Are We Missing the Obvious??

A monk of the 12th century Alanus de Insulis, in his De Incarnatione Christi states: 

"Every creature of the world is for us a book, picture and a mirror."

The Archbishob Fulton Sheen too thought in a similar line and said, " Each human being is a book issued from the divine press." One needs to read what a human being is while carefully learning each pages of the book. 

Now what happens when we read a book? We may not understand fully what the author means until we are familiarised with the context, the historicity of the text, the language and all that are involved in the making of a text. Interpretations abound. This is the reason why we have many books issued from many printing presses throughout the world.

Understandings and perspectives are too different. Is there any definitive answer to what is true? What is life? and such profound questions.

Bernard Lonergan tried to find a common ground that is operative in every human being - UNDERSTANDING. Religion cannot be a common ground because we see varieties of organised religion and varieties of religious experiences. Language can or cannot be a common ground because of the fact that there are many existing languages. Culture cannot be a common ground with the differences in culture every nook and corner of the universe. Understanding is of course a common ground because in every human being there is a structure of understanding. This consists in- 

Experience = The fact that we have seen how water boils at 100 degree celsius. It is our experience. This experience consists in merely observing the process of happening (water in the bowl, fire that heats up the water and the end result of the cold water becoming hot).

Understanding = our understanding explains our experience. This is a process prior to judgement. Here we know intuitively the truth before conceptualisation. 

Judgement = This consists in formulating what has been observed and understood and finally stating the fact in coherence with the phenomena observed. 

Now My question is Do we understand everything? It is an impossible task to understand the reality as a whole.But we can know a part of the whole.  Stephen Hawking realizes this fact. He says that it would be very difficult to construct a complete unified theory of everything all at one go (Stephen Hawking, Theory of Everything, 111). We have many fields of knowledge today. As there are many specialities, we have as many specialists. It is enough to look at the way different specialists treat the human body - we have dentists who specialize themselves in the care of teeth, the ENT specialists (ear, nose and throat), the orthopaedics (the branch of medicine concerned with injuries and diseases of the bones and muscles), the oculist (doctor who examines and treats people's eyes), general physician, etc., 


Our human body itself calls for specialization. If I want to get a hair cut, I cannot go to a tailor. Cutting hair is an art and a profession. The fact that awe are endowed with a body, no one can claim that we create unemployment. Our body and the care of it simultaneously create dignified jobs also with the possibility of the misuse of the human body. ( a diversion here - prostitution is also an undignified profession...... human body is subjected to this too..... this in turn creates the need for safety sex, the production of condoms, etc... if people contract AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases, there again arises the need for hospitals, doctors, medicine, money, the workforce and the like). To cover my nakedness, I Need other expertise - The artisans who weave clothes, the people who bring it into the market, the tailors who stitches clothes, etc... After having mentioned the above, I need only to state one fact which definitely resonates with Raimundo Panikkar that we are all "in an interconnected web."

Do we not seem to neglect what is presented before us? Are we not missing the obvious while seemingly preoccupied with ourselves? We may not understand everything, but this does not mean that we need to give up our striving to understand. I may not understand electricity and yet I enjoy the benefits of it. I don't know how it works. But I do know this - You can cook a man's dinner with electricity and you can also cook the man. On the other hand, Sometimes it makes me wonder that "man is a great creator with the potency for great destruction."

Myths and Stories

I like Myths and stories. The other day I was reading the magazine Teenager and I came across with few interesting myths or stories. I wish to put them down.

"From Pain comes poetry" (The idea of a heart-break and inspiration for poetry)

Valmiki once saw a hunter shoot one of a pair of love-birds. The survivor bird wailed around its beloved, circled around it a thousand times, and finally dashed against the ground to kill itself. Valmiki who saw this cursed the heartless hunter and the curse took the form of a verse. Thus was born the first poetry. As Valmiki said, "From pain comes poetry."

Story of Tobacco.

Tambaku, the daughter of a tribal chieftain whom no man wanted to marry despite the bridal price her father was willing to pay. she was too ugly! So she killed herself and the gods decreed that she would be born as the tobacco plant that every man who crave to put in his mouth. Thus, they would always want her and she would eventually kill them.

I will add on to it later.......

TIME

I have been thinking of writing something about time since the moment we entered into the New Year 2011. I often wondered at the question – what is new in the New Year? A day has 24 hours; a year has 364 days and a day is divided into day and night. What is really new in this? Perhaps this year calls me to understand that “I am in time” and there is “time for everything.”

The Bible tells us that the normal life span of a human being is 70 and 80 for those who are strong. The introductory chapter of the Ecclesiastes begins with the reflections of a royal philosopher. He begins, “vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” He goes on to say –

A generation goes, and a generation comes but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises… All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full, to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow…

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done;

There is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1: 4-9)

This reminds me of one of the verses from the Tirukkural,

You are on the path that has been walked by many great human beings before you. Your experience is not unique. Just keep the faith and continue choosing to go deeper and deeper within yourself. All of the answers that you are looking for are within you.

In his book, The Go Between, L.P. Hartley wrote, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there – but why is the past so different from the future? Why do we remember the past, but not the future? In other words, why does time go forward? (Stephen Hawking, The theory of Everything, 97).

When Martin Heidegger first came to Vienna and visited Viktor Frankl at his home, he agreed with Frankl’s concept of the past. Heidegger autographed something in German in a picture taken:

                        Das Vergangene geht;

                        Das Gewesene kommt

                        The English translation of it is:

                        What has passed, has gone;

                        What is past, will come.

In Logotherapy, “Having been” is also a mode of being, the safest mode. In the phrase “being past” Logotherapy places the emphasis on “being.” Frankl was questioned by the transitoriness of human life. He says,

The transitoriness of life cannot destroy its meaning because nothing form the past is irretrievably lost. Everything is irrevocably stored. It is in the past that things are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. Whatever we have done, or created, whatever we have learned and experienced – all of this we have delivered into the past. There is no one, and nothing that can undo it (Frankl, Recollections, 29).

  

For St. Augustine time is the “Present” – present of things past (memory), a present of things present (sight) and a present of things future (expectation). He further says about time:

If nothing passed, there would be no past time

If nothing were approaching, there would be no future.

If nothing were, there would be no present time.

Frankl was acutely aware of the transitoriness of human existence and he asks how one can find meaning in life when everything seems to be passing. He says, “Face to face with life’s transitoriness we say that the future does not yet exist; the past does not exist any more; the only thing that really exists is the present.”[1] It is in the present moment that one qualifies life and seeks meanings to fulfill conscientiously and responsibly. He does not reduce the three aspects of time – past, present and future into one. His understanding of the “time” is different from that of existentialism[2] and quietism[3] following from the traditions of Plato and Augustine. Existentialism is pessimistic about the present because of the belief that everything is unstable and changing.[4] Quietism, on the other hand, leads to fatalism, because it advocates that “everything already is,” therefore, nothing can be changed and there is no point in action.” In understanding the serious aspect of time, Frankl is tragically optimistic about the present, past and places hope in the future.

And in my cosmology class, all that I could remember about time is the definition: “Time is the number of motions with regard to before and after.”

There are many things to be understood about time...

For the concept of time in Indian Mythology, kindly access - http://www.templenet.com/beliefs/concept_of_time.htm

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             [1] Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, 102.

                [2] Existential philosophy asserts that in the seeming nothingness of man, one can still find meaning. Existential philosophy calls this as “tragic heroism” – saying yes to life inspite of its transitoriness.

                [3] Queitism conceives time as imaginary.  The past, the present and the future are mere illusions of our consciousness. (Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, 103.) Here, eternity rather than the present is the true reality. Quietism in the tradition of Plato and Augustine consider time as eternity – what is meant by eternity is a simultaneous world that encompasses present, past and future. For Augustine, “there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future,” Augustine, Confessions, 11/XX, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans., F. J. Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943). Hence, for Augustine, time is always the present, present in the mind as memory, sight and expectation, hence simultaneous.

                [4] Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning, 103.

Meaning is All that I Encounter

Viktor Frankl is of the view that being human is always directed, and pointing, to something, or someone other than self.[1]

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenologist stunningly identifies the reality of meaning. He says, ‘because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.’[2]                

Meaning is all that I encounter in my daily living moment by moment. Our whole life is a meaningful encounter with realities around. An the meaning of life can differ from person to person. Let us consider what Viktor Frankl has to say about meaning in life: 

The meaning of life, Frankl says, differs ‘from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.’[3]

Bernard Lonergan explains the fact that meaning is embodied or carried through arts, language, symbols, lives and deeds of persons and in human intersubjectivity.

The following is an illustration of how meaning is carried.


1. Meaning is carried through the intersubjectivity of feelings and actions.

Intersubjectivity occurs in spontaneous mutual aid:  Giving your hand spontaneously (not deliberately) to save one from falling (one does it not before it occurs but while it is occurring) is an apt example to enunciate the phenomena of the intersubjectivity of action.

A Spontaneous giving of hand to help someone

Intersubjectivity appears also in some of the ways in which feelings are communicated. Lonergan takes the hint from Max Scheler’s distinction of feelings – community of feeling[4], fellow feeling[5], psychic contagion[6], emotional identification[7].

Consoling

Berieved parents  

            

            

              

Undifferentiated consciousness

Strikes

The aspect of Intersubjectivity can also be explained through the phenomenology of a smile.

A smile does have a meaning and it is highly perceptible. The meaning of the smile and the act of smiling are natural and spontaneous. We do not learn to smile as we learn to walk, to talk, etc. we do not learn the meaning of smiling like learning the meaning of words. The meaning of a smile is a discovery on our own. The meaning does not seem to vary from culture to culture. It cannot be reduced.

It is different from linguistic meaning.[8] Smile is global and it has the intersubjective meaning, because meaning is not about some object. It reveals or even betrays. There is no inference. It is transparent.

2. The second carrier of meaning is Art.

It is enough to look at the art work on the coverpage of the Book, "The Wounded Healer" By Henri J.M. Nouwen. This piece of artwork sufficiently explains how it conveys meaning. Jesus was wounded for the sins of mankind. His wounds were the sources of healing. The concept of the wounded healer is a recent contemporary concept that is widespread in the psychological circle. It can mean that a person who has gone through suffering can as a result become a great source of wisdom, healing power and inspiration for others. The artist while working at the piece of art gives expression to his own experiences of suffering and intrumentalize his vision, imagination and meaning through the material production of the work of art itself.

3. The Third Carrier of Meaning is Symbols.

Symbol is an image of a real or imaginary object that evokes a feeling. Feelings are related to objects (desires food, enjoy meal, fears pain), to one another (to changes in the object – desires the good that is absent, disheartened if some evil happens, etc., related to one another through personal relationship) and to their subject. They change themselves to express the new affective capacities and dispositions needed for one’s growth. (eg. St. George and the dragon, Jonah’s whale.)

Symbols are very important for our growth, especially in understanding. When I was small I used to hear about the stories of Jonah the prophet, and St. George and the Dragon. My initial understanding was very minimal, but as the time went by I began to understand the hidden meanings of the symbols - Jonah stayed three days in the belly of the whale. As a child it was exciting to hear the stories without the implied meaning. Later I understood that Jonah's stay in the Belly of the Fish has a great significance since it parellels to the fact of the resurrection of Christ - His rising from the dead after three days. St. George symbolism is yet another illustration of hidden meanings. St. George overcomes the evil or rather he destroys the evil. Everyone has to fight against the evil one that stand against our spiritual gravitational pull.

4. Language

As we grow we also learn to talk in a language of our own. We are often initiated into the language by the mediated world of the adults. Then we learn with passion. We need words to express what we mean by what we want.

I remember having watched the Hindi Movie "Black". Rani Mukherjee learns with passion with the able guidance of Amitabh. We could clearly observe the intensity with which she learns each word and the desperation and the struggle to get the words to express the right thing at the right moment. Our language is full of implied and meant meaning. It is impossible to speak verbally without meaning anything. Language carries us through. It is through the language of the people that we enter into their hearts too.

Language orders one’s world and orients oneself within it. Language structures the world of the subject. Subject would mean the one who uses the language - we, you, he/she/they, etc. As language develops, there emerges a distinction between ordinary[9], technical[10] and literary language[11].

5. Incarnate Meaning

It combines all or at least many of the other carriers of meaning. It can be at once intersubjective, artistic, symbolic, and linguistic. It is the meaning of a person, of his way of life, of his words, of his deeds. It may be his meaning for just one person, for a group, for a nation, social, cultural or religious tradition.

For the Salesians Don Bosco is an incarnate meaning of the Charism - Da Mihi Animas Cetera Tolle (Give me souls and take away the rest). For Christians Christ is an incarnate meaning of all that means to be wounded, healed and saved.

Finally I would say that there are five acts of meaning:

1. Potential: this is the basic act of meaning. Here the  distinction between meaning and meant is not yet arrived (smile, work of art – interpretation by a critic is potentially intelligible)
2. The formal act of meaning: act of conceiving, thinking, considering, defining, formulating. There is a distinction meaning and meant. Here one is et to determine whether the concept is a an object of thought or more than that.
3. Full act of meaning. This comes when we do the act of judging.
4. Constitutive and effective acts of meaning: meaning rises to its active level and becomes communicative when it is used in human actions, decisions and judgments of values. It becomes effective in and through the individual and community.
5. Instrumental: this involves expressions. They externalize and exhibit for interpretation. (work of art for all the other acts of meaning)

          At last, everything is meaningful. Man is never devoid of meaning. We seek meaning. The fact that we are born, we are born to meaning....................And we seek for an ultimate meaning (God). Meaning cannot be reduced to any single element. Freud would reduce it to the Unconscious. It is significant to note the words of Rene Girard, who says,

"Man does not live by bread and sexuality alone, but he needs meaning."

Viktor Frankl observed the crisis of meaning today. He warns:

For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.[12]

               

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                [1] Frankl, “The Concept of Man in Logotherapy,” 74.
                    [2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans., Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) xix.

                    [3] Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 99.
                [4] Two or more persons respond in parallel fashion to the same object (parents express their emotion at the loss of their child)
                [5] A first person responds to an object, a second responds to the manifested feeling of the first
                [6] A matter of sharing another’s emotion without adverting to the object of emotion. (e.g. Strikes, mass-excitement. In general there is a disappearance of personal responsibility, a domination of drives over thinking, a decrease of intelligence level, and readiness for submission to a leader. It can be deliberately provoked, or exploited by political activists, entertainment industry, etc.
               [7] Either personal differentiation, a yet undeveloped or else there is a retreat from personal differentiation. (undeveloped differentiation – mother and child, retreat from differentiation – hypnosis, sexual intercourse)
               [8]Linguistic meanings tend to be univocal, smiles have a variety of different meanings – of recognition, welcome, appreciation, etc. linguistic meanings are propositional.
               [9] It is transient and used in day to day language. Expresses thought of the moment at the moment for the moment and it’s basis is commonsense.
               [10] As the common sense intelligence develops, there comes a time, when language is needed to distinguish field of specialization. In ancient time we have to distinguish people as fruit gatherers, hunters, gardeners, fishers, etc.
              [11] This is a permanent language.
              [12] Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978) 21.