THE MEANING OF LIFE
Whether or not we choose to accept it, we are all Philosophers and have some working hypothesis regarding the Meaning of Life that, however unconsciously, guides our actions. To regard Life as "meaningless" is as much a philosophical and even religious position as any other on the subject. To say that the question is unimportant is to make a value judgment that is guided by some conception of Truth, importance, reality, and meaning. Perhaps we avoid going into the matter because of the dread that our working answers to such questions of ultimate meaning are not substantial or sturdy enough to withstand much scrutiny and that the real Truth about the matter (which we all think we "know" at some level) is unbearable. And perhaps some eschew or abandon conscious inquiry because an intuitive despair of finding an answer that would make any difference or do any good. But, as we will see, Cointegrative Science, involves a theory as to this question of the Meaning of Life that is not only intuitively, emotionally, and empirically obvious, but surprisingly has much potential for making a difference and doing some good.
"When the shoes fit, the foot is forgotten; when the belt fits, the belly is forgotten. The essence of this observation by the Taoist sage Chang Tzu, when translated into the cognitive idiom of the West, is the concept of "Wholesthesia" or "the relative silence of health". As with the shoes and the belt, so with a well "fitting" or functioning organ, muscle, or cell in a living human being. The conscious awareness or sensation of any such parts of ourselves is usually (though not always) a sign of some relative problem or malfunction in that area, where as our relative forgetfulness of them is generally a sign of their healthy functioning. All of this is a fact or every day experience.
Why not call this state of affairs "Homeostasis" as modern medicine does, and drop the neologism? Because the phenomenological approach of the concept of "Wholesthesia" points up, in its logical implications, profound and until now, collectively unconscious truths that the other terminology obscures. The word "wholesthesia", which has the etymological meaning of "complete" ("holos") sense perception ("aesthetikos") reveals, like some proof of socio-psychoanalysis, the Freudian –or perhaps I should say "Jungian"—slip of our collective unconscious involved in the currency and use of word "anesthesia". This word has the etymological meaning of "without" ("an") "sense perception" and relates to what might be called the "relative silence of sickness." This is because the lack of feedback involved is, far from being a sign of health, usually a suppression of information to the contrary.
What can we make of these concepts and how can we relate these two phenomena? Well, in modern medicine there is the recognized (though of course dreaded) progression of local anesthesia to general anesthesia and possibly leading to coma and even to death as numbness and the chemicals inducing it, is made or mistakenly allowed to effect progressively deeper levels of the organism. This, of course, is a dynamic of disintegration.
It is possible though, through recourse to the "opposing" concept of Wholesthesia, to map out a dynamic or process of cointegration in the opposite direction through a kind of inverse analogy:
The phrase "Local Wholesthesia," to begin this analogy, is meant to describe the relative silence of health, as it exists in all of us, as described above, in those local and relatively circumscribable areas of our bodies of which we are relatively unconscious. A relatively healthy liver, for example.
From local wholesthesia we can infer the possibility of "General Wholesthesia". This refers to a general state of physical "Lightness" and effortless functioning that begins to involve the whole of the physical organism in a more inclusive way. To be sure, the experience of this rare state in comparison to a previous one of less than healthy functioning will be very noticeable at first. However this awareness and appreciation is up held more by memory and imagination, and by its alterations with local Wholesthesia, than by any essentially "positive" quality of the state of being itself, and my be expected to pass after a given time.
Just as the application of General Anesthesia can go awry, so that the patient in an operation slips into coma or "sleep", so can the state of General Wholesthesia, as it penetrates more deeply into the nervous system, lead to what may be called "Phenomenesthesia" or "Awakening." I infer this state to be sense of the totality of phenomena from a center, which has ceased to be the relatively unconscious one of the "ego" and to have become the relatively conscious one of the Soul (am tempted to speak of ego-body and Soul-Body here because I am anxious that neither of these words be understood in a pure psychological or subjective sense; both Ego and Soul are meant be understood as expression of the Mind-Body and not just the "Mind").
But to extending our inverse analogy; the chief difference between coma and Death is that coma is a possibly reversible state of affairs whereas Death by definition is not. Precisely the same distinction can be made between Phenomenesthesia (or "Awakening") and Numinesthesia (or "Life"). The experience of awakening can be temporary. The individual may fall back into a closed unconcious state and forget his or her Soul-Nature almost completely. But the conscious experience of Life is understood as an abiding sense of the Numinous "Whatness" of Being that is somehow permanent and irreversible. To be Alive is to be in the presence of The Ultimate, The Holy, in a conscious way. A state of mystical awareness is being experienced by that is paradoxically consistent with the limitations of everyday life. This is to Live out of in ones Soul.
And does the process end there? The state of conscious awareness of Spirit, of the Presence of "God" is not the same as Union with that Presence. Soul is not the same as Self-Nature and even this is not quite Freedom or Spirit. In this manifestation of SelfNature, embodied soul is presumably fully realized and transcended leaving only that which is purely Self and so also Purely Nature and which is the individuation of the Tao, the Great Mystery, The Freedom which transcends Identity and even entity. Freedom is arbitrarily predicable and it is unpredictable and yet Freedom and Life are the "strange attractors" and final cause of all evolution and of the world itself. And to say even this about it is perhaps to say too much.
To summarize so far: just as there is a progression from local Anesthesia, to General Anesthesia, to Coma, to Death, so also is there a progression from Local Wholesthesia to General Wholesthesia to Awakening (Phenomenesthesia) to Life (Numinesthesia). And beyond (as well as within) all this there is Freedom or Spirit as something like the immanent/transcendent final cause and ultimate source of all of the above. To experience mostly only ego is to be only unconsciously aware of all of this. To be in any given moment consciously aware of all of this is to be, relatively speaking, in ones awakened Soul. To be stabilized in this Soul-Nature is to be Alive. To progress in ones Soul-nature is to progressively realize (or be realized by) SelfNature, which is the Door to Spirit or Freedom itself.
GOOD SENSE
In the light of all this we might regard our normal state of being as manifestly somnambulant amnesia, dissociation and only rudimentary consciousness. We exist for the most part in an unhealthy and unconscious "synthesis" of the "thesis" of anesthesia and "antithesis" of wholesthesia, which is, not stable synthesis but rather a dialectic of progressive degeneration. To become conscious and sensible of this condition is already to partially transcend it and enter a dynamic of cointegrative, conscious, and healing synthesis, which is nevertheless also of both wholesthesia and anesthesia. This sensibility intuits, feels, and understands the reality of Life and Freedom as ultimate goals as well as their reality in the here and now of a specific situation. It is a progressive intellectual moral and physical reorientation and an indwelling confirmation of Healthy Knowledge. This sensibility and understanding is the opening of the ego-body to the Soul-nature that is none other than the Good Sense of our title.
If Anesthesia is "Nonsense" and Wholesthesia is "Complete Sense", than "Good Sense" (tentatively "Enaesthesia"), is that sensibility that recognizes and welcomes them both and yet distinguishes them from each other. It does this in the context of what we have said of their ultimate implications all well as in the context of everyday life. It is the innate understanding of the Soul active even in the ego in each real and definite everyday situation. Good Sense does not exclude nonsense (anesthesia), which it intuitively understands as a necessary and even essential aspect of what is recognized to be the beings evolution toward Spirit. It is the healthy instinct/intuition to aim for an overall predominance of wholesthesia over anesthesia in the context of the peculiarities of the individual Soul-nature and situation. Abstractly and morally, the intention is to move toward greater wholesthesia and Life. Practically and ethically the dynamic is more sophisticated and evolves a kind of "beating to windward"; a balancing of exigent "weaknesses" and limitations against strengths and possibilities in an ultimately progressive way.
This more sophisticated existential dynamic involves the coordination and balancing of attention to the future, the past, and the eternal with and in the present moment. It is an improvisational sensibility that makes good use even of mistakes, which are in fact indispensable to its manifestation. For without the recognition of the redeeming complementarity and preexistent paradoxical synthesis of nonsense (anesthesia) and complete sense (wholesthesia) in real experience, Awakening, Life, and Freedom would be Meaningless even as ideal orienting types, because one "could not get there from here". Good Sense is this sense of the mutuality and presence of the remembering of Healthy Knowledge even within our forgetfulness of it, and as such it is the most indispensable of sensibilities.
And of course, as with all the Theories of Cointegrative Science, I think we all really already know all of this, at least deep down in our souls we do. That is just the point. Nevertheless, we seem to need a more formal reminder every now and then, hence this post.
The relatively unconscious, relatively anesthetic ("Mal-aesthetic" really) nature of the modern/post-modern science, diet, medicine, architecture, -- of the modern/post-modern world in general-- is too much to go into in a brief essay. But the prescription for all of these disintegrating fields of activity is the same; it is that of Good Sense in the light of Cointegrative Science. Again, by such Good Sense I mean the sense, not only of the current numbness under which the jewels of Life and Freedom are buried but also the equally strong sense of the very real presence of the jewels there nevertheless (And be assured that they are there, for if they were not within us at some deep level then we would literally be dead.) and the gratitude and resolve that come with this. And by such Good Sense I mean a consciousness and embracing of our our sick culture that can only be effected by truly Healthy Culture. Such Good sense, is the sense of Togetherness; the balanced, paradoxical dance of the awareness; the inclusive welcoming of both realities in the service of progressive healing and aliveness.
And such Good Sense also implies Good Taste, the taste or sensibility of such paradoxical togetherness and the ability to discern the relatively beautiful, healthy, and appropriate in the context of Mutuality and of Ultimate as well as more immediate truth.
And it implies Good Will, the cointegrative, willed affirmation and acknowledgment of essential Togetherness and the intention toward its increasing realization both inwardly and in outward practical and world affairs.; a will to inner and outer Life and Freedom in the light of Life Truth that implies conscious understanding and moral commitment to the great Theme of our collective existence as well as its variations in cultural and individual manifestation.
And it implies Good Faith, a Living Faith in Togetherness, which (because it is alive) involves a constant checking of any Belief (including the theories of Integral Science) against the inner consensus of ones intuition, heart, mind and body as to its Living Truth and value, with an eye to either its reformulation or its replacement with something else. It is faith in the existence of some healing and useful shared understanding of reality and a commitment to critical participation in the best that we have yet found.
The role of Death in evolution is to provoke individuals and species toward Life and Freedom. We are going to die anyway but be are not going to "Live" anyway, in the present (new and also very old) sense of the word. To seek death is to be in a state of unconsciousness that is not worthy of our humanity—it is to seek nothing at all. To seek Life and Freedom with humility, humor, wonder, and gratitude is our common privilege as beings that are going to die. Whether or not we succeed in taking advantage of this opportunity is ultimately not in our hands but to make the attempt is the only gesture that is consistent with sapience, with true happiness, and with Good Sense.
P.S.
I shared the above post with someone (a self described "Philosopher") who labeled it as "new age", I guess because of so much mention of things like "soul" and Spirit. I think if I had avoided such simple words and used only the long winded neologisms I came up with, the whole thing would have got a better review. People who think the distant past is a total nightmare tend to get spooked by such old fashioned language. On the other hand people with the opposite inclination might be put off by my high sounding greek-based inventions. Since most things are both simple and complicated however, and since a big part of the intention behind these writings is to reconcile and transcend both the traditional and "modern"/postmodern, it doesn't really do to ignore either aspect of reality and use just one set of terms. I think I have done a little more than simply update some generalized version of traditional understanding, but I think I have done quite a bit less than discover something that is complete new and untranslatable into vernacular language. If that language bothers you because its not fancy enough, just focus on the fancy words and/or just the basic argument. If on the other hand my made-up words seem pretentious to you, reformulate the whole thing without them.
Supplement:
Wholesthesia and Shared SelfNature (Shared Nature/Self)
The preceeding post was written for my old blog perhaps 10 years ago. The Concept of Shared SelfNature (which I briefly outlined in my last post about Healthy Culture in general was not yet born in my head then, so I want to use this space to try to relate the two Ideas. Most especially, I would like to explore the implication of the "Shared" part of the idea of Shared SelfNature (as well as the shared part of the idea of the "Shared Ego", a concept which I have also just barely introduced in the previous post.
Clearly "Wholesthesia" is "Local" Shared SelfNature since the presence of this "relative silence of health" can certainly be understood to be shared among everyone who is (usually unconsciously) experiencing it; that is, everyone who exists. The ground of our existance and health in other words, is in a shared SelfNature that is tied up with the existence of a "Shared Nature" of clean air and water the general health of Gaia, the Sun and everything generally to some degree anyway and so perhaps it can be understood to be a local experience reflecting a kind of Latent and prexistant inner/outer harmony that we can chose to cultivate once we are conscious of it.The inner part of this harmony would be the "yin" or subjective part of Shared SelfNature (the "Shared Mind" or "Shared Self") which would be the implicit subjectivity or consciousness inherent in everything.
Here its necessary to pause for an important clarification. The kind of implicit togetherness that exists between yin and yang also exists between Self and Nature but this kind of togetherness has, I think, been generally misunderstood. I think that a neglected implication of the familiar YinYang symbol, in which the white/yang dot is placed in the black/yin area and visa versa, is a kind of "fractal" situation, in which, within that little white/yang dot, there is necessarily a little black/yin area and within that a white, and so forth indefinitely. If thats the case, then it is a pretty one-sided and kind violent dissociation to speak of "yin" by itself or "yang" by itself at all. There is no "pure" yin or "pure" yang but only relative yin/yang. Moreover as implied in the title of the "book of changes", the relative amounts of these correlatives is understood to be constantly changing. I suppose one could suggest that much in the symbol by making the black and white dots (and the corresponding white and black areas around them) different but mutually compensating sizes, (thus suggesting dynamism). Perhaps this was done is some places, but the usually static symbol is I think misleading. At any rate, whether or not the above is really the sense of the YinYang symbol, its certainly the sense in which I speak of Shared SelfNature/NatureSelf. This means that talking about the "Shared Self", however necessary, is very misleading in that it suggests a really impossible seperation of Self from Nature ("Consciousness" from the "Universe"). Here we are at the edge where language does some violence to the truth, (unless one is amenable to paradox-friendly logic such as the Logic of Coidentity, which I will introduce in another post.)
So much for that clarification.
The correspondence of wholesthesia to Shared SelfNature suggests a correspondence of "Anesthesia" to the "Shared Ego" and "Callesthesia" (good sense) to the Shared Soul (and I mean both the term "Ego" and the term "Soul" in a kind of Phenomenological sense that includes "body" as well as "mind") . The Shared Ego and the Shared Soul must also be understood as somehow latent in all being, at least as a potential. The subtlty of this consideration has to do with the fact that the Shared Soul can be decribed as the healing dynamic that connects the Shared Ego to shared Self Nature and to what I am calling "Spirit", thus manifesting a evolutionary rather than devolutionary dynamic.)
All of these thoughts lend themselves to a great many interesting conjectures. I'll mention just a few here.
For instance there seems to be an implied critique of the Hindu concept of the Self which is similar to that of certain forms of Buddhism; from our point of view there is no pure absolute "Self" but only a shared SelfNature. On the other hand, the idea of the Shared SelfNature and the Shared Soul and the Shared Ego seems to challenge the conception of private individual merit or private individual enlightenment or private delusion. Even the idea of being a Bodhisattva is challenged in that, though that idea does imply a kind of "everyone or no-one" conception of spiritual progress, this is presented as the choice of a supposedly superior individual, while the implication here is that there is no such choice and no such thing. At best one could say that the "Boddhisatva Spirit" (the Shared Soul) has been activated and the reality of Shared NatureSelf percieved by someone, at least for the moment. In general the very subtle, paradoxical, and dynamically phenomenological nature of this present notion challenges the rigid hierarchies of organized religion and spirituality, including those of Buddism and Hinduism. Presumably, (in the east at least) the rankings and merits emerged as an a tempt to motivate the ego to undertake the discipline of yoga or meditation practice, but this is a mistake I think, since action taken under the illusion of primary seperateness can only strengthen that illusion leading ultimately to delusional inflated egos. Unless the motive and understanding are cointegrative from the first, neither the process nor the result of practice will be. Indeed I think that the nature of the practice itself must change in order to reflect the present cointegrative understanding.
There are many more interesting and suggestive implications of this
understanding vis-a-vis not only Buddhism and Hinduism but all the known religions, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, "Animism", as well as the religion we now call "Science". Whether or not one wants to see any of these as monolithic entities, I am willing to suggest that, on a case by case, historical as well as empirical basis, all of these cosmologies/cultures can be shown, in the light of this understanding and that of healthy culture generally, to have both their "piece of the lie and piece of the truth", like any individual culture or person. Given that we live in a sick culture, however, its reasonable to expect more often then not, the latter more actively manifest than the former.
Of course "Cointegrative Science" is no different. It presumably also has its "piece of the Lie and Piece of the Truth". The aspects of the sick culture that may be involved, (or may become involved) in the understanding that I have just shared are at the moment unclear to me. But I can say that Cointegrative Scientific "Truth" cannot be the static result of competitive argument, one-sided interrogation, or one-sided exposition, but is rather the living co-created result of inclusive, collaborative, and cointegrative conference. This cointegrative conference (technically "Co-inference") is the "scientific method" of Cointegrative Science; a method aimed at inner/outer healing, Inner/Outer consensus, dynamic balance and communion rather then, "final Truth", victory or control. All that can be said then regarding a text such as this (or any others in any of my blogs), is that it is meant as conversation opener; a preliminary sharing of views in the hopeful anticipation of a conference in which a (necessarily tentative) inner and outer consensus can be reached, as a basis for further collaboration.
Still, by ordinary criteria, what I have written above about the meaning of Life does seem to have both direct and circumstantial evidence; it "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck", etc..., and if I didn't regard "ordinary criteria" and purely one-sided verbal written exposition as such intrinsically "lame ducks" themselves, (in so far as being sufficient generating real Living Truth goes), it would certainly have my vote. As it stands I can only offer it as the most promising conversation opener I have ever come across (if I do say so myself).
--I-P
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