Lovers of Sophia
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something like a fish out of water.30 The basic metaphysical position
of Shaktism demolishes the distinction between three realms or,
rather, col apses them into the spectrality of the ‘intermediate’ one.
As the Vajrayana Buddhists put it, there is no Nirvana distinct
from Samsara and so every samsaric condition conceptualized
as intermediate between Samsara and Nirvana – from the highest
heavens to the bleakest hel s – is marked by the same inessentiality.31
Adharma (chaos, immortality) only leads you to hell if you sow karma without recognizing that all dharmas (natures, paths) are empty of any inherent essence and that the hero’s liberation may take
place anywhere, under any existential condition.32 There is naught
but intermediacy in life, and what the mind hopes to grasp in terms
of matter or escape to in terms of (relative) formlessness is nothing
but the greater or lesser stability of one or another degree of the life force’s concrescence. Despite the widely held Western view that, as
29 Ibid., 48.
30 Ibid., 38.
31 Ibid., 32.
32 Ibid., 58.
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compared to modern European materialism, the spectral is more
at home in the East, the spectrality of existence or – if you prefer, the finitude of being – has always haunted orthodox Indian thought
as what is neither Being nor Nothingness and what has never yet
been but may become so through creative activity: the simulacrum
without an original; maya as Shakti. Such is the radical Tantra of a serpentine feminine energy that both poisons the human condition
and is the cure to it. It is She who possesses one with a vital force
that carries one above the gods. As the Tantric texts put it, this
daimonical y inspiring creative force is bound to supersede the gods to whom She gives birth:
Shakti is the root of every finite existence… She is the mother
of all the gods. She supports them and one day they will be
reabsorbed into her… It is by Thy [Shakti’s] power only that
Brahma creates, Vishnu maintains, and, at the end of things,
Shiva destroys the universe. Powerless are they for this but by Thy
help. Therefore it is that Thou alone are the Creator, Maintainer,
and Destroyer of the world.33
This is a radical y empirical, ruthlessly pragmatic view of life. In the vast expanse of Indian mysticism and religious thought, it has never
been the view of anything but an extreme minority of dangerous
rogues. The mainstream of even the more liberal and lenient Hindu
and Buddhist sects have equated this antinomian gnosis with an
asuric or “titanic” view of life.34 When I use the Western terms
“empirical” and “pragmatic” one should not think of the empiricism
of Hume or of the common sense of so many 18th century European
and American gentlemen. I mean these terms as William James did.
In Tantra sadhana or “practice” takes precedence over theory.35 The Greek word theoria shares a common root with theater and involves assuming the position of a spectator with respect to the cosmos.
33 Ibid., 21.
34 Ibid., 75.
35 Ibid., 11.
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Much of Western science, even when its content is materialist, has
understood itself in these idealist terms. The form of Western science has been predominately idealist in its self-image and understanding
of the primacy of theory.
Of course, in actual fact scientists are practitioners and
elaborating theoretical frameworks is real y a kind of practical work.
The English word id ea shares a root with the Sanskrit Veda, namely vid – which we also find in vid eo and e vid ence.36 In a sense, the Vedas are texts of a theoretical nature produced by visionary intellection.
Within the worldview where atman must wake up to the fact that he is real y Brahman by liberating himself from this il usory world –
including his embodied existence – practice, which not incidental y shares an Indo-European root with Prakriti, can only be conceived negatively, in terms of self-destructive acts of erasure.37 How, then, could Yoga work?
The fundamental incoherence of this cannot be exorcised by
means of any mystical mumbo-jumbo concerning the ineffable and
paradoxical character of the sacred path. Those who recognize that
the ultimate reality is Power ( Shakti) or the will to a power never positively possessed also understand that life is praxis. Theoria is only about life, and its worth – not its objective ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’
– lies in what it empowers one to accomplish. The siddhis or
superpowers are, literal y, “accomplishments.” There is no one and
nothing above or beyond those who have refined their embodiment
to one or another degree of subtlety and enhanced their capacities as
compared to those lacking in the superhuman desire for exploratory
evolution without a predetermined end. This means seeing dark
ignorance ( avidya) and the passionate unconscious as a necessary limiting condition that sheathes the sword of Wisdom.38
Insight is lightning. The radical y empirical and ruthlessly
pragmatic attitude towards life is precisely the opposite of being
sensible. It is the very uncommon sense of the hero ( vira) who 36 Ibid., 10–11.
37 Ibid., 19.
38 Ibid., 29, 41–42, 45.
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braves danger and risks damnation, to test head on every claim that
something is “impossible.” Its history is a saga of accomplishing the
Impossible. “Wisdom is a woman,” said Nietzsche, “and she always
only loves a warrior.” This could just as well be an aphorism from the Tantric Way of the Thunderbolt Scepter ( Vajrayana). God is dead, we have killed him, and only the dance of the sky-clad Vajra Yogini can rouse us to a life greater than that of gods. “One must still have chaos inside, in order to give birth to a dancing star.”39
39 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: The Modern Library, 1995), 342.
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PARANORMAL PHENOMENOLOGY
In his book UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, Dr.
John Alexander uses the term “phenomenology” to refer
to paranormal manifestations in general.1 There have been
objections to this usage on the part of persons trained
in academic philosophy, where the term “phenomenology” has a
clearly defined meaning and refers to a particular school of thought
that begins with George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and continues
through such figures as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Yet two of these phenomenologists, Hegel
and Merleau-Ponty, wrote fairly extensively on the paranormal.
Moreover, their having done so is not at all incidental to the basic
character of the phenomenological method. The latter involves
a bracketing of specific theoretical knowledge and a suspension
of commitment to potential y conflicting frameworks for the
acquisition of such knowledge. This is done not only with a view
to understanding the cultural-historical construction of such
frameworks, but with the aim of delineating basic structures of
our experience, perception, and understanding that are more
fundamental and stable than any particular scientific theories or
their broader p
aradigmatic structures.
Consequently, Colonel Alexander’s use of the term
“phenomenology” is apt insofar as he insists on engaging with
the data of UFOs, or perhaps more accurately, Unidentified
1 John B. Alexander, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2011).
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Aerial Phenomena, without being prejudiced by any unexamined
assumptions, for example the materialist assumption that these
‘phenomena’ are objects rather than, say, psychic or psychokinetic
manifestations of some kind.2 This adoption of the discourse
of “phenomenology” should be generalized within the field of
exploratory scientific research on the paranormal, but in a way that
explicitly acknowledges, appropriates, and furthers the insights of
thinkers such as Hegel and Merleau-Ponty. To this end, I intend to
examine the most significant point of contention between Hegel and
Merleau-Ponty on the question of the implications of paranormal
phenomena for the enterprise of scientific exploration in general.
Hegel’s repeated affirmation of the veracity of psychic phenomena
and his sketch of a paranormal phenomenology takes place in §
379, § 393, §§ 405-406 of his Philosophy of Mind, together with their Züsatze or addenda. The Züsatze to §406 of the Philosophy of Mind is shockingly revealing. There, Hegel claims that: “the occurrence of
very marvelous premonitions and visions of this kind which have
actual y come to pass can certainly not be denied.”3 He also says, of
paranormal phenomena more general y: “Whatever charlatanism
there may be in accounts of such happenings, some of the cases
mentioned seem worthy of credence…”4 Hegel discusses numerous
types of psychic phenomena in the Züsatze, giving examples from what he takes to be credible case histories of them.
The basic thesis of Hegel’s treatment of psychic phenomena can
be found in §379 and §§405-406 of the Philosophy of Mind, without even considering their Züsatze. In §379 Hegel notes that we have an experiential sense of the unity of our mind, and yet in our desire to
comprehend that unity we are tempted – for example, in neurology –
to analyze the mind in such a way as to break it up into an aggregate
of independent forces and active faculties. These tendencies, at odds
with one another, ultimately culminate in apparent contradictions
2 Ibid, 227–230.
3 A.V. Miller and N.J. Findlay, Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 113.
4 Ibid., 108.
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lovers of sophia
such as the antithesis between the freedom of psychical agency
and the determinism of the presumed corporeal substrate of mind.
Hegel believes that in “modern times” psychic phenomena have
provided us with an especial y “lively and visible confirmation of the underlying unity of soul, and of the power of its ‘ideality’”.5
However, he goes on to add that while these phenomena are
“facts”, it remains the case that “the rigid distinctions of practical common sense are struck with confusion” in the face of them. In
§405 psychokinetic maternal impressions on the fetus, as well as
telepathy between persons close to one another, are mentioned
as examples of the “magic tie”.6 In §406 Hegel once again refers
to phenomena such as clairvoyance,7 telepathy,8 and other forms
of extrasensory perception9 as factual, and he elaborates on the inability of the practical intellect to accept them as such.10
The reason that the practical intellect cannot comprehend these
phenomena is that they violate the chains of mediate causality and
thus cannot be conceived in terms of what Hegel cal s “the laws and
relations of the intellect”.11 We will not be able to understand psychic phenomena “so long as we assume the absolute spatial and material
externality of one part of being to another.”12 The philosophical
significance of these phenomena is that they are phenomenological
evidence for the lack of any fundamental ontological “distinctions
between subjective and objective” or “between intelligent personality
and objective world”; they show us that we need to give up the
assumption of “personalities, independent one of another and of the
objective world which is their content.”13
5 Ibid., 4.
6 Ibid., 94-95.
7 Ibid., 103.
8 Ibid., 104.
9 Ibid., 105.
10 Ibid., 101.
11 Ibid., 105.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
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This does not mean that we should give up these distinctions
for practical purposes, only that we should not conceive of them
as ontological y grounded. Hegel believes that exceptional y strong
psychic ability is a “morbid” or “degraded” state that threatens
the freedom and responsibility of the individuated intellect.14 The
garbled information attained by means of it, which is so often “at
the mercy of every private contingency of feeling and fancy” as well
as to “foreign suggestions”, is certainly no substitute for rational y ascertainable general truths.15 Nevertheless, denial of the existence of paranormal phenomena, and of their ontological significance, is
unscientific (in the broad sense of “Science” as Wissenschaft) and such a denial clearly indicates that Absolute Knowing has not been
attained.
Before phenomenology can guide the sciences into Science, into
Absolute Knowing, these “phenomena, so complex in their nature
and so very different one from another, would have first of all to be
brought under their general points of view.”16 This would seem to play a significant role in Science’s being able to overcome, and not simply dodge, the last of the three slave ideologies, namely the Unhappy
Consciousness of Religion. Hegel claims that the “miraculous cures
said to have been effected in various epochs by priests” that fill the
“old chronicles” and “which are not to be too hastily charged with
error and falsehood” are actual y cases of psychic phenomena that
can be understood in their ontological significance rather than
marveled at in blind faith.17
In other words, Hegel’s overarching view of the paranormal is
that, although these phenomena are evidence for a pre-rational
and primordial dimension of experience, they can and should be
surmounted and circumscribed by scientific thinking. In fact, such a
development of human reason will take the ground out from under
religious doctrines that are legitimated, above al , by holy terror
14 Ibid., 102-103.
15 Ibid., 103-104.
16 Ibid., 101.
17 Ibid., 111; 117.
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lovers of sophia
in the face of paranormal phenomena. But if the roots of rational
thought extend deep down into the occulted soil of an essential y
irrational Nature, and of an intuitive power capable of engaging
it pre-rational y, then why would we see the edifice of scientific
rationality as anything more than a construct consisting of useful
abstractions rather than abstract but objective truths?
&
nbsp; Maurice Merleau-Ponty takes just such a view when he examines
the structure and function of Science against the background
of what cannot be comprehended by its rationality. Like Hegel,
Merleau-Ponty sees paranormal phenomena as a clue to recognizing
the superficial and reciprocal y reinforced distinction between the
objective and the subjective, but unlike Hegel, he is more consistent
in following this insight through to the conclusion that the structures of scientific thought and practice are basical y totemic.
In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty sees the scientist assuming the position of a spectator above all things, so that taken
together these things grasped as objects turn the world into a Great
Object – what I would call an atlas of the world.18 For example, when different real world astronomical perspectives of those who
observe the starry heavens are rendered commensurate with one
another it is not in terms of a universal world but as the function of a methodology grounded in the assumption of the position of the
great spectator.19
Whereas for a while this methodology seems to effect
breakthroughs that allow us to observe both microphysical and
astronomical realms closed to our immediate perception, as Physics
advances on these dimensions it is forced to confront the limit of
its assumed objectivity by admitting the interdependence of the
praxis of the observer and the observed phenomena. Insofar as
the physicist attempts, on the basis of a philosophical ontology of
materialism, to explain away these empirical discoveries by treating
as objective realities quantum ‘entities’ that well up from the flux
18 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 15.
19 Ibid., 15–16.
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of nature for milliards of a second and that are dependent for their
manifestation on careful y controlled conditions of observation, the
physicist is translating these intangible and elusive phenomena into
localizable classical entities just of a much smaller scale and in terms of a much shorter interval of time.20
This projective transformation real y entails assuming the aspect
of a giant or Promethean titan with respect to the microphysical
world.21 Similarly, when, as in the case of Einstein’s theory of relativity, the presumed possibility of the integration of the perspectives of