of the retreatant and the body of that will. Not everyone's
body
is ready for meditation at the particular time chosen for the exercises.
Ignatius
wants to single out those who might continue and those who should
proceed
no further. Though the exercises carry so much promise they could also be
dangerous
to one's health if not done under the best physical conditions.
Ignatius
says of "those with poco suiecto (little temperament, lack of stamina
and
preparation) that "they should not proceed any further" (Exer. 18).
This
first week is one of violence to the body habits of the retreatant. He
is
asked to search for a "place" (Exer. 20) away from the ordinary place
to
which
he/she is normally accustomed: the cave of Manresa, a lonely room, a
different
room from the one usually inhabited, a different house, a monastery in the
country,
an unaccustomed place, a place where the retreatant has to invent
new
body habits and where outside communications systems do not reach. The
retreatant
is also instructed about lights: less in the first and third weeks, more
in
the second and fourth (Exer. 79). The retreatant's body is subjected to
new
and calculated positions: kneeling, prostrating oneself face down, standing
with
the head bent down, pacing, walking, sitting rigidly (Exer. 74, 75, 76,
77)
lowering the eyes, raising the eyes, closing out sounds, listening to
special
rhythms as the meditation dictates (Exer. 81, 258). The whole body
of the
retreatant
must be reeducated until it becomes like a repellent to the external
communications
system and habits he/she was familiar with. All gestures,
facial
expressions, bodily movements, bodily expression must be painstakingly gone
over
as if in slow motion so that the body becomes impervious to the outside
and
begins to learn the technologies of facing and gathering within.
The
will of the retreatant is now used as a surgical knife to cut some
openings
into the interior world. The whole attention of the retreatant is now away
from
the outer world even if in order to achieve this he/she must cut to
pieces,
one by one, the different lived moments of his/her life, the different
moments
of a day, of a prayer, of a meditation, of an examination of conscience,
of
an act, a look, a thought (Exer. 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 34, 38, 42, 43). But on
the
trail of these acts of the will a language is being formed: "intense pain
and
tears," ugliness and evil...of sin" (Exer. 57), compare God's
attributes
to
yours, wisdom and ignorance, omnipotence and weakness, justice and
inequity,
goodness and selfishness (Exer. 59), "esclamacion admirative con crescido
afecto"
(shout with amazement and filled with a growing emotion) (Exer. 60);
self-pity,
gratitude, amazement, disgust, consolation, desolation (Exer. 62) are
the
signs of this language the will has started to create by turning the
entire
life and every minute of it into an interior timetable where only the chimes
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I just want to
point out some parallels with Yoga practices from Sumerian times to the Bakti
period just to show that we have is a SPIRITUAL UNIVERSAL and hence equally
available to all and all human beings are the SAME in this respect. Turning
away from scriptures to the BODY and accessing the deeper parts of the BRAIN
seems bring out the UNIVERSAL in religious matters and which has something that
was emphasized by the Siddhas Sufis and so forth.
Now I just
want to cite some parallel accounts from SumeroTamil literature to show that
these are very ancient and have been sustained in Tamil Culture and which has
given rise to the OPENNESS that is characteristic of it. Patanjali’s Yoga
Sutras Tirumular’s Third Tantra as well as many Tamil Siddha texts provide many
details on these themes attesting a continuity of tradition.
My first
citation comes from a description of what is obviously the forcing of the body
into various Asanas by way accessing some deeper realms of the brain:
This is just brief note on Enlil
(also called se-ir mal) where some lines are taken from a book "a-ab-ba
hu-luh-ha" (Oh Angry Sea!), (Raphael Kurtscher, 1975, Yale Univ. Press) a
very scholarly book that also details the distinction between the eme-gir
and eme-sal forms of Sumerian language.
In connection with Yoga, we have a
clear description of Ta. aRituyil ( Sk Yoganidra)
This notion , interestingly enough
exists in Sumerian too, as the following lines would indicate.
5. a-a (d) mu-ul-lil sipa
sag-gig-a ( Father Enlil , Shepherd of the Black-headed)
Ta. ayyaa moo uLLil ciiva caan
kaikka ( Father who pervades in the interior of all, the savior who is black)
6. a-a (d) mu-ul-lil i-bi-du
ni-te-na ( Father Enlil, the one inspecting for Himself)
Ta. ayyaa moo uLLil imaiyidu nii taanee
( Father who pervades the interior of all, and sees all on his own accord)
7. a-a (d) mu-ul-lil am erin
di-di ( Father Enlil, the Warrior Who Leads the Troops)
Ta. ayyaa moo uLLil amaa araN titii
8. a-a (d) mu-ul-lil u-lul-la
ku-ku ( Father enlil, Who Feigns Sleep ( lit. Who Sleeps a False Sleep)
Ta. ayyaa moo uLLil uuzalla kokkoo (
...)
We should note the following things:
a. Tirumaal is BLACK, i.e. maal and
perhaps this is what is being communicated by the phrase 'sag gig-ga" the
black head or black person ( sag, sa-an: head , person, gi-g-ga > kringka,
kalingka; gi = mi :Ta. mai: black)
b. The notion of False Sleep -
u-lal-la ku-ku , uuzalla kokkoo , along with " inspecting for
Himself or who sees all on his own accord pretty well communicates the
notion of the vision of Third Eye, the EYE that does close at all. The term
ku-ku ( Ta. kokkoo) is available in the term kokkookam, the science of sexual
embrace hence sleeping by wrapping around. Tirumaal does NOT sleep at all, but
only PRETENDS to sleep for otherwise he cannot SEE everything as the indweller
in all.
Now the notion that EnLil pervades
the INTERIOR of all (si-ba sag gig-ga> ciiva saan kaikka) and which has
given rise to the VaishNava notion that BEING is the indweller in all (Antariyaamin)
may the pre-understanding that launched the INWARD GAZE (i-bi-da ni-te-na)
However the following line from the
same book clearly outlines the disciplining the body into new postures by way
accessing deeper and untapped parts of the brain:
A19 (p.94)
gu-zu ur-ra ba-e-ni-mar-ra
si-mah-en ( (You), who
placed your neck between your thighs, you are likewise exalted)
Ta. kuuv-juu uur-ra baayinee
malla sii maahyen (“)
Bending and placing the neck
(kuuv) between the thighs (uur-ra) is certainly an attempt to break the normal
body habits and initiating it into something new. It may be possible that all
these postures (projected onto Enlil) are in fact attempts to access the deeper
brain parts that would allow the visions into the hidden and concealed and
hence ARituyil.
It
may be possible that Ignatious de Loyola was rediscovering something that was
already discovered by the Sumerians and which the Tamils continued to develop
and adumbrate.
From: "K.
Loganathan" <ulagankmy@yahoo.com>
To: <akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com>;
<agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com>; <meykandar@egroups.com>;
<kalaivani@egroups.com>; <ene@egroups.com>
Subject: Re:
[akandabaratam] Re: [agamicpsychology] Ignatius de Loyala: Was he a Siva uyogi?
Date: Monday,
February 23, 2004 9:07 AM
Dear Prof
Thank-you very
much. Yes the neurobiological turn that is in Ignatious and the SivaYogies from
Sumerian times is certainly the philosopher's stone that can unravel the
secrets of the metaphysical world. And thank-you very much for pointing out its
presence in Ignatious and making it a central theme in your books and writings.
I believe that once
we succeed in drawing the attention of the scholars to this genuine WAY of
metaphysics, the Brahmanism of the Brahmins with their sruties and smrities
will be seen as unnecessary for real spiritual quest. The same will aply to
Muslims and Christians who hold on to their scriptures as if the sources of
absolute truth.
Furthermore the
neurobiological turn can be seen also as scientific but of course the
Hermenutic Scientific .
Let us develop the
dialog so that more of such things emerge to the fore and capture the
imagination of the scholars.
Loga
diotima245@aol.com
wrote:
Dear Loga and
friends,
Dr. Loga has found
the philosopher's stone in spiritual practice. It is not history and the book
that give us truth, but the disciplined development of inner technologies in
the body that gives us access to the truth. Meditate more, think less. Let
neurobiology speak through the body (the cause is in the effect) and let
history be the witness of what is first experienced and the company we need to
know we are not alone.
OM and SHANTI
Antonio de Nicolas
In a message dated
2/21/2004 11:41:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, ulagankmy@yahoo.com writes
It may be possible
that Ignatious de Loyola was rediscovering something that was already
discovered by the Sumerians and which the Tamils continued to develop and
adumbrate.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Images of Ignatious
One of the
despicable consequences of the worship of words of the religionists and
emphasize on Theoretical Thinking of the positive scientists, is the
elimination of Icon Thinking and with that enjoying truth-experiences (Ta.
MeyyuNarvu) of the most profound kind that also contribute to the evolution of
the human personality. But it appears that in the West too Icon Thinking was
developed but perhaps only by significant individuals and which did not catch
on as central in authentic religious life. We can see this in the architecture
of the Church, which does not have Imago Dei where worship, is offered. The
same goes for the Mosques of Islam where only Empty Space appears to be
worshiped. All these stand in contrast to the typical Hindu Jain and
Chinese Temples where idols of gods abound
(I am not sure about Buddhism though Tantric Buddhism seems to be very
similar to Hinduism)
In the following
passage our Nitin Bhai draws attention to the different ways Ignatious
understood and classified the images and about which I want to raise some
questions. Here I am NOT against Prof Antonio’s heroic efforts to bring back
IMAGINING, in the special sense he uses the word. I fully endorse it and I am
inline with his efforts in this direction.
Nevertheless I raise some questions only to clarify some doubts that
emerged in my mind on reading such passages.
Imagining
as Individual Dismemberment
Language,
in order not to be a dead language, must be used, spoken, written
down.
Memories would become dead if not activated through acts of imagining.
Contrary
to contemporary practices in psychology, where imagining is guided
so
that individuals and groups share the same image and are guided in imagining
it,
or where archetypal images are the object, goal, and the identity of
imagining,
Ignatius, astonishingly enough, leaves the retreatant entirely to
his/her
"own abilities" (Exer.18) when guiding him/her in the act of
imagining.
Ignatius
provides memory points, describes how to imagine, but the images of
imagining
are absent from the Exercises . Actual imagining is the retreatant's
exercise.
This may be understood because Ignatius cannot draw on any existing
reservoir
of images in order to correct mistaken identities. He cannot draw from
any
subjective field of images with which the subject may be more or less
familiar,
because through some of those images individuals have already
experienced
transformations, even creations. Ignatius displaces the retreatant
from any
subjective
or objective pools of images and vigorously transplants him/her to
an
imageless field where the absence of images will force the exercise of
creating
them. This kind of imagining is the more powerful because it does not
rest
on images anyone ever before created. Neither the exercitant nor the world
has
the images of the exercises of imagining. The images to be born are of a
sheer
power of imagining which includes not only the act of imagining, but the
act
of creating the images.
This
strategy of Ignatius is so demanding that it rests more on the actual
technologies
of imagining than on any images. Thus his insistence on the
technology
of concentration in order to bring out the pure image, the uncontaminated
image,
the image in perfect solitude, the original image, the divine image.
The
image created in meditation is the only image that will gain currency in
meditation.
One cannot borrow it, one must create it. In this creation all other
images
are automatically excluded. The whole technology developed in the
Exercises
has one aim: the perfect image, for it is in it and through it that God's
signs
will appear. The image will turn to language and return to the public
domain.
The
pure image, the original image, will penetrate the public domain if first
it
penetrates the material body of the retreatant. This material body is
always
set facing the scene, the image, to be imagined. But this material body is
a
fluid body through imagining: a slave in the Nativity, a knight in the Two
Kingdoms,
a sinner facing the Cross; or it may change sizes if compared to
other
men, the angels, God (Exer. 58); it may become a vermin worth "many
hells"
(Exer.
60); or the temple, image of God, animated by God, sensitized by Him
(Exer.
235).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
According to
Ignatious there are Pure Images, which are original, uncontaminated and are to
be had only in prefect solitude. Where
such imagining is guided by some individuals, the imaging process may become contaminated
and we have inauthentic images channeling the metaphysical thinking and so
forth. One cannot borrow authentic images but have to create them.
Now these
observations raise some questions about how icons in fact figure in the
religious culture of mankind as well as in Depth Psychology.
First of all this
claim seems to go against the notion of Collective Unconscious that Jung
proposed because he saw the SAME images in deep dreams, mythologies, folklores
so forth across the world. The archetypes that emerge in Deep Dreams also
figure in ancient mythologies and some are also substances of folk tales. We
can cite the images of Mother Goddess Tree Snake and so forth and which are met
with not only in the mythologies but also DREAMS. Since they erupt in dream
experiences they CANNOT be fabrications of the human mind and hence have to be
the uncontaminated pure images of Ignatious but only that they are encountered
in dreams and not during retreats. Here
there is NO technology of concentration etc but only that of sleeping and hence
being in a state without any conscious control.
Could it be that
even Ignatious was saying the same thing: to concentrate and meditate in
splendid isolation is actually a way of allowing a free access of the mind for
the Unconscious forces that actually fabricate the images, as it happens in
dreams? This actually means we should not allow the ego thinking to interfere
with the natural image formation process instituted as already there by BEING
and as a way HE communicates with the human beings? BEING may take various
Avatars in order to INSTRUCT the person on something deeply metaphysical and
shape and meaning will be distorted if the ego thinking of man is allowed to
interfere?
Now this raises
questions about placing the tavasi, an adept
into an imageless field so that he experiences only Pure or Perfect Images. This has to be interpreted again as
freeing the mind from ego thoughts in order to experience the authentic avatars
of BEING, an attitude of Inner Objectivity where only what is revealed or
disclosed in held up in mind and exactly
as disclosed.
Now given this,
what is wrong if a person is exposed to a traditional field of such Pure Images
so that the person is TRANSPORTED into a metaphysical field, the celestial
world that can facilitate the experiencing of NEW possibilities?
For example a
typical temple going Hindu is exposed to thousands of such Pure Images or
Avatars and in which he is in a way guided in his imagining. However it is also
a fact that only some images become meaningful to him and hold up his
imagination till he LEARNS whatever encrypted within and after which he moves
to another image. For example I have seen many who are drawn to the Image of
GaNesha in the their youth but later to Lord Siva and so forth.
Certainly this is NOT the same as the devices in modern
cognitive psychology where imagining is guided towards an end. However in the
Hinduism of Temple culture there is an attempt to guide such metaphysical
imaging and I am not sure whether Ignatious de Loyola would be against it.
Dear Prof
Thank-you so much. When words of agreement come from a great scholar
like yourself and where you have the conviction and courage to speak your
own mind, I cannot but congratulate myself in having succeeded again
in my thirst for MeykaaNal, seeking out and seeing only truths and nothing
else.
What has emerged is the need for Inner Objectivity , of making the mind
FREE of prejudices so that it becomes the playground of BEING. This is
what Tol means by saying vinaiyin viLaGkiya aRivu, a notion that does real
credit to Dravidian philosophical achievements and which has formed my
philosophical life.
Next the notion 'dismemberment' intrigues me and I hope to have a
dialogue with you on this.
I am happy to note you have brought in here Rig Vedic notion of Asat and
which is better retained in Saiva Siddhanta than in the Vedantic traditions.
Perhaps this is the reason why Meykandar refers only to Rig Veda by name and
not to any other texts.
More to follow soon.
Thank-you again for your books.
Loga
diotima245@aol.com wrote:
As usual Dr. Loga has hit the center of the
mark!!! All you say is true about Ignatius too.
Images need to be made out of nothing.
Thinking is just concepts and a better or worse translation of the image world.
The images we encounter on the road are only "memory points" for us
to practice "dismemberment," that is, making them anew out of
nothing.
The way of the left brain, on the other
hand, is a movement in the opposite direction. Substitutes an image
(experienced) for a concept (empty of content) and builds a global world
based on this operation. While the world of reason proceeds then to destroy
reality to build its own castles of conceptual smoke, the imagination works on
dismembering oneself by lending its own sensation to the image in the making
one sense at a time and in turn the image returns sensation. This is what the
Rg Veda calls the Asat, where movement that stopped as movement by becoming
a fixed invariant in thought, becomes again dismembered of its forms
and fixity and it's set into motion by directing action according to the
dharma of the context facing the witness at every moment.
It affects the body, opens the heart and the frontal lobes to make the best
decisions within a limited dharmic situation. Theology is the province of the
conceptual brain, the blind god (for it has no access to the outside world, but
only to the images of the right neocortex).
While it is true that Islam has no images
notice it has geometries (as in the Asat); and while Christianity has also no
images notice how Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Church has many and each
and all are no more than memory point in this path of decision making. Ignatius
would be happier with images in the churches than with books telling us how to
act.
I think this is đhe most fruitful dialogue I
have been part of so far.
OM and SHANTI
Antonio de Nicolas
Nitin Bhai
From: <diotima245@aol.com>
To: <agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [agamicpsychology] The Images of Ignatious
Date: Friday, February 27, 2004 7:36 PM
Dear Sathia and friends:
Great questions.
The so called Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism, Christianity are primarily
left neocortex dominant. This means that they prefer reason to emotion, and
reason is based on the written word and the written word is not just a sign but
reality itself. Therefore when they read images in that way the image becomes
an idol, and they believe in one God, not many. It all goes back to Moses
declaring the ten commandments to his people who were worshiping idols while he
was dealing with God and the burning bush. However you have to distinguish
between theological religions and mystical ones within that tradition. So Judaism
and Islam in their exoteric garb as well as Christian Protestantism will
reject images, while Catholics and Orthodox Christians will not, for they use
images only as memory points to be dis-membered and therefore re-membered as the
ground of their religious practice and experience.
Which one is the more effective is redundant in the sense that the left
brain, left neo-cortex , has no access to the outside, the world etc, but only to
the images of the right brain. It gains its autonomy by killing its origin, its
mother. This is a neurobiological fact made evident in neuroscience in the
last twenty years only. It is not a matter of comparison and equality. Rather it
is a matter of getting the facts finally and retraining religious practice,
for the right brain has its own unique technologies as does the left brain. In
other words, there is no other experience than the one created, contained in
the right neo cortex, the left only translates, as Indic texts clearly indicate
and the mystics duplicated. Any attempt to declare the left brain supreme is
sheer imperialism as we know, only that only now we have the facts to back it
up.
OM and Shanti
Antonio de Nicolas
In a message dated 2/27/2004 5:40:00 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ulagankmy@yahoo.com writes:
--- In akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com, "ssathia" <ssathia@h...> wrote:
Dear Dr Loga and Prof Antonio,
Can you kindly explain the dislike of iconic representations of BEING
as found in the Abrahamic religions while Hindus seem to thrive on it?
Is there any empirical evidence as to which of the approaches is more
effective in realising the Truth?
Thank you.
Regards,
Sathia
From: <diotima245@aol.com>
To: <agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [akandabaratam] Fwd: Re: [agamicpsychology] The Images of Ignatious
Date: Friday, February 27, 2004 10:34 PM
Dear Sathia and friends:
As to question one: Yes writing did it and it accounts for the mind/mind
split, that is the left neocortex split into left neocortex and the interpreter
module. See The Heresy of Oedipus by Dr. Maria M. Colavito. Writing is a
technology and the technology became embodied and a substitute system for the real.
As to question two, you are right again. India did not go into the
technologies of the interpreter module till after the colonial powers took over. Indic
texts are mostly right brain dominant and the left brain (manas) is not a
faculty but the sixth sense, as you know, an instrument of translation. However,
you can see in the Indic written texts, the interference of writing with outside
gods like Indra in the Rg Veda and the development of the Mahabharata, the
origins of births, in eggs, sperm, water, metals etc. The Pandavas and Kauravas
are very similar to the house of Cadmus (Oedipus' house).
Why Indic texts remained oral dominant and therefore decision oriented rather
than theology/ideology oriented?
This is your question three: The left brain creates its own loops, from its
logics to invented theories to its logics to language to invented theories and
so on and on. The left brain has power to calm the right brain, in the case
of trauma or wrong perception by delaying its mechanism of panic, as when
seeing a snake in the garage and turns out it is a rope; but this is when the
brains are aligned and working together. In most cases the left brain acts as an
imperial despot and cancels out the right brain, experience included in exchange
for ideology. The English language is deadly in this game for establishes a
subject, a reason, a
hierarchy of values simply by the force of speech. It is very difficult to
act in the anahamvadin ( not I-speaking, witness) mode when speaking English. It
is easier in Spanish, Italian and the Latin derivates. Or better still it is
better to be bilingual, or multilingual, (your fourth question).
This might explain why the Mediterranean religions (Catholicism, Orthodox
Christianity) are more image bound since they remained oral much longer than the
Northern Europeans.
Remember these people converted in large groups around the year one thousand.
Also many of the groups in the Mediterranean countries were persecuted groups
from Asia and the near East. And they were persecuted because of their right
dominant religions. For these groups memory held them together and in memory
they imagined and recreated Christianity bypassing theology, even when they
always praised the Church in public.
And again you are right. Modern Hindus are as bound to the left brain
technologies as the British were/are just by simply replicating their technologies of
language, reading/writing
English and forgetting mother Sanskrit. However, the difference is also great
since the Hindu might be suffering a lapse in memory, for his/her body will
always remember its own technologies. All it needs is remembering to start
with. How would you otherwise would have been able to intuit all of the above if
you did not have it already in your body, somewhere?
OM and SHANTI
Antonio de Nicolas
In a message dated 2/27/2004 8:35:34 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ulagankmy@yahoo.com writes:
ssathia <ssathia@hotmail.com> wrote:
To: akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com
From: "ssathia"
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 13:26:50 -0000
Subject: [akandabaratam] Fwd: Re: [agamicpsychology] The Images of Ignatious
Dear Prof Antonio,
Thank you for clarifying.
As one door opens, I see many more doors waiting to be opened.
1. Firstly, did the emergence of left neocortex have anything to do with
the rise of western preference for logic and experimentation for which the
cause is the relative ease of documentation and learning using alphabet and
numbers? In other words, is writing the "culprit"?
2. Conversely, can the lack of widespread documentation of knowledge using
alphabet and numbers within the Indian tradition be attributed to Indians'
traditional preference for imaging as evidenced in iconic representations,
music and great dramas that harness the right brain?
3. As we learn in engineering, systems have feedback loops within their
boundary and they can have external influences affecting them. If we
consider the brain as a natural system, and observe that the left brain is
drawing from the right brain, that alone has access to the external world,
there must be a feedback loop from the left to the right brain. I would
venture to infer therefore that there must be mutual influences from the
right to the left and back to the right again. The net effect could be
somewhat like rowing a boat on both sides, with the boat moving in the
direction of resultant force. Only that in the west, it is more to the left
whereas among Indians traditionally it could be more to the right. But even
if that were correct, it appears to be fast becoming old story now, as
today's education follows the western model, with the Indians becoming more
left oriented. Modern scholarship, as led by the West, is strongly left
oriented.
4. Coming to Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, how did they become the
odd men in the crowd?
Thank you again.
Regards,
Sathia
--- In akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com, "K. Loganathan" <ulagankmy@y...> wrote:
>
>
> diotima245@a... wrote:To: agamicpsychology@yahoogroups.com
> From: diotima245@a...
> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 06:36:26 EST
> Subject: Re: [agamicpsychology] The Images of Ignatious
>
> Dear Sathia and friends:
> Great questions.
> The so called Abrahamic religions, Islam, Judaism, Christianity are
primarily left neocortex dominant. This means that they prefer reason to
emotion, and reason is based on the written word and the written word is
not just a sign but reality itself. Therefore when they read images in that
way the image becomes an idol, and they believe in one God, not many. It
all goes back to Moses declaring the ten commandments to his people who
were worshiping idols while he was dealing with God and the burning bush.
However you have to distinguish between theological religions and mystical
ones within that tradition. So Judaism and Islam in their exoteric garb as
well as Christian Protestantism will reject images, while Catholics and
Orthodox Christians will not, for they use images only as memory points to
be dis-membered and therefore re-membered as the ground of their religious
practice and experience.
> Which one is the more effective is redundant in the sense that the left
brain, left neo-cortex , has no access to the outside, the world etc, but
only to the images of the right brain. It gains its autonomy by killing its
origin, its mother. This is a neurobiological fact made evident in
neuroscience in the last twenty years only. It is not a matter of
comparison and equality. Rather it is a matter of getting the facts finally
and retraining religious practice, for the right brain has its own unique
technologies as does the left brain. In other words, there is no other
experience than the one created, contained in the right neo cortex, the
left only translates, as Indic texts clearly indicate and the mystics
duplicated. Any attempt to declare the left brain supreme is sheer
imperialism as we know, only that only now we have the facts to back it up.
> OM and Shanti
> Antonio de Nicolas
From: "Vishvesh Obla" <ovishvesh@yahoo.com>
To: <akandabaratam@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [akandabaratam] Fwd: Re: [agamicpsychology] The Images of Ignatious
Date: Friday, February 27, 2004 11:58 PM
Dear Prof Antonio,
Very interesting.
I think we have had two streams of intelligence in human history :
the subjective and the objective. With the Greek philosophers
started the objective intelligence of our modern age.
Your reference to left and right neo-cortexes leads me to a
different perception of the same issue in terms of psychological
explanation of the mind. D.H.Lawrence made a very perceptive study
in his 'Fantasia of the Unconcsious', where he associated the two
pairs of plexuses and Ganglions to the two distinct types of
perceptions of the mind, one the spiritual and the other the
mental. He demonstrates in that book how because of the imbalance
in those four modes of consciousness, our perceptions became
skewed.
vishvesh
Dear Prof Antonio and Friends
Right from the ancient days we find something interesting in connection with religious life. Thus we have the Sumerian Gilgames advocating a life of control of sensual pleasures as a way of escaping premature death. And in En Hudu Anna's immensely interesting Kes Temple Hymn we have the en-kum-e-ne, those who withdraw their senses meditating in a special room within the temple precincts. You can see such views being advocated in Jainism Buddhism and many other Indic cultural traditions. Certainly it is also very central to the different kinds of yogas that have been developed in India.
TiruvaLLuvar (c. 200 cent AD) incorporate this in the Paayiram itself:
PoRi vaayil aintu avittaan poy tiir ozukkam, neRi ninRaar niidu vaazvar: Those who follow the WAY where the falsities are uprooted and which is the Way of the One who dismembers the senses five, will also live long in the world.
It is interesting that this same view also emerges in Ignatius of Loyola and where interestingly enough the BODY is also brought into perspective. The act of imagining or meditating in pure image-field makes possible the detachment of the body from the senses.
>>>>>>>>>>
Technically,
however, this material fluid body of the retreatant, becomes
dismembered
through the act of imagining. Ignatius conceives imagining as an
act
of
dismembering the senses by running them in isolation, one by one, through
the
image being made.
The
retreatant is placed in front of a scene and asked to make his/her own
"contemplacion
viendo el lugar" (contemplation seeing the place). With
exhausting
detail, he/she is asked to make up the scene; the road: how long, wide, flat
running
through valleys or hills; the cave: how big, small, how high, how
low,
how furnished (Exer.112). Imagine hell, the width and depth and length
(Exer.
65), or imagine the synagogue, villages and castles (Exer. 91), or the Three
Divine
Persons (Exer.102), or Mary riding a donkey or Joseph pulling an ox
(Exer.110).
But for Ignatius the image alone is not the source of signs. The
image
on recall is to call it to memory. The actual birth of the signs or the
system
of signs does not take place until the retreatant proceeds, through
imagining,
to "read" the image through his own dismembered sensorium. The perfect
image,
the solitary image, the divine image is set into motion through the
sensuous
motion of the retreatant's senses as he or she runs them, one at a time,
through
the image. It takes the "reading" of the image by each sense so
that it
becomes
a mediation of signs. The efficacy of the image is made possible on
condition
that the subject be kept elusively absent, as a fixed unity, in the
act
of imagining. What he or she is asked to do instead is to lend sight,
sound,
smell, touch, movement to the image. The image must be filled through the
reading
of each sense on the image. He or she vitalizes the image through his or
her
dismembered sensorium. Each sense must read the image separately; each
sense
must sensitize the image separately; each sense must read/write its
separate
movement on the image separately. What is done through visualization must
be
repeated through hearing, smelling, touching, moving. This applies to the
exercises
on hell, the Nativity, the Cross, Resurrection, in short, to any
exercises
where images are to be imagined.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What catches
my attention is the recommendation that the tavasi must “read” the images
through his own dismembered sensorium.
What can this mean?
Assuming that
Ignatius is saying the same thing as Icon Thinking, reading each image in terms
of senses can mean only getting at what the image TELLS about the earthly
existence, that the MEANING the images communicate is something about
EXISTENCE. The CROSS for example may
mean that one must attach oneself to the SivaliGkam that the CROSS represents
(if it is the case) or whatever metaphysical MEANING it may hold within itself.
The RESURRECTION may be something like in dreams- getting beheaded and growing
a new head in its place and which really means dying as the past kind of being
and enjoying resurrection as a NEW kind of being, a kind of conversion.
And this
reminds me of Meykandar’s Iladdatee aintu avattai eytal -enjoying clarity of
consciousness with apodictic certainty at the region of the forehead.
Images and
such other symbols, must not only be gained and held firmly in vision but also
be INTERPRETED as to the EXISTENTIAL
meanings they communicate. Such
interpretive exercises, provided done within the field of pure images or
“dismemberment sensorium” , as Ignatius would say, will furnish Truths, the Sat
that will enter consciousness and hence the body itself and for Meykandar, the
forehead region.
Now the
important questions emerge. Let us recall VaLLulavar’s PoRi vaayil aintu
avaittan i.e. the One who causes the dismemberment of the senses five and with
that release the anma from being tied to the body. The Buddhists would call
this a distinction between Vyavakaarika and Paramartika (if I am not mistaken)
though they did not understand the Paramartika as the metaphysical world of
mantras that fabricate the images, icons, mythologies, the metaphysical
meanings that come along with them and
so forth. The One, the BEING who
dismembers is also BEING as the Pancjakrittiyan, the One who enacts the
processes of presencing (sristi) sustaining (titi) and annihilation or
destruction (dismemberment? saGkaaram) and all these through the meta-processes
of disclosing (aruLal, anukrakam) and concealing (MaRaittal or Tirotakam)
Himself. This also means that there are the workings of the mantras
si-vaa-ya-ma and the Deep Structure of which is the Logos -Aum.
So we can
think of field of inquiry, Meta-linguistics where the images, icons,
mythologies and their MEANINGS are fabricated by the aksaras, syllables of this
meta-language - how the Aum differentiates into the Si-Vaa-Ya-Na-Ma and so
forth and configures the images icons the metaphysical geometries (Yantras) and
ILLUUMINATE the mind through activating the Panjcakrittiyam.
Now it
appears to me that a science of Meta-Linguistics is TACIT in the words of
Ignatius and he might have IMPLICATED such a science but which did not take off
in the Christian World of his time.
Am I right in
thinking thus? Hope I am.
Loga
Memory and
Predictability
The
Historicity of Christianity
Dear Prof
and Friends
I wanted to
deal this topic for sometime and I am glad I have found a passage in your post
that describes this very succinctly. I have noticed that Saiva Metaphysical
Thinking is quite naturalistic and the whole way of thinking can be called
Naturalistic Metaphysics. Kallaadanar, in describing the essence of TirukkuRaL
says that it does NOT go the way of the theologians (camayak kaNNakar) but goes
the way of the Hermeneutic scientists in expounding metaphysics through the
study of the natural, the existential world. (ulakaiyal kuuRi poruL ituvenal)
This stands
in contrast to the NEGATION of the natural as in Advaita and recasting it to a
theoretical model of flux of momentary particulars the later depending on the
death of the former and so forth in Sautrantika Buddhism. This dismissing the
historical or recasting it and transmuting into something non-natural is a form
of metaphysical thinking that has given
the global impression that Indian Thinking is otherworldly and so forth
and which does not apply to Saiva Siddhanta as it does not apply to the
Philosophy of KuRaL.
Christianity
is HISTORICAL; an event in TIME, in History, the birth and death on the cross
of Jesus Christ is the most momentous event and which organizes Christianity
itself. This applies to Islam also in a way for here we have Prophet Mohamed
(Sal) elevated to the LAST prophet and hence again a HISTORICAL event
transmuted as the most significant. Now in the Indic traditions, we have such
significant mystical figures particularly in Buddhism and Jainism but there is
a difference. Both these Indic religions do not deny the possibility of a chain
of Tirtangkaras or Bodhisatvas and what count is NOT the historical of the
birth but rather what they SAY through the Agamas and Pidakas. Advaita Vedanta in seeking, in recent times
to elevate the personality of Sankara, the Brahmin, to the status of a
Bodhisattva and so forth is entirely inconsistent with their total negation of
the historical with the concept of perception as Aroopitam and Adhyasam and so forth.
In contrast
to these religions, Saivism is both Historical and Ahistorical and hence while
sharing with Christianity the historicity,
it DIFFERS in the ahistorical dimensions.
To push
further these views let us have a look at the concise description of this
essence of Christianity by our Nitin Bhai.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The
origin of Christianity was an experience that had already happened. It
originated
outside of time with the Trinity and entered time in the Second
Person
of the Trinity through the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption. It
is
precisely because of the fact that this experience has already happened that
for
every Christian to know is to remember. Memory makes of Christians
communities
and religion; it is the common ground of memories, on which all stand,
that
joins them as community. Without memory Christianity could not be
articulated. Christ had
already set down the internal law of the community: "Do this
in
remembrance of me." (Luke 22, 19) And even when the Father will send, in
Christ's
name, the Comforter, the Spirit, He will do it to "bring all things to
your
remembrance" (John 14, 25). To be a Christian is primarily to live on
memory,
to turn memory around, to store memories, to turn every sign, whatever
its
origin, into a memory-point, to articulate those memories so that memory
remains
active. Those memories are the remembrance of the Will of God in
operation.
They are the memory of a past actively present and therefore, being God's
Will,
with a future. It is a memory that predictably organizes the future. But
not
without human effort and participation. Strictly speaking, the Spiritual
Exercises
are a string of memories, of memory-points. Even the exercises as
written
are not to be read for information or edification or content. Each and
every
word is slowly and carefully chiseled out so that it becomes a
memory-point
for action, or for making memory.
The
journey of the retreatant's will dividing his/her life into the search
for
sins, the day divided into exercises of the will to discover flaws, to
remove
flaws, these exercises are primarily exercises in memory: memories that
travel
back and forth, up and down, within the perimeters of a human life.
Meditation
begins by "bringing to memory" the first sin of the angels (Exer.
50); "by
bringing
to memory" the sin of Adam and Eve (Exer. 51); "by bringing to
memory"
our sins (Exer. 52), all the sins of my lifetime (Exer. 56), year by year,
place
by place, looking at the places I have lived, conversations I have had,
work
done (Exer. ibid.); bring to memory to instruct the intellect in it: "so
that
the intellect, without meandering, may reason with concentration going
over
the reminiscences (memories) of the things contemplated in past
exercises..."
(Exer. 64). Ignatius literally means, through the Exercises, "to bring
all
things
into remembrance." In order to bring all things into remembrance,
however,
demands from us certain shifts in technologies. In every case human effort
is
needed.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The question I want to raise is: Is “Bringing all things into
remembrance” the same as “Brining all things into clear consciousness,
njaanam,” that Saivism emphasizes? Certainly there is thinking about the sins
one has committed, the flaws there are in one’s personality and which are
conceived of as becoming Cuttam, Pure in Saivism. But there is a DIFFERENCE I
think, an important difference that may constitute why Saivism is one stage
above the Semitic religions that are essentially historical.
The fact is LEARNING as destruction of IGNORANCE conceived as
Paacanjaanam, Pacunjaanam and Patinjaanam, the Alpha Beta and Gamma
learning, are NOT just recalling
recollecting remembering and so forth but rather gaining ACCESS into that which
has remained hidden, concealed buried in the depths and so forth. It is
becoming en-lightened, the DARKNESS within destroyed with flooding it the Light
of Metaphysical illuminations so that the UNDERSTANDING becomes fully
TRANSLUCENT with no opacity at all.
The flaws sins and such other defects are powers of Malam, the
Darkness and which is the same as aaNava Malam - that which makes one FINITE
delimited, constrained, partially blind and so forth. The Christian ‘sin’ is
probably the same Su. sil (> Ta. sin: small) and Akkadian Sihru (> Ta.
siRu). This original Sumerian ‘smallness’ of the mind and because of which man
does evil, sometimes even unknowingly, seems to have evolved differently
in Christianity and Saivism. While
Christianity ties itself to RECALLING a momentous event that has a PURIFYING
effect on those who recall thus and let the memory of that event work on one’s
understanding, Saivism frees the mind form such memories of historical events
and transports the mind into the ahistorical, into the realms of BEING , the
Tillai ManRu, the Tilmun of the Sumerians.
BEING stands beyond or above TIME and hence beyond Historical
Thinking, so says MeykaNdar (kaalattil taakkaatu ninRu). Now if we conceive
redemption as Moksa then it follows that unless we gain an understanding that
is FREE of time then we cannot enjoy true redemption or Moksa. The problem is
remembrance of a past event or events,
while may have some purifying effect upon the one who remembers, but it
does NOT free the understanding from temporality and historicity! And hence
DOES NOT lead Moksa and hence redemption if it is equated with Moksa.
In Saivism. we take off from the historical, the natural and end
up with LEARNING in the Celestial
World, the Tillai Ambalam or CiRRambalam,
the TIMELESS and eternal and where Siva Dances the Dance of BLISS with Sakti. The genuine redemption
consists in becoming PURE (beyond and incapable of sins) and reaching a
condition of NO learning at al only because
there is NO MORE the Darkness of Ignorance.
This view, I think, is still in the depths of Christianity and
which it can bring out easily and
incorporate it into the system and with that recast the organizational
principles of the Church itself.