I’m sure everyone is aware that political sides like to play with words. For instance, everyone knows of the he/she dilemma, which to date is not well solved. Academics still struggle with the ungainliness of using he/she – out of the question for literary works – and the confusion of alternating he and she, or putting in all “she” and so on. Most of us have settled for “their” when possible, even if it is inappropriate for the subject (for example, “everyone is aware of their own feet.” ) No big deal, unless you are a writer. Sending my last book out for publication, the editor gave me a confusing list of ways to avoid the problem. I settled for a few easy outs, then used the centuries – old rule of “he” as a general pronoun, even if politically incorrect. Rhythm and sound and , by golly, ART, are more important!
The list goes on and on. “Illegal aliens” are now “undocumented immigrants,” “Orientals” are now “Asians,” “negroes” became blacks became African Americans, and controversial legislation like preferential hiring is called “affirmative action.” I am not going to go political here, but rather wish to bring up the outlying reason for such manipulation of language. Some changes – the purely political -- are on-the-surface obvious. Others not so much; rather, they are imbedded in the theory that language change can affect deeper thoughts and attitudes (for instances, on women or illegal immigrants.); that is, that people’s attitudes can be changed from the outside to the inside. After reading Bernard Kastrup’s More than Allegory, though, it appears obvious that such change is not as easy as some think (even though he uses “she” throughout as the general pronoun).
Not that the book is primarily about this. Rather, it is about reality – what makes it, and how real it really is. In a nutshell, Kastrup believes that ALL reality as we could possibly understand it is a symbol of that which generates it. From another angle, reality is something of a knot of possibilities that coalesce around a central premise to create other premises. In our world, as in many (most?) other realities, this is made possible by the space/time phenomena, which is nothing more than a stretching out of various possibilities that exist all at once to produce an ephemeral, time-bound reality. In the end, says he, we are eternal, and in fact are the generators of realities as well as the subject of them. We blind ourselves to our own tricks to make realities possible – a trick done for the sake of experience. At the end of life, the knot is temporarily (if I can use time) untied, only to become another, much like a quantum realization of the metaphysics of reincarnation.
It goes on and is complicated, but for our purposes, I wish to note one very important implication in Kastrup’s argument: if our reality is made up, why couldn’t we simply decide to, say, fly? True, it would take deep belief, but let’s say it’s the belief of a schizophrenic who really, really believes he (he/she – here we go again) can fly. But can he fly? No. We would find at the end of his potentially historic leap a pile of flesh mourned by his next of kin. So what gives?
Says Kastrup: it isn’t so easy. The “knot” of reality runs deep, and to be able to fly would mean that the subject no longer understood himself to be a human, or even part of this reality. It would have to be total. So to fundamentally change the world, we would need a fundamental overhaul of our perception of reality. This is what Marx strove for, as well as the mavens of political correctness. For Kastrup, though, these groups' methods are grossly lacking. Their reality is created through linguistics, which is only a “sign” of reality, rather than a symbol - which is something that points "beyond." So for Kastrup, we must move beyond words, or “beyond allegory.” To enable us to do that, he claims, is the job of deep myths that act as guide posts to the greater reality. In virtually all cases, these myths are religious.
From his thoughts, one thing is clear and another is not: fisrt, for that which is clear: we find that religion is perhaps the only human mode we have of transcending our reality. It is not that religion is itself the new reality, but that it points to The reality, for that is all anything could do in our smaller reality. Religion can be co-opted and either used for bad purposes, or it can be taken as the literal truth, both of which are not the intent of religion. Used wisely, its intent is to show us the way – and once well on the way, we are to discover that religion and its myths were not THE reality all along, but only the guide posts.
For (2), lack of clarity, we have to ask: who are the purveyors of religious myths? Who amongst us are those psychic geniuses? Buddhists believe in avatars, and Christians in Christ, the latter (of which I am most familiar) said to have come as God himself in human form, as an active part of history, yet beyond history. As impossible as this seems from our reality, we can use Kastrup to say that Jesus realized both the knot of our reality, and its place in the ultimate, timeless void that we call God. In that position, he would be above the rules of our reality and really could, as easy as pie, raise the dead and walk on water. We could do it, too – but only if our reality became more a plaything, a backdrop to the Real. To do this, we would have to undue our reality completely without becoming totally, screamingly insane.
The question still remains, though – who or what sent these avatars, or this God? Kastrup does not explain it well enough for me, for he does not seem to see direct participation of God in our world. Rather, he takes a colder, more Eastern approach. I disagree, as any Christian would. It is far more comforting to me to believe that God, through His representative in our reality, really cares. The Christian problem, however, is in confusing the God with the man, as most of us do, which inhibits progress towards the Real.
Which, to wrap things up, is what the Marxists and ideologues do in their own way as well. They confuse the sign – that which indicates an immediate reality expressed in language – with symbol – that which points to something well outside itself. The materialist ideologues will never go far towards their utopia, because they will never question the deep-base fundamentals of reality. The religious, however –as far out as their myths appear to some – are ideally situated, because true religion is true symbol – pointing out for us the exit sign that can lead us beyond this reality, and beyond death. FK
The list goes on and on. “Illegal aliens” are now “undocumented immigrants,” “Orientals” are now “Asians,” “negroes” became blacks became African Americans, and controversial legislation like preferential hiring is called “affirmative action.” I am not going to go political here, but rather wish to bring up the outlying reason for such manipulation of language. Some changes – the purely political -- are on-the-surface obvious. Others not so much; rather, they are imbedded in the theory that language change can affect deeper thoughts and attitudes (for instances, on women or illegal immigrants.); that is, that people’s attitudes can be changed from the outside to the inside. After reading Bernard Kastrup’s More than Allegory, though, it appears obvious that such change is not as easy as some think (even though he uses “she” throughout as the general pronoun).
Not that the book is primarily about this. Rather, it is about reality – what makes it, and how real it really is. In a nutshell, Kastrup believes that ALL reality as we could possibly understand it is a symbol of that which generates it. From another angle, reality is something of a knot of possibilities that coalesce around a central premise to create other premises. In our world, as in many (most?) other realities, this is made possible by the space/time phenomena, which is nothing more than a stretching out of various possibilities that exist all at once to produce an ephemeral, time-bound reality. In the end, says he, we are eternal, and in fact are the generators of realities as well as the subject of them. We blind ourselves to our own tricks to make realities possible – a trick done for the sake of experience. At the end of life, the knot is temporarily (if I can use time) untied, only to become another, much like a quantum realization of the metaphysics of reincarnation.
It goes on and is complicated, but for our purposes, I wish to note one very important implication in Kastrup’s argument: if our reality is made up, why couldn’t we simply decide to, say, fly? True, it would take deep belief, but let’s say it’s the belief of a schizophrenic who really, really believes he (he/she – here we go again) can fly. But can he fly? No. We would find at the end of his potentially historic leap a pile of flesh mourned by his next of kin. So what gives?
Says Kastrup: it isn’t so easy. The “knot” of reality runs deep, and to be able to fly would mean that the subject no longer understood himself to be a human, or even part of this reality. It would have to be total. So to fundamentally change the world, we would need a fundamental overhaul of our perception of reality. This is what Marx strove for, as well as the mavens of political correctness. For Kastrup, though, these groups' methods are grossly lacking. Their reality is created through linguistics, which is only a “sign” of reality, rather than a symbol - which is something that points "beyond." So for Kastrup, we must move beyond words, or “beyond allegory.” To enable us to do that, he claims, is the job of deep myths that act as guide posts to the greater reality. In virtually all cases, these myths are religious.
From his thoughts, one thing is clear and another is not: fisrt, for that which is clear: we find that religion is perhaps the only human mode we have of transcending our reality. It is not that religion is itself the new reality, but that it points to The reality, for that is all anything could do in our smaller reality. Religion can be co-opted and either used for bad purposes, or it can be taken as the literal truth, both of which are not the intent of religion. Used wisely, its intent is to show us the way – and once well on the way, we are to discover that religion and its myths were not THE reality all along, but only the guide posts.
For (2), lack of clarity, we have to ask: who are the purveyors of religious myths? Who amongst us are those psychic geniuses? Buddhists believe in avatars, and Christians in Christ, the latter (of which I am most familiar) said to have come as God himself in human form, as an active part of history, yet beyond history. As impossible as this seems from our reality, we can use Kastrup to say that Jesus realized both the knot of our reality, and its place in the ultimate, timeless void that we call God. In that position, he would be above the rules of our reality and really could, as easy as pie, raise the dead and walk on water. We could do it, too – but only if our reality became more a plaything, a backdrop to the Real. To do this, we would have to undue our reality completely without becoming totally, screamingly insane.
The question still remains, though – who or what sent these avatars, or this God? Kastrup does not explain it well enough for me, for he does not seem to see direct participation of God in our world. Rather, he takes a colder, more Eastern approach. I disagree, as any Christian would. It is far more comforting to me to believe that God, through His representative in our reality, really cares. The Christian problem, however, is in confusing the God with the man, as most of us do, which inhibits progress towards the Real.
Which, to wrap things up, is what the Marxists and ideologues do in their own way as well. They confuse the sign – that which indicates an immediate reality expressed in language – with symbol – that which points to something well outside itself. The materialist ideologues will never go far towards their utopia, because they will never question the deep-base fundamentals of reality. The religious, however –as far out as their myths appear to some – are ideally situated, because true religion is true symbol – pointing out for us the exit sign that can lead us beyond this reality, and beyond death. FK
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