A Few Thoughts On Thinking

To be conscious is to be awake, alert, purposeful, aware of one’s “place” in the whole of reality. 

Some persons appear to be awake, but when questioned, it turns out that their mind was unfocused, or barely awake, or almost in a semi-dreaming state: You speak to them, and they say, “Whaaaat? Where am I? What’s happening’, man?” It seems to me that many persons, much of the time, are in this semi-dreaming state between genuine alert wakefulness and full sleep. They are unconsciously conscious, or unwakefully awake. To be truly awake and alert, open to reality and responsive, takes much work, practice, dedication, love. It is all too easy for a human being to sit or lie down, and enter into a kind of twilight zone of mindlessness. Television watching encourages this kind of unconscious consciousness. By the effects on consciousness, every television show is, to some extent, a variety of “The Twilight Zone.” 

To be mindfully conscious, alert and responsive, is no easy task, and seems to be especially difficult and all-too-uncommon in our present culture. Bodies move around, or sit on a sofa, or mouths move, but not much thought or awareness of reality is exhibited. For example, much of what passes for political discourse is nearly a mindless mouthing of words, slogans, or lawyerly smokescreening, detached from practical reality. For a man of common sense, such verbal meanderings are quickly recognized as “b s.” The politician I have heard the most words from in my life is Barack Obama, as he has so often appeared in the news, talking—more Twilight Zone. Much of what he says exemplifies what I call lawyerly smokescreening. He says many words to avoid saying something of pithy and of consequence. Politicians of both parties engage in the same verbal games. They are not thinking or dialoging with us, or engaging our minds, but seeking to dominate minds by mere verbiage. The right purpose of speaking is to engage other minds, to open us up more fully to reality, and not to dominate, confuse, baffle, or entomb our minds. 

                                                        Dialectics and eristics 

What is thinking? Thinking in the proper sense is a movement of thought from one point to another, if in the practical sphere, leading to a decision and taking action. Intellectual thinking, in which one explores some problem or question, is far better done in writing, because writing channels and disciplines the mind. “Wool gathering” or anxiously going over any matter is not really thinking, but a form of neurotic worrying. Much of what people call “thinking” is anxious worrying, not a genuine search for truth leading to insight or to concrete action in the world. 

To think in the intellectual sense is to pose questions and to explore answers. For example: What are the differences between constructive thinking and anxious, worrisome “thoughts”? Much of what is called “thinking” in our society is not thinking in the proper sense, but spinning of words or images in the mind, not leading to action or definite insight. Genuine thinking requires a discipline of the will, hard work, and an ongoing search for truth. If one is not seeking, how can one find? If one does not question, what could “answers” possibly mean? 

Following Plato, I wish to distinguish two kinds of “thinking” that may appear as intellectual, or constructive, or as searches for truth. One kind he terms “dialectics,” the other he calls “eristics.” Dialectical thinking is a search for truth within the in-between of existence, as the human inquirer questions reality as it presents itself to him in consciousness. This genuine thinking is in truth a movement between the divine and human partners in being. One who thinks in this mode is not alone, isolated, or self-enclosed, or “introspecting.” Nor is he or she speculating on what might be, or on some imagined deity dwelling “out there” somewhere—in the Twilight Zone. Dialectical thinking is a response to the divine mind moving one to question and to seek the truth. And this kind of thinking is limited to the exploration of concrete experiences, to reality as it presents itself to consciousness. It is a movement within reality; or in other words, reality is becoming conscious in the thinking of the one seeking truth that emerges between the divine and human partners. Dialectically, one questions because one is moved to question; and the one who seeks, finds. “What are you seeking?” are the first words of the Christ in the Gospel of John. One seeks by questioning reality as it presents itself to consciousness. 

Eristics is argumentative, speculative, intellectualistic, and not grounded in experienced reality. The best examples of eristic thinking in our western culture came from hardened religious positions taken over centuries: one accepts or “believes” certain dogmas or opinions, and then argues about them, trying to instill the same opinions in others. At least since the Enlightenment of the late 18th century, religious “thinking” or “beliefs” became far less tolerated by the intellectual elites, who turned instead to ideological, secular, political, inner-worldly eristics. Whether liberal, conservative, progressive, Hegelian, Marxist, feminist, or so on, these “thinkers” engage in the semi-conscious and more or less irrational practice of eristics: speculating or “reasoning” about matters outside of the human-divine in-between, and seeking to replace reality with a second reality, an imagined world. The genuine exploration of reality engaged in by scientists exploring real problems is a wholly different matter; but speculating on science and its place in culture is often a matter of either “science fiction” or scientism, the latter being an ideological elevation of “science” to the position of a monopoly of truth about reality. A physicist may know much about the causes and effects of gravity, for example, but that knowledge tells him virtually nothing about the nature of consciousness and the human condition. Philosophy dialectically explores the in-between reality of consciousness; eristics speculates on reality or realities more or less divorced from concrete experiences of consciousness. 

In this regard, a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist, a progressive intellectual, and a Marxist are essentially doing the same thing: speculating on reality without due recourse to concrete experiences of consciousness. If one were to examine actual states of consciousness rather than mere doctrinal or scriptural beliefs, one may well discover that there is no essential difference between a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist or “believer.” Differences among concrete human beings may emerge if one asks real questions: “Does this person truly love God and neighbor? Is this person seeking to do good, to enhance life, or destroy it? Is this person seeking truth, or does he presume that he has already discovered truth? What actions is this person actually taking to do the will of the that which he calls “God” or “Allah”? Similarly, one can ask of the true believing Marxist: “How does he or she really live? Are they open to the truth of reality as it presents itself to consciousness, or do they seek to impose on reality pre-conceived intellectualistic categories? What is the end state of human society according to the Marxist conception? Can violent action now truly produce a state of peace and justice? Can human beings truly “change the world” as Marx said; or are there fundamental structures in reality which all beings, including human beings, must observe and respect? What are these fundamental structures that transcend human volition and action? What is the nature of reality in which we exist? Or should one follow Marx’s dictum: “Do not think. Do not ask questions,” because the “socialist man” does not ask such questions, but “knows” that he “creates himself by his own labor.” 

To think properly requires that one work within the given structures of reality, and seeks to explore these structures, “the nature of things” as they were called by the ancients. The sphere of human action, and what may be changed for the better, requires discovery, and working within the limits set on human activity. It is the old lesson taught by the story of Daedalus and Icarus: one must not seek to fly either too high, or too low, but stay within the limits set by reality. Dialectical thinking, or philosophy, seeks to understand human being’s place within the mysterious whole of reality, and to help us adjust to that reality, and make the best of our apportioned time of living on earth—or rather, our existence between time and eternity. For present human existence is mysterious indeed, as we participate by our bodies and minds in the whole range of reality, from inert matter up to the mind of God. Our lot is to explore the realms of reality, seeking truth and doing good within the relatively brief compasses of our lives; and to do so even as we stretch ourselves out towards “that which is immortal and everlasting,” sharing even now, by “faith working through love,” in what is by long tradition called “God.” 

To be conscious is to explore the truth of existing within the whole of reality, and to move, by “the voice of this calling and the drawing of this love” into eternity present here and now.

On Listening to Beethoven's Late Quartets

Sitting quietly at Felix House, I have been listening once again to the slow movements from Beethoven’s late quartets.

A few observations:  In Beethoven’s major compositions, he is ever concerned with God, in some form. In such works as the Eroica and 5th Symphonies, Beethoven is in a state of open rebellion against God, against his fate, against going death, against mortality itself.  He may have conflicts with particular human beings, but they largely reflect his inner conflict with God.

In the late quartets, for reasons of which I am not sure, one can hear that Beethoven is communing with the divine partner of his soul.  Some struggle remains, but it is within the partnership, not against it. Beethoven’s late quartets are composed within the Metaxy, within the Platonic in-between, the realm of the spiritual, between God and human being.  In listening to these quartets, one is listening to an inner dance, a conversation between two lovers in four voices.  It is not that some instruments represent the one, and some the other partner; rather, the two are ever together, moving in harmonies with one another, playing together in various senses of the word.  

If one wants to know what Plato-Voegelin means by the in-between, and the mature Jung by the psyche, listen to Beethoven’s late quartets.  They arise from within the in-between, and this reality gives the music not only its unearthly-earthly beauty, but a kind of inevitability or ineluctability about it:  from the first few notes of a given (slow) movement, one can hear the seemingly effortless, “natural,” inevitable unfolding of sound.  It is what it must be, and its being is a sheer gift, not only to the composer, but through Beethoven to anyone who enters into his songs of divine-human communion through the art of listening between.

Ah, the Cavatina: adagio molto espressivo from the Quartet #13 in B-Flat.  Listen.  How thankful to be alive, to be able to sing together, to listen to one another.  Beethoven is delighting in his immortal Beloved, who may be embodied in a human being, but who is first and foremost the divine presence within his soul, and is now embodied in exquisite, metaleptic music.  And not only in one movement, but in the whole set.  Listen to the Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile from the Quartet #12 in E-Flat. To listen well is to enter into that which is heard, so that it is coming, as it were, from the depths within one’s psyche. The music truly heard is also one’s own communal song with God.

Goethe wrote words to the effect that listening to a good string quartet is like listening to four adults in conversation. Perhaps, as when hearing Mozart or Haydn, or early or middle quartets by Beethoven. But in listening to the late quartets of Beethoven, one is hearing two in conversation:  the divine and human partners of the in-between, the psyche open to the fullness of reality, and especially to the ground from which all blessings flow. 

Closed Heart + Closed Mind = Living in Hell

Christ’s story of the rich man and Lazarus, as told by St. Luke, packs a punch. If you do not feel personally confronted or convicted by it, then you should wonder if you are spiritually dead. Or at least take your pulse to see if your heart is still beating. To be spiritually dead is to have a heart insensitive to the workings of God and the sufferings of human beings; to be spiritually dead is to have a mind closed to the divine breaking in Here and Now. 

The rich man in the story is not named, because he is you, he is me. He is not moved by the man dying of hunger on his doorstep; nor is he aware that God is visiting him in the same beggar. Indeed, the living God is pleading for the rich man to get up from his table and feed the one who is starving, feed Jesus Christ in the form of the dying man. If the rich man were open to the presence of God in his own soul, he could not be closed to the real needs of the man-Christ on his doorstep. No one can love God and be deaf to the cries of his fellow human beings. A hard-hearted human being is less moved by the God of compassion than is a dog who licks the poor man’s sores, seeking to heal his wounds and comfort him. As the end of the story tells us, this man has cut himself off from God, now and into eternity. In his lifetime, he may hear Moses and the prophets, but his hearing is superficial, does not penetrate his stoney heart. As many times as he has heard the Scriptures read, he is not moved to action by the impassioned words of the prophets: “I was hungry, and you gave me no food; I was grieving, and you did not comfort me.” The rich man lives in luxury and at ease, but in fact he is already living in hell. And what is hell? A self-enclosed, self-contracted, self-absorbed life. Hell is a human being closed to the life-giving God. 

I wonder if those who knew this rich man realized that he was living in hell on earth? Knowing people, most of them probably envied this fellow because he was rich. They wanted to be like him. They did not stop and think about the rich man’s soul—or inner life, or sheer lack of inner line. Nor did this fellow consider his inner wretchedness. No doubt he thought about his “stuff,” his loot, his belly, and “having fun,” to use our terms. His body may have been sleek and sound, his balding head well-oiled and shiny, but his soul was like a shrunken head, and rock hard. Although alive in body, he is dead in spirit. And that is what we call “hell.” 

The story is not meant to provide fodder for speculating on the afterlife, but that is the way it has often been used or abused by Christian interpreters. Words about Lazarus being “carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham,” about “a vast chasm that prevents anyone from crossing over,” about “suffering torment in these flames,” and so on, are all poetic images meant to communicate spiritual reality: being open to God and alive with God’s love; or being hard-heartedly closed to God and to his creatures, and living a hellish life even on earth, as sketched out above. And of course how we live now affects our eternal destiny, for living in eternity begins now. In telling this story, Jesus is not trying to feed speculation about what happens after death. Rather, he is warning his hearers to wake up, open one’s heart and mind to God coming to them in the needs of others, and to leave one’s self-contained “comfort zone” and take God’s compassion to those who suffer. 

To be hard-hearted, indifferent to the sufferings of others, closed to the cries of God in his creatures, is the worst fate for a human being. To allow the real needs of others to penetrate one’s heart and mind is the price of being truly alive with and in God. That is the lesson I hear Jesus teaching in this powerful little story. What do you hear? Or are you listening?

A Note On Forms Of Knowing: Philosophy-Science-Mystical Experience

Voegelin demonstrates that and how the complex consciousness-reality-language must be held together in tension, and studied together.  I think that there is another complex, one of knowing, that must be explored together:  philosophy-science-mystical experience.  None of these three forms of knowing reality is sufficient in itself, but all three must be used together to understand reality.  

Without philosophy, mystical experience can degenerate into incoherence, or gnosis, or dogmatic fundamentalism.  In common usage, the word “mystical” often means a kind of incoherent truth—“begins in mist and ends is schism.”  Without philosophy, science can degenerate into scientism, grounded on mistaking intentionality (knowing of things in the external world) as the only form of knowing; and science blossoms into philosophy when the scientist asks the questions beyond the range of intentionality, questions of ultimate reality.  To borrow Leibniz’ two fundamental questions:  “Why is there something, why not nothing?”  and “Why is the world as it is, and not some other way?”  These are questions for a philosopher, and I would think that at least some scientists allow them to bubble up into consciousness from time to time as they pursue their knowledge of structures in the world, of “de rerum naturae.”

Philosophy without mystical experience degenerates rapidly into logic chopping, into word games, into sterile definitions, or sophistry, or “metaphysics,” or even atheism or nihilism.  Anyone who seeks to speak about the divine, for example, must ever keep in mind the tension between knowing and unknowing, between revelation and unrevealed reality, so well summarized by Voegelin:  “Even when the divine Beyond reveals itself in its formative presence, it remains the unrevealed divine reality beyond its revelation”  (In Search of Order, p. 97).  Without such awareness, any claim to “revelation” degenerates into dogmatic beliefs, fundamentalism, biblicism, or at its worst, gnostic claims to certainty.  I know of no “religion” that does not embody the problem of degenerating mystical experience, and more generally, of the loss of contact with reality as experienced.  

Philosophy and science both begin in wonder, and proceed by questioning and seeking the truth about reality—seeking insights into the mysterious Whole in which we find ourselves. Science studies particular parts of the whole; philosophy seeks to understand something about the whole in which everything participates.  Philosophy has flourished without science, as in Plato; but Plato had a sharp knowledge of mathematics, language, political reality, and the like.  In Aristotle, philosophy and science blossomed together, although Whitehead’s claim that “Aristotle founded science, but ruined philosophy,” deserves at least some consideration.  (I have not seen a destruction of philosophy in Aristotle, but I am aware that some of Aristotle’s summary insights became taken as definitions or axioms for thinking in generations after him.  Example:  “man is the rational animal,” or “God is the First Mover,” and so on; and even compared to Plato, one often senses in drier passages of Aristotle some weakening of the grounding in mystical experience.)  The history of philosophy amply demonstrates that philosophers need to know what other philosophers have thought, as they enter into the historical dialogue that is an essential part of philosophy; and the study of history, as in the history of philosophy, requires historical science.  

In every direction in which my mind searches, I am quickly faced by the reality of my ignorance.  The Whole, the divine ground, the particular structures of reality, exploring consciousness itself—all arouse in me an undying, often disturbing sense of not-knowing.  This sense can be, and often has been, so intense that I have been tempted to give up the search for knowledge.  But then I ask myself:  What is the alternative to some search for truth about reality?  To indulge in a life of pleasure-seeking, or of money-making, or of various diversions?  It seems to me that the human task is to respond to beauty, to do good, and to seek the truth.  Beauty awakens wonder and gratitude.  Doing good brings happiness and pleasure.  Seeking truth enlightens the mind and delights the heart.  What else is life for, but these fundamental human activities?  

Addendum:  Three wonders.

Often I experience three wonders, or have three wonder-filled experiences, at the beginning of each day:  the move from sleep / dreaming into waking; seeing that Moses is alive, although usually soundly asleep at that time; and seeing the stars above when I first step out of the house.  In a sense, these three experiences all affirm life:  that I am alive; that one I love is alive; and that the whole cosmos is alive with astounding beauty.

"Who Is This God?"

Who is Christ? And who is the God working and speaking in him? What is this God, who can be at once fully present in Jesus, present in those who respond to the divinity in Christ, and who at the same time is known to be beyond all understanding? What is the divine mystery unfolding around us and within us at every moment? Why do some find God in Christ, and others find only a fraud, or a “mere man”? Questions such as these are provoked by nearly every passage in the New Testament, as well as by our daily life experiences. One must be spiritually quite dull not to have such questions stirred up as one hears the Gospel read at Mass, sits down to read the Scriptures, or wonders about the Stranger who is always breaking into consciousness: “Who are you, LORD?” In the words of the Apostle, “If you think you know, you do not know as you ought to know.” 

To those who were spiritually dull, resisting or simply inattentive to the actions of God in and around them, St. Luke presents Jesus telling three parables of the lost. Taken literally, the stories are sufficiently absurd as to provoke wonder in those who are still able to be curious and ask questions. Why would a shepherd leave ninety-nine sheep in the desert to go in search of one stray? It would be foolish to do such things—to risk the safety of so many sheep for one lost stray. Is it possible that Jesus is not actually talking about human shepherds, or about a woman searching for a lost coin, or about a father with two spiritually dull boys? What is he talking about? Jesus is allowing the unknown God he calls “my Father” to work on the minds of his hearers through seemingly absurd stories. And the first divine action is to break through dullness by provoking wonder and questioning. The third story, known as the “prodigal son,” demonstrates the refusal of Jesus’ own contemporaries to recognize divine presence in him. Those who “believe in God,” who are the Chosen People, are blind to the reality of God in their midst. Jesus does not fit into their religious categories—nor into ours. The older son in the story represents those who resent God’s mercy and grace given to others. Jesus is verbally confronting his self-important hearers, who are disgusted at seeing Jesus forgive known sinners, and show favor to the “unwashed masses.” They are refusing to renounce their own thoughts and feelings and enter into the joy of God’s inexplicable action in Christ. 

Many of us Christians are as spiritually insensitive and dull as were the Jewish scholars and righteous folks to whom Jesus spoke these parables. Thinking ourselves Christians, or instructed in the gospel through the Church, all too often we become fools—human beings who have lost our openness to the divine mystery. Told too many answers, we forgot our role to be seekers, questioners. At times we may realize that we have received God’s mercy and forgiveness, but we do not realize how we resist the actions of God, and refuse to “enter into the joy of the LORD.” We do not see how we Christians are the like the older son in Christ’s parable, who resent it when someone else receives divine mercy, treated as a returned child. We show ourselves to have the hardened and resentful attitude of the older son by failing to appreciate God’s mercy on the Chosen People, on unbelievers, on every being in this mysterious cosmos. To us Jesus says, “Refusing to enter in God’s presence yourselves, you prevented others from entering.” 

Jesus taught us no doctrine of God or of Christ.The New Testament documents, beginning with the letters of the Apostle Paul and the Gospels, present the truth of God through actions, images, stories, and puzzling words. To one longing for God, still seeking “the face of God,” the account of the merciful father in Jesus’ parable brings joy and hope. As you may have noticed, the father in the story of the prodigal son has a remarkable resemblance to Jesus himself. He cannot be confined by religious practices or doctrinal formulations. He is alive, waiting for our response, even running out to meet those who seek to turn back to him. Christ himself is “the exact image of the unseen God,” because “in him dwells all the fullness of God.” The spiritually dull and blind did not only fail to respond to God in Christ; they had the brutal Romans crucify him.