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.
