Theos-Talk Archives (November 1999 Message tl00350)

In a message dated 11/27/99 5:08:16 PM Central Standard Time, dalval@nwc.net
writes:

> You are correct.  To make definition would require quite a lot of
>  explanation, depending on the level of perception and
>  introspection that any one has reached.

Your claim that to make a definition would require a lot of explanation
and depends on the level of perception and introspection I could
agree with if we are talking about degrees of finitude.  But then this
raises a question about how clear, distinct, and definite are the
cosmological ideas of HPB for any finite mind.  This question
arose while watching you and Jerry S debate/discuss aspects
of after death experience.  Consider.

Any finite definition or bit of meaning or bit of information or bit of
experience or bit of intelligibility is provisional, tentatively grasped
(but not in fullness), and subject to ambivalent and/or equivocal
readings so long as its integration into the total picture is not
grasped.  Or as ancients put it, the full meaning and significance
of a part is not definite (i.e., for a comprehending power defined)
fully until the whole it is a part of is seen.  This was Descartes'
error.  He clearly understood what it was to have a clear and
distinct idea but not that a finite cogito could not arrive at that.
As Plato and the Buddhists well know, logic and conceptual thought
and definition serves, as a means to an end, a variety of tasks.  But
it is based on the level or quality of experience or consciousness.
In modern psych-ward there is a lot of logic.  But it is based on
lousy and bad experience.  As Plato's Cave teaches us, quality
of logic (even if valid and no fallacies commited) is based on
quality of input.  So, the finite mind is itself Plato's Cave.  As
such, its grasp of anything is not definite.  Consider:

1. The bill is too large.

This sentence is a finite bit of meaning.  It is grammatically a
well-formed expression.  But, unless one is presumptiously
or naively confident in one's first impressions (literalism) of what
something means, one discovers it is equivocal.  Is the bill
a bird's beak, a cap's visor, or a sales ticket that is
charging too much money?  Notice in de-ambiguating
the sentence by bringing out its various senses/meanings
(actually bringing out the three semantic sentences behind
the one grammatical one), we had to provide context for it.
By adding the thought that a bird was meant as context,
we got one sentence.  By adding the thought that a cap
was meant as our interpretative context, we got another
sentence.  And so forth.  This is the process of including
a part within a bigger whole.  The question that always
arises until we are at infinity of meaning and intelligibility
(call it LOGOS) is whether we have provided the right
whole (did author mean bird, cap, or sales charge?).
Now it is easily shown that any sentence, any formula,
any concept, and theory is subject to just this same
type of process where it gains in definiteness of meaning
by providing context (i.e. putting the part into a whole) and
the vicissitude that what whole is the correct one remains
an open question until LOGOS.  At the simplest level,
as Chomsky has demonstrated, any sentence can have
"and" added to it with a new clause that changes the
overall import of the original sentence.  But there are
a variety of other ways this is done.

Now, if the the universe is not an absurd mechanism
and materialism is true, that is, if the universe is a
intelligible and meaningful whole, then at infinity the
universe IS the LOGOS.  The Real is itself the ultimate
and final meaning.  This means that there is a convergence
of meaning and reality.  That is, meaning is not one thing
and reality another ultimately.  But it also means, logically,
that literal definiteness of meaning exists only at infinity.
But if ultimately the meaning and the Real are identical,
any finite meaning or finite real will show the same kinds
of indefiniteness that we have looked at above.  Any finite
meaning, understanding, experience, or state of being
will be ambivalently indefinite.  So, here comes the
question posed to you, Dallas.  Jerry tried offering
the idea that post-mortem states might be interpreted
differently and that there was not just one normative
model (which you seemed to aver).  But isn't a certain
indefiniteness intrinsic to any finite state?  And might
any finite theory, such as HPB's, while not false may
not be literally true because literal definiteness exists
only at infinity.  This is the Dzog chen view of its
own cosmology of planes, higher bodies, and such
which is very similar to theosophy.  Short of infinity,
the nature and meaning of anything is indefinite,
open, empty of definitive self-nature, is not literally
as it seems, and not captured definitively by any
finite model that can be taken to be literal (since
the literal is LOGOS at infinity).

Grigor