Johnboy January 30, 2012 at 8:28 pm # Let me suggest a distinction between the unitary and the unitive. When we’re talking vaguely about the STUFF of primal reality, we intuit that it all somehow has to share certain attributes in order for it to be able to interact, otherwise our accounts will suffer what the philosophers call a “causal disjunction.” How could a Creator, Whom we only describe metaphorically, ever interact with creatures if all we have to work with are analogues? Try to have an analogy tonight for supper and see if that fills you up! This refers, then, to a putative UNITARY being, hence INTRA (within) OBJECTIVE (an object). At the same time, when talking about the self as a true agent, it violates common sense long before it becomes a metaphysical conundrum to deny the reality of authentically interacting subjects. This refers, then, to our UNITIVE strivings, hence INTER (between) SUBJECTIVE (persons). Combining these insights we might affirm a panentheism. I call it a vague panSEMIOentheism because this meta-critique is a step away from the more metaphysically robust panentheisms, which rely variously on different root metaphors like substance, process, being, experience and so on. In other words, it is a semiotic realism, which suggests that, even though I’ve only offered a putative heuristic with some vague placeholders that lack robust descriptions (root metaphors), still, those placeholders might very well make successful references to a putative primal reality in a way that we can realize some SIGNificant value vis a vis our God-talk. To be sure, much of what we seem to take away in our more Eastern-like experiences of the Indeterminate Ground of Being (just for example) seems to correspond to an experience of absolute unitary being (cf. Andy Newberg, neuroscientist) or intra-objective identity. Our more Western-like experiences of a determinate Creator and creation seem to correspond to an experience of our unitive strivings or inter-subjective intimacy. Interestingly, people who’ve experienced either/both the unitary or/and the unitive come away with a profound sense of solidarity & compassion for all sentient reality and deep gratitude for all reality. These general categories are much too facile though for authentic interreligious dialogue for there are prominent devotional elements in the East (bhakti and such) that affirm the value of our intersubjective experiences. Most of the valuable take-aways from Western encounters with the East have been in the realm of practices and asceticisms, more epistemic than ontological. There’s more to be had by the West, though, in further cultivating the Eastern wisdom of remaining silent on all things metaphysical as it pertains to God’s essential nature? Not that the West doesn’t have a great 1
apophatic tradition of its own. Let’s just say it’s been under-employed in many circles, just like our contemplative tradition, the reawakening of which remains in its infancy (post-Merton). Was I too harsh on Wilber? I see the self as a quasiautonomous agent, free-enough to realize values and not as some vestige of divine amnesia. In other words, there is a true ontological distinction from which we realize value, inter-subjectively, vis a vis God and other persons in our UNITIVE strivings. This is not to deny — but to held in a creative tension with — the notion that we and God, in some mysterious way, also share some of the very same “stuff” from which we may have issued forth vis a vis primal reality, creatio ex nihilo notwithstanding. Otherwise, whither any divine interactivity? I’ve always thought the Hesychasts of Mt Athos might have been on to something with their distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies. Maybe they were on to something — not in a robustly metaphysical way, but — and providing us a vague meta-critique? So, I’m only suggesting that Wilber’s account would be fine once sufficiently nuanced. I’d also like to affirm Cynthia Bourgeault’s notion that our experience of “constriction” is an encounter with a sacrament and all that that would efficaciously entail! It matches my intuition that we, as co-creators, amplify risks to augment values. I’m not suggesting that those values that are derived from all of the suffering attendant to that risk-taking could not have been gotten some other way (how could we know?), only that there IS value and I embrace it even as I positively eschew the suffering and would love to realize values without having to make sacrifices! Some day we’ll all understand … cried Fogelberg. I adamantly maintain that that day hasn’t arrived and that no theodicy is good that does not contain a huge measure of MYSTERY. Reply
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