What must be the ‘non-negotiables’ into any authentic discussion of the nature and significance of the Psyche?
·
First of all is its central siting within the larger scheme of things; it stands astride the two domains of Transcendence and material Existence·
Actual Manifest Value is to be found solely within the interiority of the conscious moment.·
Self-examination has a variety of roles to playO The Phenomenalist mission –the description and analysis of what is directly given
O The dispatch of ‘Naïve Realism’ opens up an entirely novel mode of introspection; for we now know ourselves to be immersed within configurations crafter from mental substance. As such, an introspective exploration with the directly given Cartesian Theatre -with this born in mind- cannot but make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Mind/Brain relationship.
O It is out of our own nature alone that we can approach a resolution of most of the "Great Questions" of our existence that have disturbed our sleep since mankind emerged into explicit self-consciousness. Taken in the large, this manifests as the discipline of Existentialism seeking to provide an approach to the larger Reality through what the interior view directly gives us.
·
With regard to the latter, it must not be forgotten that Existentialism cannot stand alone. It must be drawn into the kind of coherent cognitive-intellectual scaffolding or framework that Systems Philosophy alone can supply. Nor can we neglect the third of the great approaches to Reality –that of the Direct Encounter afforded by Mysticism. Ideally, the investigator needs to be architect (of ideas) poet and also a seer. This is a tall order, especially regarding the latter yet there can be few of us who have not enjoyed and benefited from the epiphany of the "golden Moment" –those insights that come unbidden from nowhere.The ontology of Neutral monism -expressed symbolically by the slender inequality: I <= H confers unique properties and characteristics upon the nature of the psyche ( I is the individualistic aspect of the entity and H its holistic grounding). At one and the same time,
· Pluralism is no latter-day offshoot or invention of the Holistic Source -as most of Western religion would assert, but absolutely essential to its constitution. Without Pluralism -without you and I for example, there could be no Holism
· We are begotten rather than created -and in a far deeper sense than has been contemplaed by some panentheist theologians. We are aspects of the holistic Presence, not pluralist additions. Eckhart's "....God is closer to me than I am to myself" truly comes home to roost. This has the profoundest of impacts upon eschatology.
· At its deepest, our individuality reaches beyond the logic of the quidditas. To the contrary, it is haecceity grounded; each of us is incorrigibly unique, because of the multiplicity-from-unity logic of our singularity.
· This leads to a redefinition of pronouns. Each of us in looking out upon the world of other beings finds himself standing, as it were, within a hall of mirrors. It's not the ' I ' -which is me- observing a population of 'Yous' but upon other ' I 's each of which appears as a variant of myself. 'Yous' are an illusion of perspective.
· The first of the two illustrations below illustrates a progressive merging of two putatively identical men; in this twinning sequence, when does it become appropriate to speak of a unity rather than a duality? A what point, if any, does the couple become one, and if so, upon what precise ontological grounds?
· The role and significance of the pluralism which you and I exemplify is vastly extended; we are more than essential partners in managing the process of evolution -that of converging the cosmos to a single global being. We -and those who follow- must do the whole job.
The second illustration below portrays a graded series of options in the dualistic aspect of the mind/brain relationship. The third of the series -a rather slender one- is that which I have taken to follow from the neutral monism ontology. This is extensively explored within the chapter
