Sunday, October 30th, 1977

WISDOM'S GOLDENROD, ALAN BERKOWITZ CLASS NOTES

(TYPED)

OCTOBER 30, 1977

EPISTEMOLOGY; SYMBOLIC FUNCTIONING

TOPIC: Epistemology

SUBJECT: Symbolic Functioning

SUBSUBJECTS: Senses as Entrances and Exits, Scholastics, Mentalism, AD Paper ("Scholastic Epistemology: Senses as Entrances")

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Rene Guenon, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta

• I.K. Taimni, Man, God, and the Universe

• C.G. Jung, CW 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, "Spirit and Life"

• S.N. Dasgupta, Yoga as Philosophy and Religion

• Paul Brunton, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga

DIAGRAM embedded in these notes:

• FIGURE 1977 1030-1-AB. Senses as Entrances and Exits correlate with Progressed and Diurnal Sun and Rulership and Exaltation Dignities of Houses 12, 10, 7, and 4.

AD PAPER read in class:

• "Scholastic Epistemology: Senses as Entrances"

TYPED AND REFORMATTED by IT 2022

NOTES:

• RETYPED HANDWRITTEN NOTES (hence V08). From Alan Notes 02 1977 to 06 1979.PDF.

• All capitalization and punctuation corrected, abbreviations spelled out.

1977 10/30 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

Epistemology; Symbolic Functioning

[Alan Notes 1030 1977 Begin]

10/30/77, Sunday

Epistemology - Symbolism

Senses as Exits and Entrances

Guenon, Man and His Becoming, Chapter 15 [Note: Rene Guenon, Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta.]

Man, God, and the Universe -- 423 ff. [Note: I.K. Taimni, Man, God, and the Universe.]

Jung -- Structure and Dynamics -- "Spirit and Life" -- images [Note: C.G. Jung, CW 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, "Spirit and Life".]

Yoga as Philosophy and Religion (Dasgupta) - p. 108 -- vasanas in citta (108) [Note: S. N. Dasgupta, Yoga as Philosophy and Religion, 1924 edition.]

Scholastic Epistemology: Senses as Entrances -- (Tony's paper) -- [Note: Tony is Anthony Damiani (AD).]

[Note: AB comments that the rest of the notes for this class are a combination of Anthony's paper and his commentary on it and it is difficult to tease them apart without looking at the paper itself, which I don't have access to.]

Two kinds of being -- conceptual and objective -- reason deals with former, extracting (abstracting) them from latter. Intention is 1) primary (pure sensation - alocana - prior to categorization) -- grasps a thatness, not what (quiddity) -- and 2) secondary -- whatness -- assigns a category or description to object -- logical concept of the thing, universal in the thing.

1) = indeterminate perception -- indifferent to universality or particularity.

2) = determinate perception -- a creation of the mind referring not to the thing itself but to its properties.

1) deals with forces in World-Mind, 2) with your understanding of them = individual and cosmic mentalism

How does (2) give knowledge of (1)? Scholastics assume a pre-established harmony between thought (2) and reality (1) -- concept has an extra-mental existence in thing as well as in our minds -- is not just a subjective fantasy. Knowledge is really of object (material cause) produced by our mind (efficient cause). One-to-one relation between universal in mind (concept in us) and second intention (universal in thing or real quality of object).

Aspects of knowledge -- (2) Mind is repository of all prior perception -- vasanas are ingrained in citta.

(3) Feeling-expectation constitutes experience (desire to repeat experience -- taijasa).

(1) Symbolific activity of consciousness projecting experience.

Object is constituted of form (combination of qualities) and matter (prakritic entity).

Mind can only grasp form of object, not matter.

Senses as exists project primordial image of world with you in it (experience of Witness-I) -- then within that image arises the epistemological problem of senses as entrances (= problem of Scholastics, problem in Hidden Teaching).

Object is composed of a number of vibrations which resonates with contents of citta and calls up corresponding and appropriate image.

[FIGURE 1977 1030-1-AB. Senses as Entrances and Exits correlate with Progressed and Diurnal Sun and Rulership and Exaltation Dignities of Houses 12, 10, 7, and 4. Facsimile scan from AB class notes.]

Entrance -- Scholastic starts with particular → universal -- from left to right.

Exit -- Mentalism starts with universal (Jupiter/Moon) → particular (Venus/Jupiter) -- right to left.

[Alan Notes 1030 1977 End]