Σοφία. Lux. Initiatio.
An ongoing exploration of the liminal in between. A harmonious reconciliation of the superordinate polarity, between Lucifer and Ahriman.
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experience is subjective, but thinking connects man to the universal. for instance, the variables that affect the subjectivity of experience are things such as our characterological disposition, inherent traits, our physical sense-organs as that pertains to how we perceive phenomena like light & color; but when we think conceptually, what happens is our subjectivity converges with the universal concepts, which everyone through thinking can obtain. on an additional note, this is why morality cannot be imposed externally, because if each individual comes to an understanding of himself, morality arises as an understanding of the human being.
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when i see a table, the subjective qualia impresses upon me such as its color, but in my thinking activity i've acquired the concept of a table, which is universal; also in the midst of that, i form my own mental picture of the table, which mediates between the subjective perception of mine, to the universal concept.
i say externally because we must distinguish between characterological dispositions which are subjective and refers to our temperaments, impulses, habitual reactions and inherited traits; none of which actually originate from free thinking which is not bound by the subjectivity of the foregoing.
if i conform to a rule imposed externally, i cannot be free; neither am i free if i oppose a rule in rebellion. if i follow a rule simply because it is considered the "moral" or right thing, then i am also not free. if we take a closer look at morality, we see that external order and law is an abstraction in the history of individual moral actions; that means in a given moment, there cannot be a rigid prescription for the "right" act, but that it arises intuitively in the human being, and it is from these acts that we derive external rules and order.
in essence, the core of what i'm stressing is this: perception and experience of an individual is subjective but thinking connects man as individual to the universal. the mental pictures we form help us mediate between the two. my mental picture of a "cat" differs from yours, but it mediates between how i perceive cats (subjectively), from yours, but we both apprehend the same concept of a cat. that said, with morality it is never black and white, though external rules act as indicators and steps, true morality must always arise intuitively in the individual and sovereign human being.
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to be in the now means to be. time and its perception arises from the rhythms of the bodily constitution, but the "I" stands above and before the former; to be in the now is to be in the I. you can rise again now simply because your thinking activity is immediate rather than given from without, therefore it is self-generative: your thoughts are then mediated by feeling, and results in willing (action).
it is that we constantly only interact with the shadows or reflections of thoughts; we only analyze from a distance, the products of thinking, such as words-forms or whatever objects that are produced, but when we are actually active within the stream of the thinking process itself? we are divorced from the process, and only apprehend the output. as long as this remains, man only lives in retrospect and in reflection. in essence, what i'm really stressing here is the thinking activity; no true knowledge can come to be if the very activity of cognition is not inhabited consciously.
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the things perceived by our senses in sense-perception are percepts and phenomenological insofar as we remain limited to that mode of cognition. when we consider the essence of our thinking faculties, "they have only a relative being; together only in relation to one another" (they are disjointed because of how ordinary cognition fragments reality) ignores thinking as the activity which apprehends concepts for inter-relational connections between percepts to even be possible. the "unknowable" thing-in-itself of Kant's is another error because it again, is an additional, hypothetical world (like Jung's unconscious though for Jung it can be experienced psychologically) posited on top of what is at its core, divided only by percept and concept. when we discuss conditions such as "time, space and causality", we again are doing so conceptually through our thinking; but the caveat here being that we do so descriptively, from a distance, as a subject who is confronted by a world of phenomena. without thinking, all phenomena become nothing but an aggregate of percepts; the Kantian position totally neglects the active participation of the human being as microcosm within the macrocosm. percepts (phenomena) are given in immediacy, because we actually never experience the forming of a percept in real time, such as that when we see a tree in front of us; it is given immediately to us. percepts are transient, and are presented to us as a multiplicity (due to our ordinary consciousness) but they remain incomplete, that is until the thinking activity completes it and therein arises a synthesis. in this multiplicity that confronts us, we actually perceive ourselves perceptually as subject, or "Self"; we are this "Self" that which is differentiated among the "outer" percepts. thinking is the most immediate activity known to us, because in thinking, we are both subject and object; our thoughts arise, and we begin to notice our physiological selves as percept, and other percepts which come to our Self such as feeling, touch, hearing and other sensory impressions. however, the fact of the matter is that we cannot step outside of thinking; therefore the reality is that anything we attempt to posit outside of thinking is impossible, and is therefore only hypothetical (such as Kant's noumenon). yes, this includes percepts that come to Self, such as touch, that too, is formed conceptually as we think; if we did not think, any physical pain, torment, and the like would be nothing more than mere phenomena. to even conceive of how "time" affects the percept of our Self, we must again, do it through thinking.
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we recognize objects because thinking as a spiritual faculty allows for the apprehension of universal concepts; the outer world and its percepts are immediately given but concepts are required to synthesize and form a total and whole understanding. human cognition is not 'generalization' but the universal act of thinking (beyond dialectics) which permeates and makes sense with the use of concepts, the "data" or percepts which are dependent and vary based on personal organization (e.g., seeing diff shades of red).
"cognitive science" or any science presupposes the activity of thinking. thinking is the condition of observation and you cannot step outside it. you can study the physiological brain and organs but yet those too are merely conceptual strings to attempt the explanation of perceptual phenomena. experiences vary and are subjective, if concepts were generalizations formed on personal experience then everyone would hold various different forms of a said concept. experiencing anything requires thinking, and the concept of "red" remains outside of experience because it is universal. how does one who is blind and unable to experience the qualia of red still manage to apprehend the concept of red?
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Because man in his "I" is united in the world of ideas to one another, in the living, sovereign I contains the free spirit of man, wherein he acts from that intuition, in the most moral sense possible. If man were not united in the world of ideas, then all would be subjective; but far too easily are base instincts and actions arising from imposed conditions confused for that of the free spirit. The problem is evidently, that the I of each man is obfuscated through layers of the characterological disposition, the astral body, and the higher influences; but as the I is the true divine spark of God, when man realizes the I, he realizes the "I AM", and therein, there is no separation between himself and the world, and he finds that the only true morality to exist can only be in this way, by intuition.
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Goethe "saw" the Urpflanze, not because he described it from a distance, but because he was in the "I AM", wherein he intuitively lived in the formative forces; where a tree no longer becomes just a static object, but it becomes a living participation in the Being itself.
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the world is neither chaotic nor disorderly; it only appears that way because of our organization and how we perceive phenomena (as in what we perceive with our senses). the reason why knowledge seems incomplete is because humans lack a fundamental understanding of oneself, and in science observing the world externally, it actually does not serve to advance our understanding of how knowledge arises in the first place, with its theories and all. this makes things of the world seem disparate and out of sorts.
it is a problem of dualism: when we hold a belief that the world exists out there in itself, as in a continuous ontological state, and our thinking is in here, we attempt to "replicate" the world, and our aim becomes to evaluate if our replication corresponds to the world outside. the error and result of this is that one is then separated and divorced from knowledge, not in the dead intellectual sense, but of an Intuitive understanding. consciousness is not and cannot be a closed-system; if it were so, we would be reduced and limited to mere inference, without direct knowledge of anything at all.
moreover, it is not just that our minds "create reality" in the idealistic sense, because if this was the case, we would be attempting to transcend the very reality in front of us, that is already given to us; but that is not possible because we can't step outside of our thinking. "you see life through the way you perceive it, your thoughts and feelings." this is partially true, but it's a little more nuanced than that. we experience life subjectively and individually, because our feelings (feeling-life) are our own, and it is inherent in our individuality.. but what we apprehend conceptually is universal. we ought to be cautious here because in this idealistic view, the whole world and people become reduced to products of our 'subjective' (in this context) consciousness.. then how can we know if the person in front of us and myself are of the same world? this quickly becomes solipsistic.
when you and I both perceive a table in front of us, with our senses (eyes), we perceive the phenomena of the table in its appearance of its color, form, shape, and so forth; but the both of us apprehend at the same time the table concept. though our perception of the appearance is subjective, we hold the same concept of table; but more than this is we then individually create a mental picture of the table, and this, mediates for us between the concept (that we both have), and from the subjective perception.
in simpler words: this is all to say reality can be apprehended in total, and freedom can be attained. BUT, it first and most importantly demands an observation of how we know to begin with; which modern science and academia fails to do, as the results therewith operate on faulty premises full of erroneous presuppositions. freedom is possible, in the truest and most individual sense, and ultimately, a reconciliation of the tension within ourselves (the seeming split between feeling in soul, and intellect), along with us and the world (macrocosmically). everything depends on this: morality, ethics, purpose, love, and our very mortality (as it would appear, the perishable and finite life). if we are deprived of us, we can only grasp in the dark (as your original comment implies), and life is lived in this state of temporality... that only aims towards the end that is death. humans are reduced to mechanical and biological processes; talk of the "soul" and spirituality are lofty, abstract and only fantasy; psychoanalysis attempts to be the bridge, but remains only in the psychological, and never really quite penetrating to what is beyond only the psyche.
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specifically, it is the active participation of man within the cosmos, no longer under a subject-object dualism. realization through action is willing which is preceded by feeling, the subjective factor which presupposes thinking (which is primary). the 'privilege of transforming potential into reality' ought to be viewed with the lens of the privilege in man as co-creator, as opposed to passive observer; after all, man is made in the imago Dei. also, this really only confirms the universality of thinking and the world of ideas, individualized through the I (with the aid of the mental picture, or Vorstellung)
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Death is all.
They say, death is when the body ceases to be,
or when the soul becomes halted in its metamorphosis.
But if you have not died, then you are not alive.
If you believe yourself to be alive, then truly, you are dead.
All of life is death. To die is to come alive—
no, not only to be reborn, but that we are constantly dead,
and only then, can we be truly alive.
Death is all.
