From the Wolff man: a beautiful structural development re Recognition

[Guest guest]

some cogent thoughts and a beautiful development of theory on

recognition:

 

It is perfectly true that sensation can be used as a stepping-stone

to Recognition. But this is done by viewing the objects of sensation

as symbols rather than as actualities existing in themselves. It is

possible, then, to use the direct object of sensation as an

instrument to awaken consciousness of that Matrix which is the

Fullness that comprehends or encloses the relative emptiness of

ponderable objects.

I question greatly whether this technique is practical for any

extensive application to occidental humanity in its present stage of

consciousness. There is a tradition that a certain ancient race did

employ this method as a systematic technique, but that race had a

much higher development of sensual purity than is now the case. So it

would seem that, on the whole, with men being what they are now, the

technique with overly great sensual desire must be in the form of

replacing the sensual with super-sensual objects. Gradually, then,

the desire can be moulded or directed toward genuinely spiritual

objectives.

4. This may be called a barrier that grows out of the nature of

subject-object consciousness as such. A man who is relatively free

from egoism, as is true of many scientists and philosophers, may have

a strong intellectual development and be little, if in any degree,

involved in somnambulism, and in addition he may have a strong

control of sensual desire, and yet with all this fall into the error

of 'false predication.' With respect to this class more than any

other, the problem of Recognition falls in the field of philosophy.

In my judgment, this constitutes the really crucial problem relative

to the Liberation of human consciousness from the state of bondage.

Accordingly, I shall discuss this barrier to Recognition at some

length.

The problem of false predication arises in the following way: The

Self, or the purely subjective moment in consciousness is the primary

reality of the subject-object manifold. It is the Light, or the

Intelligence, or the Consciousness on which the whole universe

depends for its existence. It is unitary and above space, time, and

causality and, therefore, not subject to conditions. The objective

world, including the human body as well as other objects, is

dependent and bound within space, time, and causality and, therefore,

subject to conditions. It is also multiple in appearance.(* I will

not at this time develop the logic that supports this position, but

that logic is well unfolded in existent philosophy and in addition

has the overwhelming support of the testimony of the mystics. For the

present I shall ask the reader to assume the essential correctness of

the above statement of primary fact.) Thus it is, in all respects, of

a nature both opposite and complementary to the Subject.

Now, it is a widespread habit among human beings to reverse the above

predications. So we have the custom, explicitly or implicitly

manifested, of predicating self-existence of the objects of

consciousness. As a result, things or objects come to be taken as

primary, and then it may actually become a problem as to how a self-

conscious Self ever became introduced into this world. Many a good

scientist has addled his brains over this quite falsely stated

problem. The fact is that a problem concerning nature has as its

essential basis a conscious self that makes the apperceiving of the

problem possible. In a purely blind and dead nature, there never

could arise a scientific or any other kind of problem. Of primary

importance, then, for the understanding of any problem concerning

nature is a knowledge of the Self and of the knowledge-forms through

which It acts in cognizing or sensing the world. The most primary

fact of all is the Self that thinks and senses. Its presence is the

one completely immediate reality that can neither be proved by logic

nor found through experience, for it is the absolutely necessary

basis for both these forms of consciousness. Thus it is only of the

Self that we may properly predicate self-existence. It alone is that

which is the original indubitable 'given' on which all the rest

depends. So the real problem is: How does the external universe come

to have existence? It is a complete misconception to state the

problem in the form: How did the Self come to be injected into the

universe?

The Self, then, is the one Reality of which we can be absolutely

certain, for It is presupposed as much in false as in real knowledge

and underlies dreams as well as waking states. Now what can we

predicate at once concerning this Self in addition to self-existence?

A simple answer comes immediately: The Self is an unchanging power of

awareness. This bare awareness is not affected, as such, by the modes

or qualities of the contents of that awareness. Thus, the states of

objects, including the body of man, do not affect the Self. For

instance, a man may have a sick body, but he makes an absolutely

false predication when he says: " I am sick. " The experiencing of the

state of sickness in the body is a fact, but to predicate this

sickness as attaching to the Self is to build the typical binding

illusion which holds human consciousness in thralldom. Similarly,

man's manifold instrument of body, mind, etc., is limited, but the

Self is not limited. Thus to say " I am limited in such and such

respects " is to produce but another of the illusions of nescience. It

would have been perfectly correct to predicate these limitations as

attaching to the individual and personal instruments. The application

of this principle should now be clear.

The final consequence of both classes of false predication is the

production of a state of Nescience or Avidya. The effect is a sort of

superimposition upon the originally given universe of a secondary or

false universe which enthralls the bulk of human consciousness. It is

this secondary universe that is an Illusion or Maya in the invidious

sense. Problems relative to nature and Being, taken from the

standpoint of this secondary universe, involve a fundamentally false

perspective, and therefore it is impossible to find effective

solutions for them. On the contrary, they simply lead into ever

greater and greater entanglements, in the effort to elaborate

solutions. The fact is, that this superimposed universe has no more

real existence than a dream. Now, the whole conscious field of a

dream, together with its problems, is destroyed by the simple process

of waking-up. This leads us to a very important point in metaphysical

logic. " Whenever we recognize any state of consciousness as being a

dream, at that moment we have discovered that it is unreal, or, in

other words, is devoid of self-existence. A man suffers while in the

midst of the ordinary dream simply for the reason that at the time of

dreaming he believes the state to be real. But this belief in the

reality of the dream is caused by a superimposition that the dreamer

himself has produced. The awakening is equivalent to a removal of

this super-imposition. At that moment, the state which was imagined

as real, and therefore as having self-existence, is recognized to be

no more than a dream. This destroys that particular world or loka of

consciousness. Now we come to an especially important point. That

world or loka is not simply destroyed for the future, but it is

equally destroyed in the sense that // never has been. This does not

mean that it is not a fact in the historic sense that at a certain

time the individual in question was deluded while in the state of the

dreamer. It simply means that the self-existence or actuality which

was imagined as true of the dream never was in reality a fact. The

same principle is true of the secondary universe in which the bulk of

mankind lives somnambulistically. When a man Awakes to the Higher

Consciousness he destroys this universe, both in the sense of

futurity and in the sense of realizing that it never has been. Right

here we are dealing with one of the most important principles of the

higher episte-mology and logic, but also one that has been very

widely misunderstood. It is not the field of subject-object

consciousness, as such, that is an Illusion or Maya in the invidious

sense, but the secondary universe. It is this that the Oriental Sage

has in mind when He speaks of destroying the universe, but He has

simply failed to make himself clear to the western mind.

There is a considerable group of western students who, through an

imperfect understanding of the oriental doctrine of Maya, have

developed a philosophy in which 'Illusion' is predicated of the whole

field of relative consciousness in a sense that is valid only of the

secondary universe. The result is, that instead of destroying an

illusion by their technique, they have simply succeeded in imposing a

new kind of illusion and produced for themselves a state of auto-

hypnosis, which results in a deeper state of dream-consciousness than

is true of the average individual. In this deeper dream-state, only

the evidence which seems to confirm preconceptions is recognized

readily and the acceptance of contrary evidence becomes almost

impossible. It is a state in which real discrimination is paralyzed.

It is practically useless to try to help any individual who is in

this state, until the force of auto-hypnosis exhausts, itself.

Properly understood, the whole doctrine of Maya is entirely

compatible with the idea that within the relative or subject-object

consciousness there can be a correct view of the universe. But this

view is correct only in so far as it is taken as true with respect to

the subject-object base of reference. Critically self-conscious

modern science is well aware that its knowledge is not valid beyond

the limits imposed by the base of reference that has been assumed.

From the standpoint of Recognition, there is no criticism to be made

of a science built upon a background of such critical understanding.

Confusion arises only when generalization goes beyond the theoretical

limits of the base of reference. From the perspective of Transcendent

or Cosmic Consciousness, the problem of nature and Being takes quite

a different form. But this fact does not imply a challenge of the

relative reality of a body of knowledge developed by sound method

within the relative field.

Once one recognizes the fact that the relative world, or primary

universe, is a valid part within the Whole and is relatively real,

then the problem of cross-translation from the level of Cosmic

Consciousness to that of subject-object consciousness is realized as

being of high importance. The possibilities of cross-translation are

admittedly limited. The immediate content of the Higher Consciousness

cannot be cross-translated, but certain formal properties can be

through the use of systematic symbols. In some respects it is like

the old problem of the evaluation of irrationals in terms of rational

numbers. The ultimate content of the irrationals cannot be given in

the form of the rationals, yet, in the radical signs, we have symbols

representing the essential unity binding the two sets of numbers.

Just so soon as the mathematicians abandoned the effort completely to

reduce the irrationals to rational form, and accepted the radical

sign as an irreducible symbol of profound meaning, then they did

succeed in integrating in their consciousness two quite differently

formed domains of reality. This integration meant that the two

domains were found to be logically harmonious, although that which we

might call the 'affective' content was discrete. Cross-translation,

in something of this sense, is possible with respect to Cosmic and

subject-object consciousness. In fact, if the consciousness-

equivalents of the entities and operations of pure mathematics were

realized, we would find that, in that great science and art, cross-

translation in a lofty sense already exists. The Root Source of pure

mathematics is the Higher or Transcendent Consciousness, and this is

the reason universal conclusions can be drawn with unequivocal

validity in pure mathematics. The greater bulk of mathematicians fall

short of being Sages or Men of Recognition because their knowledge is

not balanced by genuine metaphysical insight. But they do have one-

half of the Royal Science. Up to the present, at any rate, the

Fountain-head of the other half is to be found mainly in the Orient.

The union of these two represents the synthesis of the East and the

West, in the highest sense, and is the prerequisite of the

development of a culture which will transcend anything the world has

known so far.....

from " Pathways Through To Space " by Franklin Merrell Wolff

bob