I said earlier that \u00a0one aim of meditation is to \u201cto dis-cover the root of all thinking, that which is transcendentally-ontologically prior to all thinking.\u201d\u00a0 Tom Carroll asked me about this and what, if anything, it has to to with what Kant and Husserl mean by ‘transcendental.’<\/p>\n
1) The basic idea is that, below the surface of ordinary mind, with its chaos of thoughts, images, good and evil feelings, useful and useless memories, and other detritus, there lies a ‘depth dimension’ that some of us have experienced. It is ‘prior’ in some sense to ordinary mind\u00a0 and its discursive operations. The experience of this depth dimension cannot be brought about by one’s own effort. It occurs on its own initiative.\u00a0 Phenomenologically, the experience has a gift-character.\u00a0 It is as if one has been granted this experience by a Power external to oneself.\u00a0 Whether one has in reality been granted this experience by an external Power is a\u00a0 metaphysical question that goes beyond the phenomenology of the situation.\u00a0 But it is reasonable to take the experience as evidence of an external power that is prior to and deeper than anything on the phenomenal plane.<\/p>\n
One can have this experience, or gain this glimpse,\u00a0 without any preparatory spiritual exercises whatsoever.\u00a0 Or one can make preparations.\u00a0 The preparations at most prepare the soul; they cannot of themselves initiate the growth. If one prepares with discursive prayer, one first touches upon this depth dimension in the transition from what Augustin Poulain calls the “prayer of simplicity” to the non-discursive “prayer of quiet.” If one experiences this transition, then one has reached the initial and lowest level of mystical experience, properly so-called.\u00a0 See here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to the planting metaphor, there is a metaphor for this preparation from al-Ghazali that I like very much. A desert-dweller\u00a0 is more likely to catch a cooling breeze at the top of a minaret than at its base. So he climbs to the top of the minaret. But whether he is granted a cooling breeze is not in his power.\u00a0 So\u00a0 the first step into the mystical cannot be achieved by own-power alone.\u00a0 It is not just that own-power is insufficient; own-power is neither<\/em> necessary nor<\/em> sufficient. Other-Power, however,\u00a0 is both necessary and<\/em> sufficient. Preparations are merely ancillary or auxiliary.<\/p>\n 2) By ‘thinking’ I mean discursive thinking.\u00a0 So a meditator qua meditator is not a thinker. Discipline thinking is at best a springboard beyond discursion toward the transdiscursive.<\/p>\n 3) I said earlier that the root of all thinking is transcendentally-ontologically prior to all thinking. What sort of priority is this?<\/p>\n ‘Prior’ has several senses, among them: temporal, logical,\u00a0 transcendental, ontological.\u00a0 If one event occurs before another in time, then the first is temporally<\/em> prior to the second. The priority of the parts of a whole to the whole is in many cases logical<\/em> but not temporal.\u00a0 This is especially clear in cases in which neither the whole nor its parts are in time. The numbers 2, 7, and 9 are logically but not temporally prior to the set, {2, 7, 9}.\u00a0 \u00a0In this example there cannot be temporal priority because neither the parts (the elements) not the whole (the set) are in time.<\/p>\n In the case of a wall made of stacked stones, both whole (the wall) and the parts (the constituent stones) are in time. Moreover, the wall came to be at a time and will cease to be at a later time. Nonetheless, at any given time t<\/em> in the wall’s career, the stones at t<\/em> are logically,<\/em> not temporally, prior to the wall at t<\/em>.<\/p>\n A third example. The definitions and axioms in an axiomatic system are logically<\/em>, not temporally, prior to the theorems that follow from the axioms. And note that ‘follow’ here does not have a temporal sense, despite the fact that the writing of a proof on a blackboard involves a temporally sequential series of steps.<\/p>\n A fourth example.\u00a0 Trump and the true sentence ‘Trump exists’ uttered or written by someone both exist in time.\u00a0 Does the man exist because the sentence is true, or is the sentence true because the man exists? The latter. The existing man, as the truth-maker of the true sentence,\u00a0 is logically prior to the true sentence.<\/p>\n 4) Transcendental\u00a0 priority\u00a0 is different from both temporal and logical priority. It refers to the priority of consciousness over every object of consciousness, where ‘object’ is taken in a maximally broad way\u00a0 to cover concrete particulars, abstract particulars (tropes), events, event-sequences, abstracta (ideallia) of all sorts including Fregean propositions, mathematical sets of every cardinality,\u00a0 functions, series, finite and infinite, relations\u00a0 of consistency, inconsistency, and entailment, introspectible mental items whether intentional or non-intentional, Meinongian nonentities, concepts in minds, exemplified and unexemplified universals,\u00a0 all distinctions and differences between and among anything and anything else . . . , in short, everything that can be brought before consciousness\u00a0 as an object for<\/em> consciousness.<\/p>\n Transcendental consciousness is thus the ultimate Other to every actual and possible object in the maximally broad sense of the term.\u00a0 It is the ultimate condition of the\u00a0 possibility of anything’s appearing.\u00a0 You can think of it as the transcendental Light of mind without which nothing would appear, including physically illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or physical sources of physical light such as the Sun, or the lambent spaces between them.<\/p>\n 5) Ontologically prior to this transcendental Light stands its onto-theological Source.\u00a0 Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source of Transcendental Light upon entering into his “inmost being.” Entering there, he saw with his soul’s eye, “above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light.” He continues:<\/p>\n It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater 6) I didn’t get around to Kant and Husserl. Tomorrow’s another day.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I said earlier that \u00a0one aim of meditation is to \u201cto dis-cover the root of all thinking, that which is transcendentally-ontologically prior to all thinking.\u201d\u00a0 Tom Carroll asked me about this and what, if anything, it has to to with what Kant and Husserl mean by ‘transcendental.’ 1) The basic idea is that, below the … Continue reading “Meditation as Reduction to the Root of Ordinary Mind”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,41,106,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation","category-mysticism","category-spiritual-exercises","category-transcendental-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14144"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14150,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14144\/revisions\/14150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nlight of the same kind . . . Not such was that light, but
\ndifferent, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my
\nmind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my
\nmind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made
\nby it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows
\nit knows eternity. (Confessions<\/em>, Book VII, Chapter 10)<\/p>\n