If this metaphysical space is to be known,
such knowledge can be attained only by faith and grace,
not by ‘entering’ but by ‘being entered’
-this is so because the greater must reveal itself to the lesser.
Put differently, that which is immanently ‘Spirit’ can only be known receptively,
through its own intellective vision, and not any derivative faculty such as reason,
feeling or sensation. Reason can only discern conceptually,
at best reducing reality to a dualism of subject and object
(as in the case of Descartes) or catagorical postulate
(as in the case of Kant) or dialectic process
(as in the case of Hegel) – its ‘telos’ will tend to be utopian(as in the case of Marx),
fundamentalist( as in the cases of religious, political or secular dogmatism)
or anthropocentrically consencual (as in the case of Rousseau’s social contract);
while sensation or feeling even where elevated to
the level of empirical ‘science,’ can only discern reality as matter or as psyche,
quantitatively, thereby cutting it off from its transcendent
and qualitative roots, leading to an emphasis on hypertrophic subjectivism
(as in the case of Nietzsche), Psychologism(as in the case of Freud),
or reductive positivism(as in the cases of philosophical positivism and of scientism).
That which transcends us cannot be known reductively
but only by that transcendent faculty which is immanent in us-which in
Tradition is termed the ‘Intellect’
or the Self-knowing Spirit. To know is to discern BEING.
We must empty ourselves or our ‘self’ in order to know who we ARE.
We must return to the sacred emptiness of the space that is our
ontological core in order to know that which truly IS.
–M Ali Lakhani (the Distance between us, found in Sacred Web issue 31)
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January 1, 2014 at 4.50.am.
Great share! Talk about food for thought.