Relatively absolute

George G Clark, 04 August 2008

I still hanker after the  correct answer, after the truth, after cognitive closure. And this is despite an intellectual appreciation of the postmodern position. There remains a feeling that 'they' know and that it is 'our' job to fall in line with their viewpoints. Hegemony and elegant power reign supreme.

Postmodernists talk of the social construction of reality and of the death of metanarrative. We cannot know things as they are in themselves we can know only the perceptions that we build from our conceptions. Cultural relativism: anything goes?

But mystics speak of another kind of knowing, of a perennial philosophy. This is most often  effectively dormant and unseen because the chatter of the normal (intellectual) mind drowns it out. But IF the chatter is stilled THEN the inner mind kicks in. This makes the paucity of normal perceptions and viewpoints immediately clear. Numinousness appears and the limitations of the normal phenomenal mind become blatantly obvious.

This other kind of knowing might be thought of as relatively absolute. Absolute because it is built in to all human brains and relative because it is found only in human brains and only when the cultural dust is removed from the mirror mind. Might a key social task be to popularise the notion of turning your mind around and thus liberating your full potential as a human being?

"Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the famous revolutionary pronouncement that: 'Men are born free, and everywhere are in chains'. A couple of centuries later that still holds truth for us, but now we see that the strongest chains are symbolic ones, mind forged manacles." (Anderson, p219)

 

Digging deeper:

The reference list could be very long. I will mention only a few sources that have recently enthralled me:

Anderson, Walter Truett (1996 Ed) The Fontana post-modern reader; ISBN 0006863701 Anderson's link pieces are particularly clear and useful

Mind and Life Institute (2003) Destructive Emotions and how to overcome them – a dialogue with the Dalai Lama narrated by Daniel Goleman; ISBN 0747561826 – the cutting edge findings from the brains of ace meditators studied by ace scientists.

Gunaratana, Henepola (1991) Mindfulness in Plain English; ISBN 0861710649 – the text is also available on a website.

And Dharma talks about the practice of mindfulness by the good people at Dharma Seed. There is a long list to choose from (including Gunaratana): I personally like the clarity and quiet good humour of Steve Armstrong and Carol Wilson.