*Transcendental *Logic

Exhibit One, your honors:

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)

…That’s a representational exhibit, mind you, since that saying or versions of it have been floating around literally for centuries now, and if you look you can find them everywhere from books to t-shirts to churches to the mouths of babes.

It’s a really common saying to run into…but how many of us have really heard it, for all that?

The “I’m in here, you’re out there” feeling is very, very fundamental to the usual human experience, I think.  I remember realizing it when I was about eight, and thinking, as I bet most people do, that what I’d found was a core truth.  Many years later, after much reading and pondering and yelling, I decided to agree with the Zen masters — the feeling of being separated from everyone else, everything else even, IS a delusion.  I won’t go into why, but the longer I work on the question, the more it seems like that has to be the answer.

But this is not a realization that I have real-ized (”made real”), so much as decided to agree with because, on balance, it makes more sense to me than the way I actually feel.  It’s a tough thing, to decide to believe that you’re delusional about something; it feels like stepping onto a dangerous plank, where you violate the evidence of your senses in favor of what works in the abstract, or in your guts.

Still, years later and I haven’t been talked out of my position yet — and it’s not that people haven’t tried!  I think I’ve come closer to actually real-izing the truth of the fundamental oneness of life (Life, actually, since if there’s only one of it, it’s a proper noun, yes?) — I’ve caught glimpses of it, with my senses as well as my mind, and it’s seemed more and more solid, and more right, the more I contemplate it.  But it seems to be one of those things that many people will just have to believe in first, and work to understand later.

That’s not usually an M.O. I’m okay with.  I mean, in this case the belief itself seems to be harmless (it only seems to inspire compassion, tolerance, etc.), or even helpful, so there isn’t much to object to; but in general, I don’t like pre-validated beliefs at all, at all. 

*sigh*

Some days it seems like the Universe is deliberately tailoring the challenges you get so they require the very hardest things you could be asked to do, doesn’t it??

So, perusing the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as I’m wont to, I come across this entry: 

Dialetheism

Now, you can quickly see from it what a dialethia is — in fact, if you like etymology and Greek, you can even tell without the article; di-alethia means two-way truth.  It’s essentially a sentence (logical sentence, specifically) that is true, and the negative of which is also true.

But I read all this, and understood it, and even got a ways further, before realizing that I was not reading an article on a theism which is both true, and the negative of which is true.  Somehow my brain got stuck on this idea even long after I read and processed the definition of “dialethia”, as if “dialetheism” must be the religious version of it.

Of course, now I’m in love with that idea, and totally depressed that I can’t name it dialetheism, that word already being taken and all.

Should I fold and just call it Dial-a-theism?

;)

I forgot how much I loved Spinoza!

Check this out (it’s from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Spinoza, if you’re curious — and if you’re like me, you’ll get lost in the SEP rather like normal people get lost in Wikipedia!):

This proof that God — an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible being — is the only substance of the universe proceeds in three simple steps. First, establish that no two substances can share an attribute or essence (Ip5). Then, prove that there is a substance with infinite attributes (i.e., God) (Ip11). It follows, in conclusion, that the existence of that infinite substance precludes the existence of any other substance. For if there were to be a second substance, it would have to have some attribute or essence. But since God has all possible attributes, then the attribute to be possessed by this second substance would be one of the attributes already possessed by God. But it has already been established that no two substances can have the same attribute. Therefore, there can be, besides God, no such second substance.

If God is the only substance, and (by axiom 1) whatever is, is either a substance or in a substance, then everything else must be in God. "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God" (Ip15).

As soon as this preliminary conclusion has been established, Spinoza immediately reveals the objective of his attack. His definition of God — condemned since his excommunication from the Jewish community as a "God existing in only a philosophical sense" — is meant to preclude any anthropomorphizing of the divine being. In the scholium to proposition fifteen, he writes against "those who feign a God, like man, consisting of a body and a mind, and subject to passions. But how far they wander from the true knowledge of God, is sufficiently established by what has already been demonstrated." Besides being false, such an anthropomorphic conception of God can have only deleterious effects on human freedom and activity.

Not bad for the 16th century, eh?

I wrote a paper on Spinoza’s proof of God last year, and it was one of the most fun I’ve ever written. Part of what’s fun about it is, using plain-old Cartesian logic, he actually does manage to prove that God must exist … it’s just that in doing so, he has to (and obviously means to) sacrifice everything people assume about God. The God that must exist, and that is the subject of that wonderful sentence, "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God", can’t be anything other than a substance with infinite attributes.

*sigh* Just tickles me to death, that proof. Fun stuff!

Something a bit lighter now (yes, the following is light conversation in my book ;) ~

I was involved in a really fun, if not very productive, conversation lately about the definition of Monophasic God. Such conversations are like mental Rubik’s Cubes; they’re fun to play with, but even if you “solve” them (which you usually don’t, especially in a group), you don’t expect your solution to much impact anybody.

Nonetheless, with that conversation so recent, it amused the flying monkeys out of me to pick up a little hippie-magazine (”TRUTH JOURNAL: A Center For Spiritual Awareness Publication”, it says) and find this, on a page near the front labeled “Word Meanings to Know”:

God: Word origin: Old German, “the highest good.” The names used to indicate ultimate Reality describe concepts, imagined characteristics, or what may be believed to be (or are) intellectual insights or intuitive perceptions. The transcendental, absolute aspect is devoid of attributes. The expressive aspect is a radiant field with constituent attributes which manifest, pervade, and maintain universes.

Wow.

I have to say, ignoring the cringeworthy term “universes”, that that is the best attempt at a definition of Monophasic God that I have ever seen. Go, crazy Yoga people!

(Then again, of all the people to nail it–or come close to nailing it–it’s not very surprising that the Yoga people should be it, really. They eat right, exercise a lot, contemplate and meditate often, and stress open-mindedness. That’s a pretty good recipe if you ask me.)

Hmm…the rest of the magazine isn’t bad either, though I loathe affirmations and it does have those. Ah well.

LJ produces a little brilliance, courtesy of user erf_:

“Nobody ever talks about a Christian conspiracy running the government because it would be the worst-kept secret ever.”

Amen, brother. You can’t be a minority when you’re most people, and you can’t be a conspiracy when you insist on openly making power-grabs at every available opportunity.

You know what?

They need to teach more grammar in parochial schools.