Class
Wednesday, October 19th, 1983
Verbatim, unedited transcriptClick the series name to view more
CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY
with Anthony Damiani (AD)
October 19, 1983
PB PARAS; INTELLECT
TOPIC: PB Paras
SUBJECT: Intellect
SUBSUBJECTS: Reason, Intuition, Biological Intellect, "Eureka" Moments
CONTENTS:
THE INSUFFICIENCY OF INTELLECT AND REASON IN THE QUEST FOR TRUTH
"IF THE INTELLECT'S WORKINGS ARE NOT WARMED BY THE HEART'S MOVEMENTS, IT CAN ONLY APPROACH THE REFLECTED IMAGES OF TRUTH, NOT TRUTH"
REASON IS A FUSION OF A MYSTICAL AND AN INTELLECTUAL FACULTY
IS INTELLECT ALWAYS A TOOL OF THE EGO?
REASON CAN DECLARE CLEARLY WHAT THE OVERSELF IS NOT
MUST INTELLECT ALWAYS FUNCTION DUALISTICALLY?
CAN THE INTELLECT KNOW ITS SOURCE THROUGH MANIPULATING ITS OWN CONTENTS?
THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE LEADING IDEAS THAT DIRECT OUR THINKING
REASONED THOUGHT CAN REVEAL WHY REASON IS NOT COMPETENT TO JUDGE REALITY
THE INTELLECT IS THE TOTALITY OF BITS OF INFORMATION ABOUT HOW THE ORGANISM HAS RESPONDED TO ANY GIVEN SITUATION
IN A "EUREKA" MOMENT, TWO ABSOLUTELY INCONGRUOUS FRAMEWORKS THAT A PERSON LIVES IN ARE SOMEHOW BROUGHT TOGETHER
AN EXAMPLE OF SOMEONE FOOLED BY HIS OWN INTELLECT
WHAT BRINGS TOGETHER INCONGRUOUS FRAMEWORKS IN A "EUREKA" MOMENT?
BOOKS / ARTICLES READ FROM OR REFERENCED:
Paul Brunton, Notebooks. 16 vols; Vol. 1 entitled Perspectives [Persp.], published 1984-1988. Some Paul Brunton Notebook paras are, as of 2018, unpublished, and are noted as such.
Paul Brunton, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga
Paul Brunton, The Wisdom of the Overself
Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 2, "The Concept of Philosophy"
Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
Plotinus, The Enneads (MacKenna translation, 4th ed.)
Arthur J. Deikman, "The Meaning of Everything" (found in both books listed below)
Robert Ornstein (ed.), The Nature of Human Consciousness
John Welwood (ed.), Meeting of the Ways: Explorations in East/West Psychology
PLOTINUS QUOTES READ OR REFERENCED: IV.3.30
NOTES:
Pat Campbell transcript from 1983 exists (Scan File 1983 1019-11R04.PDF); other, earlier transcript versions may exist.
Unpublished PB paras should be sourced and proofread.
TRANSCRIBED Verbatim by IT 2019. Reformatted by JRM & JF 2019-2020, with Subheads and Table of Contents added by JRM. In 2023, IT fixes prefatory matter and footer, updates audio file name, fixes/completes Book List, adds Plotinus quotes section, fixes notes and adds new note within transcript, fixes minor errors/typos. In 2025, MW adds Subsubjects and alters Subheads to make more accurate. Archival verbatim transcript – V14.1a.
AUDIO FILES: 1983 1019a, 1983 1019b. [Note: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes that were later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files.]
1983 10/19 at Wisdom's Goldenrod
PB Paras; Intellect
Archival verbatim transcript
[Audio File 1983 1019a Begins]
RC: --as we were speaking of it last week. Unless you got a-- Looks like we have to kind of be a little roundabout, so-- [short pause] (See anybody) [couple/three words inaudible] sometime next week we'll have some idea what we're trying to talk about. There are a few long quotes to start with.
[short pause]
THE INSUFFICIENCY OF INTELLECT AND REASON IN THE QUEST FOR TRUTH
PB [V5, 7:8.1 & Persp., Ch. 7 #28, RC reading]: "The Insufficiency of Intellect and Reason (Essay)
"Intellect can perceive what belongs to reality, [RC adds: but] not reality itself. [S, very faint: You read this.] [S: Yeah.] The metaphysician deludes himself into thinking that he has seen the world in all its varied aspects, but what he has really seen is the world in all its intellectual aspects only. Moreover when he thinks that he has put together the results of one science with another, uniting them all into a harmonious whole, he omits to reckon that such are the limitations of human capacity and such [is] the rapidly growing vastness of scientific knowledge, that no man could ever combine all the multitudinous results. He could never acquire an intimate knowledge of them during a single lifetime. Therefore he could never develop a complete philosophy of the universe as a whole.
"The intellect fulfils itself practically when it discovers that each idea it produces is incomplete and imperfect and therefore passes on to replace it by a further one, but it fulfils itself metaphysically when it discovers that every idea which it can possibly produce will always and necessarily be incomplete and imperfect.
"Now so far as they are almost entirely metaphysical works, these two volumes [most likely, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself are meant--Ed.] have no option [RC reads: options] but to make their appeal chiefly to reason alone. And expounding the special and unique system called the metaphysics of truth as they do, they have to start where possible from verifiable facts rather than mere speculations. But whatever other importance they ascribe to reasoning as an instrument of truth-attainment applies only to the particular stage for which it is prescribed, which is the stage of metaphysical discipline and certainly not beyond it. Although the status bestowed on reason [in every metaphysical system beginning with science] must necessarily be a primary one, its status within the larger framework of the integral hidden teaching can only be a secondary one. This teaching possesses a larger view and does not end with science or limit itself to the rational standpoint alone. How can it do so when metaphysics is merely its intermediate phase? We must [rightly] honour reason to its fullest extent, but we need not therefore accept the unreasonable doctrine that the limits of reason constitute the limits of truth.
"Our senses can perceive only what they have been formed to perceive. Our reason similarly cannot grasp what it was never formed to grasp. Within their legitimate spheres of operation, the deliverances of both sense and reason should be acceptable to us, but outside those spheres we must seek for something that transcends both.
"But the basic cause why reason is insufficient [RC reads: unsufficient] exists in the fact that intellect--the instrument with which it works--is itself insufficient. Reason is the right arrangement of thinking. Each thought thus arranged depends for its existence on another thought and is unable to exist without such a relation, that is, it suffers from relativity. Hence a thought cannot be considered as [an] ultimate in itself and therefore reason cannot know the absolute. The intellect can take the forms [RC reads: form] of existence apart bit by bit and tell us what they consist of. But such surgical dissection cannot tell us what existence itself is. This is something which must be experienced, not merely thought. It can explain what has entered into the composition of a painting but, as may be realized if we reflect a little, it cannot explain why we feel the charm of the painting. The analytic intellect describes reality sufficiently to give some satisfaction to our emotions or [our] intelligence, but it does not touch this baffling elusive reality at all. What it has dissected is not the living throbbing body but the cold dead image of it.
"[When] reason tells us that God is, it does not actually know God. The antennae of intellectual research cannot penetrate into the Overself because thinking can only establish relations between ideas and thus must forever remain in the realms [RC reads: realm] of dualities, finitudes, and individualities. It cannot grasp the whole but only parts. Therefore reason which depends on thinking is incompetent to comprehend the mysterious Overself. Realization is to be experienced and felt; thought can only indicate what it is likely to be and what it is not likely to be. Hence Al Ghazzali, the Sufi, has said:"To define drunkenness, to know that it is caused by vapours that rise from the stomach and cloud the seat of intelligence, is a different thing from being drunk. So I found ultimate knowledge consists in experiences rather than definitions." The fact that metaphysics tries to explain all existence in intellectual terms alone and tries to force human nature into conceptual molds, causes it to suppress or distort the non-intellectual elements in both. The consequence is that metaphysics alone cannot achieve an adequate understanding. If it insists upon [RC reads: on] exalting its own results, then it achieves misunderstanding.
"Metaphysics proves the existence of reality but is unable to enter into it. Indeed, metaphysics must in the end criticize the desert-sand dryness of its own medium of thinking and not make the mistake of regarding thought-activity as [the] ultimately real, when it is itself only a section cut from the whole of human experience and existence. The intellect offers a reality which can never be a felt reality but only a described one and then only in negative terms. Intellectual work can only paint the picture of reality; we have [RC adds: then] to verify this picture by realizing it within our own experience. The final office of reasoned thought is to reveal why reason is not competent to judge reality and why thinking is not competent to know reality.
"The moment we attempt to understand what reality is, we get out of our depth because our own thinking must move in a serial sequence which itself prevents us from escaping the particular space-time form which confines us to a particular world of appearance. Just as, because it has entered our space-time experience, we can take hold of an artist's production but not the mind behind it, so and for the same reason we can take hold [RC rereads:"…so and for the same reason…" [short pause] Read it the way it is. "…so and for the same reason we can take hold] of the screen which cuts us off. This is because we can think of existence only in a particular shape or relative to a particular thing, not of existence that is formless, bodiless, and infinite. We have to localize it somewhere in space. Because space and time are forms taken by rational knowledge, because they are only conditions existing within personal consciousness, they do not enter [into] the knowledge of consciousness of that which is beyond both rational thinking and personal selfhood."
S (faint): Uh-hm.
[36 second pause]
PB [V5, 7:8.2 & Persp., Ch. 7 #29, TS reading]: "No idea is ever [really] outside another, nor is any idea ever outside [TS adds: reality] the mind, and all ideas, all that which is seen, can only theoretically be separated from the thinking seeing mind. As psychologists we have had in thought to separate seer from seen, so that we might learn at length what the nature of [TS adds: the] pure mind really is; but as philosophers we must now merge them together. It is because thinking must always have an object with which to occupy itself that it can never penetrate the Overself, for here there is only the One. We must renounce thoughts and things if we would enter into the Absolute. Because in this ultimate state there is no more awareness of an individual observer and an observed world, the distinction between individual mind and individual body also ceases. Everything, including our separate selfhood, is voided out, as it were. The resultant nothingness however is really the essence of everything. It is not the nothingness of death but of latent life. Human thought can proceed no farther. For when"not-two-ness" is established as the Real, the logical movement from one thought to a second can only prolong the sway of "two-ness" over the mind. In this pure being there can be no "other," no two, hence it is called non-dual. The integrity of its being cannot really be split. If the Overself is to be actually experienced, then it must be as a realization of the Infinite One. To divide itself into knower and known is to dwell in duality. The antithesis of known and knower [TS reads: knower and known] cannot enter into it just as the opposition of reality and illusion is meaningless for it. The oneness [TS reads: one] of its being is absolute. The return to this awareness, which regards the world only under its monistic aspect, is the realization of truth possessed by a sage. When rational thinking can perceive that it cannot transcend itself, cannot yield more than another thought, it has travelled as far as it can go and performed its proper function. Metaphysical truth is the intellectual appearance of reality, the rational knowledge of it; but it is not reality itself, not realization. For knowing needs a second thing to be known; hence metaphysical knowledge, being dual, can never yield realization which is non-dual.
"Reality must stand grandly alone, without dependence on anything and without relation to anyone; it ever was, is, and ever will be. It is this inability of human reason to grasp the super-rational [TS reads: supra-rational], the divine ineffable, that Omar Khayyam tried to express in his beautiful quatrains which have been so widely misunderstood by Western readers. If the Rubaiyat of Omar is only a drunken refrain from [a] wine-shop, then the New Testament is a mere scribble from an out-of-the-way corner of the Roman Empire. (bit of laughter) The cup of language is too small to hold the wine of the Absolute. A thought of Mind as the [TS reads: a] Void is still a"something" no less than a thought of great mountains and therefore prevents us from realizing the Void.
"Now when we grasp the basic nature of human thinking, that it is possible only by forming two opposing ideas at the same time as the concept of black is formed by the contrast against white, we can then grasp the fundamental reason why such thinking can never rise to awareness of the Absolute unity. We cannot think of eternity without thinking of time too. For our conception of it either prolongs time until imagination falters and ceases or negates time altogether into timelessness. In neither case do we really comprehend eternity. Why? Because intellect cannot lay hold of what lies beyond itself. We humans know a thing by distinguishing it from other things, by limiting its nature and by relating it to its opposite. But the infinite has nothing else from which it can be distinguished or to which it can be related, whilst it certainly cannot be limited in any way.
"Our earlier division into a dualism of observer and observed must now come to an end. But let us not make the error of mistaking it for the final stage. There still lies a path beyond, a path which leads to the ultimate where both observer and the observed become one. [short pause]
"The Real can never be stated because it can never be thought. Therefore it is quite clear that ordinary means of knowledge are [TS reads: is] unable to grasp it. But such knowledge is not useless. For if religion can give us a symbolic idea and mysticism an intuitive idea of the Infinite, metaphysical knowledge can give us a rational idea of it. And to possess such an idea keeps us at least from falling into errors about the reality behind it. If metaphysics can never perform the task it sets itself--to know reality--it can perform the task of knowing what is not reality. And such a service is inestimable. The function of reason is ultimately a negative one; it cannot provide a positive apprehension of the Overself, but it can provide a clear declaration of what It is not. Reason can demonstrate that the Overself [TS reads: that it] can possess no shape and can in no way be imagined.
"Nevertheless we may have both the assurance and the satisfaction that our thinking is correct but we have neither the assurance nor the satisfaction of consciously embracing that with which this thinking deals. We may have formed a right mental image of God but we are still not in God's sacred presence. We must not mistake the image for the reality which it represents. Whatever discoveries we have hitherto made have been made only within the limited frontiers of reasoned thinking. Exalted and expanded though our outlook may now be, we can still do no more than think the existence of this reality without actually experiencing it. The mere intellectual recognition of this Oneness of Mind is no more sufficient to make it real to us than the mere intellectual recognition of Australia's existence will suffice to make Australia real to us. In the end all our words about the Overself remain but words. For just as no amount of telling a man who has never touched or drunk any liquid will ever make properly clear to him what wetness is [TS reads: For just as no amount of telling a man who has never touched or drunk any liquid what wetness is will ever make it properly clear to him] unless [and until] he puts his finger in a liquid or drinks some of it, so every verbal explanation really fails to explain the Overself unless and until we know it for ourself within ourself and as ourself."
[short pause]
TS (faint): (Gee, I'm surprised.)
S (faint): Uh-huh.
PB [Persp., Ch. 7 #31, RC reading]: "Metaphysics points to a higher consciousness but cannot itself touch it. It provides the truest concepts of that consciousness, but being concepts only, they merely symbolize it. We must not confuse two entirely different things: the feeling of fundamental unity which the realized sage possesses and the concept of fundamental unity which the metaphysical thinker possesses. The sage will make use of the metaphysician's concept when he seeks to make the content of this felt unity articulate and intelligible in communication to others. The metaphysician cannot get beyond his concept, do what he may, unless he rises beyond metaphysics altogether. For when he tries to determine the indeterminable he merely fumbles through a series of empty words and finally fails in his attempt, his last words being purely negative ones. The metaphysician is utterly helpless when confronted by the problem of realizing his own ultimate concept of reality, for he can only express it in negative terms, which is tantamount to a failure in expressing [RC reads: to express] it at all. The moment he endeavours to determine it in affirmative thoughts is the moment when he destroys its reality altogether, for it then becomes a mere thought among the numerous others considered by his mind. Just as cold scientific analysis deprives the warmest artistic emotion of its content and thus destroys the emotion itself, so the process of thinking deprives the profoundest mystical experience of its actuality and effaces its transcendental character. For reality is beyond the demonstration and inaccessible to the grasp of reason. Metaphysical reasoning is a self-destructive process for it can only reveal its utter inadequacy to grasp the Real other than as a thought. Consequently the Vedantic metaphysicians who claim that their path of discriminative reasoning is alone sufficient [RC adds: enough] to gain God-realization without any kind of yoga practice at all always fail in their attempt. They can offer nothing more than mere sounding words, empty talk which leaves its victims as much in the realm of illusion as they were when they first sat at the feet of these babbling gurus.
"The final work of metaphysics, after it has finished its corrective [and] disciplinary work upon the personal emotions and mystical experience, is to abolish itself! For it must then show that all intellectual questioning and all intellectual responses are dealing with a level of reference which is mere appearance. When metaphysics realizes that it cannot touch the Real, it silences its own agitations and disdains its own edifice. A genuine metaphysics will thus always be self-destructive. Metaphysical thinking strenuously manufactures isolated and fragmentary patterns of the Real and then puts them together to make a harmonious whole. But both in the method which it uses to attack the problem of the Overself and in the result which it reaches it never gets beyond mere representations, that is, it never gets to the Real itself. It runs away within the range of a circumference which limits it in the end. Every effort is like the effort of a man seeking to lift himself up by his shoestrings--it cannot be done. The Overself of an unvivified metaphysics will always remain a mere mental construction."
[18 second pause]
PB [V5, 7:7.19 & Persp., Ch. 7 #30, TS reading]: "Metaphysics is ordinarily concerned with the criticism of superficial views about the experienced world and the correction of erroneous ones, whilst it seeks to construct an accurate systematic and rational interpretation of existence as a whole. This is good in its own place because we shall be all the better and not worse for finding a metaphysical base [TS adds: not only] for our beliefs. [TS, very faint: Word was belief.] It is quite clear [however] that metaphysical systems cannot alone suffice for our higher purpose, for being based on personal assumptions, reasoning, or imaginations, if they partially enlighten mankind they also partially bewilder by their mutual contradictions. Hence philosophy steps in here and offers what it calls"the metaphysics of truth." This is an interpretation in [TS reads: of] intellectual terms of the results obtained from a direct mystical insight concerned with what is itself incapable of intellectual seizure. Through this superior insight it provides in orderly shape the reasons, laws, and conditions of the supersensuous experience of the Overself, unifies and explains the experiences which lead up to this consummation, and finally brings the whole into relation with the practical everyday life of mankind. It is the sole system that the antique sages intellectually built up after they had actually realized the Overself within their own experience. Such a point needs the utmost emphasis for it separates the system from all others which carry the name of metaphysics or philosophy. Whereas these others are but intelligent guesses or fragmentary anticipations of what ultimate truth or ultimate reality may be and hence hesitant between numerous "ifs" and "buts," this alone is a presentation from firsthand knowledge of what they really are. It bars out all speculation.
"Just as science is a rational intellectualization of ordinary physical experience, so the metaphysics of truth is a rational intellectualization of the far sublimer transcendental experience. It is indeed an effort to translate into conventional thought what is essentially beyond such thought. As expressed in intellectual language, it is scientific in spirit, rational in attitude, cautious in statement, and factual throughout. It is devoted to the relentless exposure of error, the fearless removal of illusion, and the persevering pursuit of truth to the very end--irrespective of personal considerations. It seeks to understand the whole of life and not merely some particular aspects of it."
[17½ second pause]
PB [V9, 13:2.616, RC reading]: ""The academic people think they know everything already," Jung once said sarcastically. To which I would add: that is because they have never recovered from the effects of education. (bit of laughter) The higher the education the harder it is to recover." (laughter)
[short pause]
S: Yeah, uh-hm. (bit of laughter)
PB [V5, 7:1.130, RC reading]: "He should always try to distinguish between knowledge which is acquired by the intellect and spiritual intuition which is bestowed by spirit."
[short pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.126, RC reading]: "When you are going through the intellectual analysis you must think as sharply as possible. You have to hack your way through these woods by the sharpness of your thinking. This is where the clarity of thoughts and their formulation into exact phraseology is so necessary. You must not be vague and hazy about ideas; you must penetrate them with clear understanding. It is only later when you have reached the meditation stage that this activity is put into abeyance, because then the effort is to still thought." [RC reads quote as follows: "When you are going through the intellectual analysis you must think as sharply as possible. You must hack your way through the woods by the sharpness of your thinking. You must not be vague and hazy about your ideas, and their formation and expression in clear phrases is most necessary. It is only later when you have mastered the intellectual phase that you can drop this effort. Then you begin the task of stilling the mind."]
[10¼ second pause]
S: Can you repeat that, Randy?
PB [V5, 7:1.126, RC rereads]: "When you are going through the intellectual analysis you must think as sharply as possible. You have to hack your way through these woods by the sharpness of your thinking. This is where the clarity of thoughts and their formulation into exact phraseology is so necessary. You must not be vague and hazy about ideas; you must penetrate them with clear understanding. It is only later when you have reached the meditation stage that this activity is put into abeyance, because then the effort is to still thought." [RC reads quote as follows: "When you are going through the intellectual analysis you must think as sharply as possible. You must hack your way through the woods by the sharpness of your thinking. You must not be vague and hazy about your ideas, and their formation and expression in clear phraseology is most necessary. It is only later when you have mastered the intellectual phase that you can drop this activity. Then you begin the task of stilling the mind."]
[11¾ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.74, RC reading]: "A time comes when the searching intellect humbly recognizes at last that it can never recognize pure Spirit, but only its [RC adds: own] ideas, opinions, fancies, and imaginations about Spirit. If it follows this up to the fullest consequence and [RC adds: then] ceases all [its] theological or metaphysical or occult studies, it lays itself open to be penetrated by the intuition."
[10½ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.104, RC reading]: "The intellect is only the totality of transient thoughts; it is not a separate and self-existent thinker."
[students assent, faint]
[short pause]
PB [V8, 12:4.125, RC reading]: "He lets the five senses delude him into taking their world as the acme of reality. He lets the ego intoxicate him with its own passions, desires, ambitions, and attachments. Is it [RC adds: then] any wonder that the word"soul" becomes devoid of all meaning for him in the end?"
[short pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.86, RC reading]: "The limitations of [RC adds: the] intellect must be recognized, for then only [RC reads: only then] will a man be ready to try the philosophic techniques whereby words are used to rise above words, thoughts directed so that he may extract himself from all thoughts."
[16 second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.46, RC reading]: "The intellect can quite expertly give its support to any position the ego desires it to take up. It can become instrumental in the search for truth only as it becomes freed from egoism."
[short pause]
S: Would you explain it? [S simultaneously, faint: Yeah, (do--)] Would you read that again please?
PB [V5, 7:1.46, RC rereads]: "The intellect can quite expertly give its support to any position the ego desires it to take up. It can become instrumental in the search for truth only as it becomes freed from egoism."
[19¼ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.48, RC reading]: "There is a dead intellectuality which, although quite unable to penetrate to [RC reads: into] the mystical heart of things, yet carries itself with an arrogant air of supercilious self-assurance!"
[short pause]
AH: (Do/Read) that one again please.
PB [V5, 7:1.48, RC rereads]: "There is a dead intellectuality which, although quite unable to penetrate to the mystical heart of things, yet carries itself with an arrogant air of supercilious self-assurance!"
[10¾ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.67, RC reading]: "The faculty of discrimination which we are to use in the pursuit of truth is not the intellect but the true Reason, which itself judges the intellect and rejects or confirms what it says. The Indian sages call it Buddhi and have [even] assigned to Buddhiyoga a status not a bit lower than that given to [the] other yoga paths."
S (faint): Do that one again.
[students assent, faint]
PB [V5, 7:1.67, RC rereads]: "The faculty of discrimination which we are to use in the pursuit of truth is not the intellect but the true Reason, which itself judges the intellect and rejects or confirms what it says. The Indian sages call it Buddhi and have even assigned to Buddhiyoga a status not a bit lower than that given to [the] other yoga paths."
S (faint): What page is this?
[short pause]
RC (faint): Which?
PB [V5, 7:3.35, RC reading]: "It is possible, and must become his object, to develop a completely impartial intellect."
[20¾ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:7.135, RC reading]: "A metaphysical faculty is required to understand the truth. However sharp a businessman's intelligence may be, or a scientist's intellect, truth will be beyond their grasp if this faculty is lacking. But the lack may be repaired. Steadfast determined and resolute study will develop the needed equipment."
[9 second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.10, RC reading]: "The intellect ought to work only as a servant, obeying intuition's orders in practical life or filling in details for intuition's discoveries in the truth-seeking quest."
[26½ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.36, RC reading]: "Human thinking can only lead to, and produce, another thought, or series of thoughts. It cannot get beyond itself, cannot rise to any object that is not of the nature of a thought."
PB [V13, 20:1.14, RC reading]: "Philosophy is not satisfied with a merely intellectual reflection of [the] truth, as in a mirror, but seeks direct vision of [the] truth."
[10 second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.185, RC reading]: "If the intellect's workings are not warmed by the heart's movements, it can only approach the reflected images of truth, not truth itself."
PB [V5, 7:7.136, RC reading]: "Metaphysical study may exercise the reason, but if it is the metaphysics of truth it will also unfold the intuition. Therefore, it is [also] a holy path."
[short pause]
PB [V5, 7:3.69, RC reading]: "Thinking must not only approach these studies as worshippers approach a temple shrine, with the reverence they deserve, but [RC adds: it] must also become alive and dynamic."
[18¾ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.11, RC reading]: "These competing tendencies of intuition and reason may, however, be harmonized in a balanced personality. All mystics have not advocated the paralysis of intellect--even Jacob Boehme wrote [RC adds: the following]:"Human reason, by being kept within its true bounds and regulated by a superior light, is only made useful. Both the divine and [RC adds: the] natural life may in the soul subsist together and be of mutual service each to the other.""
[27 second pause]
PB [V13, 20:4.60, RC reading]: "How can science and mysticism meet when each uses a different faculty, the one intellect and the other intuition? They can meet by following two steps: first, by each one understanding its own and the other's place, function, and limitation, [and] second, by amalgamating their viewpoints, thus rising into the domain of philosophy."
[9 second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.9, RC reading]: "He may recognize the truth with his intellect and yet be unable to realize it with his consciousness."
[14½ second pause]
PB [V13, 20:3.9, RC reading]: "Without pure philosophy, there is no possibility of ascending the higher peaks of truth. In the highest esoteric school of Asia no one is [RC reads: none are] admitted before first having been [RC reads: before they are first] taken through a course of the essentials of this subject. In this school there is no progress without the full use of intelligence and sharpened reason. The lack of this quality has helped to contribute to the downfall of organized mystical movements known to us all."
[10 second pause]
RC: Where is Mary? Maybe this would be a good place to stop [one word inaudible]
PB [V13, 20:5.134, RC reading]: "The philosopher, and the philosopher alone, can sincerely believe and accept two opposite points of view at the same time."
S (very faint): [couple words inaudible]
S (very faint): Can you please (do/read) that again?
S (very faint): Yeah.
[short pause]
S (very faint): Can you please just read it again?
PB [V13, 20:5.134, RC rereads]: "The philosopher, and the philosopher alone, can sincerely believe and accept two opposite points of view at the same time."
[10½ second pause]
S (very faint): One more.
S (faint): One more.
PB [V5, 7:1.72, RC reading]: "Where intellectual knowledge puffs up a man, insight humbles him, has indeed the very opposite effect."
[38¼ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:2.62, RC reading]: "The intellect is a faculty that man is endowed with, not by Satan to trap him, but in accordance with the divine World-Idea. Man is learning how to use it. If he is using it wrongly today, the consequences will tutor him in time and he will use it rightly tomorrow."
[28 second pause]
(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1983 1019a Ends; Side 2 Begins)
[28½ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.129, RC reading]: "First there must be intellectual understanding of the truth of his real being, then he can advance to the practices which lead to its realization."
[11¾ second pause]
TS (faint): Alright?
DB/S(?) (faint): Most likely [one word inaudible]
RC (faint): Yeah they say through that door of thought.
DB (faint): What is the-- what's the distinction between talking about the intellect as a totality of scientific thought as opposed to a faculty which has been given to man which may be used properly or-- or not.
[9½ second pause]
AH: Is that to imply David that transient thoughts [DB/S(?), faint: Yeah.] don't have efficacy?
DB: No, no. The-- it's-- it's just that there were-- there was definitions there, you know, that when we speak of it as the totality of transient thoughts not having any selfhood or self-standing existence seems to be one thing. And then he spoke of it here as a-- as a faculty which needs to be developed and-- and so the process is painful, consequently one learns to use it properly. And I was just trying to sort-- sort out what the distinction there was because it would-- it sounds like there's a difference between on the one hand the faculty which is learning to arrange thought as opposed to the totality of those thoughts and I was just-- you know, just trying to understand how to understand the difference.
RC (simultaneously): Think the way that-- think the way that quote would support you, it said that there was no independent thinker, no self-standing thinker.
DB: Right, [student assents] ok. Yeah, something like that.
S: Right.
RC: I think then what it is is that even as-- if you think of it as a faculty, it's a faculty that's dependent upon your concepts, really tied to a manipulation of that imagery. And that apart from the manipulation of that imagery it has no actuality.
DB: So that-- so that basically when you're speaking about refining the intellect and so forth you're not really refining anything, you're just giving it a better quality of image to deal with, more, I mean--
RC: Well I think you're refining it. Or, I don't know what you mean by refining it, I think you're making it more skillful.
DB: Right but that--
HS: More what?
AB: Skillful.
RC (simultaneously): Skillful.
S: When--
AB (simultaneously): If you say that-- there was that quote on reason or buddhi, that the development of intellect entails its subordination to reason.
S: In other words getting it away from the grips of the ego.
AB: Yeah and directing the thought-processes (through) a logical sequence of reasoning which the reason could impose on you.
[short pause]
RC: Yeah I think that pattern with the one where it said the intellect does the work of service, obeying intuition's orders, filling in details for intuition's discoveries.
[10¾ second pause]
DB: Yeah there was also that quote we spoke of, you know, the first few long essays that you and-- and Tim read--
S: Those are incredible.
DB: Right. Oh yeah.
S (faint): Very (outstanding).
"IF THE INTELLECT'S WORKINGS ARE NOT WARMED BY THE HEART'S MOVEMENTS, IT CAN ONLY APPROACH THE REFLECTED IMAGES OF TRUTH, NOT TRUTH"
DB: Um-- they seem to say pretty completely that the intellect is never going to grasp ultimate reality, it's always going to be dealing with images of that [student assents, faint] construction of the-- mental construction so to speak. But then in one of the smaller quotes that you read after that he spoke of-- spoke of intellect being warmed by the feelings from the heart. Somehow it seems to be capable of doing more than just dealing with images and it could (be) constructive but I-- I'm not sure if I understand that [one word inaudible] (of that) [one word inaudible]
S (very faint): What?
S (faint): The second quote.
S (faint): Right.
S (faint): The intellect, uh-hm.
S (faint): Yeah.
S (very faint): Oh yeah.
RC: I don't think that the intellect being warmed by the heart is really saying anything different than the intellect seeing in terms of the intuition. Like when-- in that article that Dickie's done a couple of times, "Concept of Philosophy," KCB starts out saying that the task of philosophy is to interpret things rather than to challenge (it/them). It seems like he's saying basically the same thing. Try to understand what it is that you're heart's (embedded to).
S (faint): Uh-hm.
[9½ second pause]
DB: But even in so doing, it's not going to penetrate beyond its own inherent limitation.
[students assent, very faint]
DB (faint): Do you know where that quote is 'cause I--
RC: The "warmed by the heart" one?
DB (faint): Yes, that one, right. [couple/three words inaudible]
[short pause]
AH: I thought that quote about the heart connected with some other quotes (that) described the-- these metaphysical studies which are clearly intellectual studies it approaches with a kind of reverence and devotion and a certain feeling content (is) brought to the study or-- That would be the faculty of intellect working toward a constructive goal where there's the devotional aspect that's brought to the work.
DB: Yes a-- it's a-- it's a strange thing because, you know, there's all these-- like even with just this-- the intellect that-- that we started talking about last week, you know, which is the-- it's the response of mental level between the-- the sensible world and our-- our memories of-- and so forth. Here it's talking about it seems this exact same faculty working towards this event. I mean there's a real transition point between first stage and the lower stage. And-- and there were a couple of quotes here which seem to speak of that, you know, being-- There was one I think which spoke of it as being regulated by the reason, the-- the one you mentioned (earlier), there was another one it was spoken as being at the behest of intuition, you know. It's like this indeterminate principle which can be acted upon from above or below.
AH: But wouldn't it show that the intellect is [few words inaudible] philosophy of truth, that it-- it would have to be aligned-- it would have to be aligned in a very special way in order to be an intellectual image of that truth that it portrays.
DB: Well, yes, and-- but you see the problem is that it's-- that seems to be true but he-- PB also makes the point of several of these teachers who propound that just by the intellect alone you can get to so and so and they spend all these years reading, watching their students who aren't any better off than they were when they first came. So it's-- you know, to accept that it has to be done in a very special way because it's also possible I think that the intellect can assume that role and really not get anywhere either.
S (very faint): Uh-hm.
RC: He's got one quote where he said that it'll be just as bad to have the world ruled by intellect or disturbed by emotion and passion. Yeah that one says that--
PB [V5, 7:1.185, RC rereads]: "If the intellect's workings are not warmed by the heart's movements, it can only approach the reflected images of truth, not truth itself."
RC: So that would be taking the heart's movements there as being the-- the (spherical) intuitions in the heart.
DB: Uh-hm.
RC: And that (if) the intellect approaches them, it's approaching something which is more valid. Whereas to look out through the senses or (you're looking) to invoke (coldness), it would be dealing with-- it would be approaching at best reflected images.
HS: Well how do you say-- what would he-- what's the meaning of the intellect or reflected image of truth?
[short pause]
RC: I guess it could be taken on a lot of levels.
EMD: Nobody can hear you in the back I was just told. Can you speak a little louder up front?
RC: Did you hear the question?
EMD: I didn't hear, somebody was talking to me at the time.
S (very faint): (Well/No) we heard some questions.
S: Basically it sounds like murmuring back here.
CDA/S(?): Yeah, even though it's (not).
[couple seconds of faint background student talking]
AD (faint, possibly part of background): No he won't.
HS: What's it all mean? (bit of laughter) Question was, was it the re-- how would Randy understand the reflected image of truth. Wouldn't you say? [15 second pause] You mean like a kind of form-- a philosophic formulation of what metaphysical reality might be, that kind of thing?
S (faint): Yeah.
RC: My inclination in this context would be to apply it to the way he refers to in the earlier quote the way that a Sage will formulate in ways acceptable or approachable by the intellect, that he'll formulate his insights in reflected images, he'll use words or give symbols or whatever.
[short pause]
HS: I mean it's something like saying there is an Overself. That's your real nature. Is that like a reflected image of truth?
RC: When the-- or there was one quote that addressed that directly, he said when you say it as a thought among other thoughts, then yes, it is. Then it's brought down to being one thought among other thoughts.
DB/S(?): What's the other way?
S (very faint): Uh-hm.
[short pause]
RC: I guess that's what we're hoping to be able to-- to bring out if we can get like this qualitative difference between the intellect and the soul beyond the intellect.
HS: Ok so you think-- that's great. The intellect could recognize truth, that was one of the things (it could do).
RC: Yeah.
HS: Well what do-- what do you (take/think) that to mean? [short pause] Could be that there's an experience of truth in its proximity, you know, in the continuum that it's like [one word inaudible] (under) or something?
S: Or?
HS (faint): Or I don't know.
RC: I don't know, it seems like when we read some of these things we-- we read them with these-- we read them with the intellect and at least sometimes we realize that-- or at least we think we realize that what he's saying is true.
JB: Well hinting.
RC: Yeah, uh-hm. In the notes.
HS: Ok, in the notes.
RC: Yeah.
HS: Ok so you're talking about something like this. Real specific, you're reading it with your mind.
RC: Yeah.
HS: So it's like something you'd say-- you'd say that you see it to be true.
RC: Yeah with-- with your intellect you see it to be true. [S simultaneously: (Truth only.)] And I think that quote you said we can do that and still at the same time not be able to realize that-- that truth in your own consciousness. That within the intellect we've got these reflected images. It is possible to have a correct opinion. But correct opinion isn't to be equated with firsthand intimacy with the soul.
S (faint): Uh-hm.
HS: Correct opinion though is the province of the intellect's functioning correctly?
RC: Yeah.
HS: That-- that then you would call correct opinion?
RC: I would, yeah.
HS: But-- and you make a distinction and now you think of spoken its opinion even though it's so to say of the real, in a real sense?
RC (simultaneously): Yeah. Unless-- well it depends on the speaker. Like in one of those earlier quotes that we read, it said when the-- when the Sage has gone beyond and then tries to formulate for others this metaphysical truth, then I don't know that you could call that just opinion. But when you look at it from the underside any thoughts that you have about it certainly would be opinion.
HS: But, I mean, you wouldn't call it opinion because it contains the vision of the guy's thoughts, so to say, even though it's-- even though it's in words backed up by good(--) real goals.
AH: But if that-- if that is taken as an object of thought by someone else, consequence of that is the fact that it's within intellect now.
LH: Right, soon as we hear "ice cream".
AH: As soon as we hear it and we take it to an object, but it's an object to the mind that becomes necessarily the province of intellect.
RC (very faint): Uh-hm.
TS: Insofar as you exclusively define it as intellect.
AH: Insofar as [couple/three words inaudible]
TS: And insofar that you exclusively define it as-- as intellect.
AH: No I was just using thought as [TS: Or thought.] equatable to intellect.
TS: Yeah. But if you say that when we read the inspired scriptures, that the only part of us that's reading it is the intellect, then we would only be under-- able to understand it with thought. But if you say that the soul is capable of-- that there's an immediate knowing of the soul or intuition that may not arise all that frequently but (it's/is) there.
AH: So the intellect functions via objects or not?
TS: Intellect does.
AH: That was the point I was making.
TS: But if the knower is not only the intellect but is capable of in-- being reminded of intuitive knowing as well then it seems to me in some quotes that the person could know something intuitively through that acquired reasoning.
AH: See that's an important point because you're suggesting that that knowing would not be an object in any way.
TS: Yeah. In other words you would actually smell out or sense or intuitively grasp at some glimpse of the viewpoint from which the reasoning is occurring.
S: Uh-hm.
AH: Would you call it a kind of dualism?
TS: I wouldn't know what to call it.
RC: It seems the point that Tim's making is really crucial though because to say that it's not accessible to the intellect isn't the same thing as saying that it's not accessible to you. And, I think what he's trying to do with these quotes is, if you can actually become convinced that the intellect is not the part of you to be looking with, then your chances of seeing what you want to see are enhanced.
S (simultaneously): Uh-hm.
[short pause]
S (faint): (Uh-hm/Hm).
AH: Is it-- What does that mean Randy, that you have to stop thinking, correct?
RC: Um-- Ultimately, yeah. But he says through fulfilling it, he says it's only after you've developed it, put the doubts to rest and so on, come to an intellectual understanding of what it is that you want to do, that you're then in a position to actually start to do it.
PC: But aren't-- aren't you also saying that while you're in the process of using the intellect, you can recognize that if-- even then as accompaniment to something in yourself which in a sense [student assents] grasps what you're trying to do (then).
S: You're [one word inaudible] and choosing of--
S (very faint): Yeah.
S (very faint): Yeah.
LDS: Randy too aren't we-- part of this discussion seems to hinge on that quote we had last week about PB's definition of his use of reason. The way he speaks of it in the Hidden Teaching and the Wisdom as that-- that faculty that is composed of the two elements of the intellect that [student assents] we're speaking about tonight, and the feeling(s). [students assent, very faint] It seems to me that in response to Herbie's question about this intellect's ability to recognize a presentation of truth or image of-- a correct image of truth, it seems that in order to be able to do that, there would-- it would presuppose that you're working with this reason in PB's sense of the term, that is the intellect and this higher feeling that-- well he spoke about it tonight as this warmth from the heart as what-- what you engage to guide this intellect. It's hard for me to understand that the intellect alone, eclipsed or let's say somehow cut off from the-- this feeling that you spoke about, would be able to recognize anything in the way of a-- a valid presentation of higher truth.
[short pause]
HS: Why not?
LDS: I don't know what in it would have any kind of standard to-- to come up with that recognition. Like if in itself--
HS: What standard are you-- you claim there's an actual standard warmth from the heart is a standard of truth?
LDS: That-- ok that metaphor or whatever it is, if it is, [HS simultaneously: What standard (are you looking)?] it's an indication of some form of feeling that-- I would say higher feeling or the higher reason in some way guiding it, that lower intellect. That if that wasn't there, then the recognition of-- of higher truth just doesn't seem approachable.
HS: So it's the intellect that has to recognize that there's been a recognition? Or when [LDS simultaneously: The intellect-- when it--] you get to know it as one of the [couple words inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): The intellect went into that-- that feeling.
AH: I thought, I thought, to pick up on the quote-- [S, very faint: Yeah.] Well the first quote said that the Sage feels the reality as opposed to someone else who might know it intellectually. And as that distinction I think can hold it quite clearly between what is referred to as an image of truth and truth. [LDS: Right.] And that's the same distinction that would (be) Sage felt reality [students assent, very faint] to intellectual image of reality. And it seems that it's pretty easy to blur a distinction between image of truth and truth. And quite crisply that distinction was presented in the first [one word inaudible] (he answered).
RC/S(?): Uh-hm.
LDS: But the feeling that you're speaking of that the Sage has of truth, the ex-- I-- I think he spoke more in terms of experience of truth rather than feeling but he did say feeling. That's-- that's a little different thing than I'm talking about because I think the Sage would have to have more than that reasoning faculty. He's speaking of more than the reasoning faculty rec-- to recognize truth or experience truth. So, I still think you could-- you can maintain the use of this reason wedded-- or this intellect wedded to this feeling which constitutes reason for us or for students of philosophy or for those who can recognize something of truth value in a presentation of-- of vision.
HS: Here's the thing. You know any (other) criteria then of the-- of the truth? Is that what you're saying?
PD: (Does he say--)
LDS (simultaneously): In order--
PD: Excuse me Louie, [LDS simultaneously: Yeah.] does he say feeling and intellectuality was reason? Is that what you mean?
LDS: I think that was right.
PD (simultaneously): See I didn't understand it that way, I didn't-- You got to put it together.
S (faint): Yeah well we--
LDS: There was a passage last week. I think we had it--
AB (simultaneously): It said it was a mystical.
S: Mystical intellectual.
AB: Capacity.
S (faint): Yeah.
S: Mystical?
RC: Mystical faculty.
LDS: Well I--
REASON IS A FUSION OF A MYSTICAL AND AN INTELLECTUAL FACULTY
PB [V5, 7:1.3, AB paraphrasing]: "Reason is a mystical [LDS simultaneously: Yeah.] and intellectual capacity, not merely intellectual. It is not their co-existence but their fusion." [The exact quote reads as follows: "What was called"Reason" in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and what was honoured as "Reason" by the Cambridge Platonists is a mystical plus intellectual faculty and not merely an intellectual one. It is not merely a coexistence but a fusion of the two capacities."]
S: Can you read the whole sentence?
PD: Louie, I'm still not following.
S: Loud.
PB [V5, 7:1.3, AB paraphrasing]: "Reason is a mystical and intellectual capacity and not merely an intellectual one. It is not merely a co-existence of them but a fusion."
AB: I thought that point was referring to--
PD (simultaneously): [one/two words inaudible] well-- I didn't understand it. Say that again?
PB [V5, 7:1.3, AB paraphrasing]: "Reason is a mystical and intellectual capacity and not merely an intellectual one. It is not merely a co-existence of them but a fusion."
AB: I hope I got that right.
RC: That's the one that started this whole business.
S (faint): Right.
AB: Right.
RC: Anthony said what do you mean by intellect there.
JB (very faint): Uh-hm, right.
AB: That's what you're trying to elaborate tonight.
S: Wait, if-- if I understand correctly are you seeing intellect as devoid of feeling?
LDS: Yes.
S: I would think that the intellect would have to include feeling, to just say the stimulation of-- of all thought, thought includes feelings.
LDS: Well I meant higher feelings, ok? But that's-- that's where I misquoted the quote, it should be the use of mystical-- mystical element, I would consider it higher feeling.
HS: And you [LDS simultaneously: Ok.] would consider that as capable of doing a [LDS: Of working--] valid criterion of truth?
LDS: Yes.
HS: The mystical feeling present in your intellect, [LDS: Yes.] through your intellect?
LDS: I-- if I understand the quote.
HS: That's what you think the criteria of the truth (means)?
PD: Would that be like another way to say that would be like the intuitive operation through the mind, the mystical--
LDS (simultaneously): Yeah, I would-- I would say.
PD: So the intuitive mind conjoined to the intellect--
LDS: Analytical, intellectual.
PD (simultaneously): Analytical.
S: Yeah.
S: And would that make the intellect become reason through that feeling, that higher feeling?
LDS (simultaneously): The-- well he spoke here of this fusion. He spoke-- reason is this fusion of this intellect with the mystical faculty.
S: So you're saying that the intellect, when wedded with this higher feeling, you're calling reason.
LDS: Yes.
HS: And that [one/two words inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): And I'm saying that would be the standard of the recognition of truth.
PD: (Louis/Truth) by [AS simultaneously: Wait a minute.] the way, I still don't [AS simultaneously: Yeah there's a big difference there.] really understand the conclusion that you just came to. The intellect doesn't become reason.
LDS: I didn't say re--
PD: Well I think that's [S simultaneously, faint: Ok.] what she said.
S: Yeah.
LDS: She agreed that it was the fusion.
S (simultaneously): Sounds like that's what you said.
LDS: But you just agreed that it was the fusion of this intellect with the mystical element that [student assents] becomes the reason?
S: Right.
LDS: That's-- that's [few words inaudible]
PD (simultaneously): Reason is a fusion of these two faculties, [LDS: Yeah.] two powers, two levels of your being.
LDS: Yeah.
PD: But one level doesn't become the other and the other one doesn't become--
LDS (simultaneously): No, no I didn't mean to suggest that.
S (faint): Uh-hm.
PD/S(?) (simultaneously): Ok.
MB: I'm not even sure if they're-- I mean from the other quotes about reason that he talks about reason is a [one word inaudible] I think he mentions that reasoning can go as far as the experience of truth itself.
LDS (simultaneously): That's right, that's right.
MB: And yet the way you're phrasing it now it sounds as though it's (firm) in that--
LDS (simultaneously): No, I said recognize or appreciate a presentation of truth.
MB (faint): A presentation, exactly.
S: (Well--)
HS (simultaneously): When you're [MB/S simultaneously: Oh.] using the phrase 'mystical' you mean actual experiences here.
LDS: No. Not necessarily.
HS (simultaneously): [couple words inaudible] (truth). Not the experiencing. And you don't-- you don't have to experience the truth of intellect to (know/learn) the experience of truth in the mystical and yet-- and yet, you know, what's the truth here? [MB/S(?) simultaneously: Are we talking about me?] Are we using the mystical in the-- as experiencing the intellect to give your criteria.
S: No, then you have to go beyond that and employ the reason with-- with the true intuition and then you have truth.
HS (faint): I'm all confused.
AH: I'm really confused.
LDS: Wait a minute. We had some quotes earlier tonight where PB said this-- this reasoning could recognize a presentation of truth. Ok?
PD: That is correct.
S (faint): Image of truth.
LDS (simultaneously): And I'm trying to make sense of that. And the only way I could make sense of it is that you would have to be speaking about the two faculties fused together, the reason-- or the intellect with the mystical feeling and now you have a faculty that can recognize truth, [AH simultaneously: Image of truth.] not experience truth.
S: Wait, [AH simultaneously: Image of truth.] wait, you're saying can recognize truth. [PD simultaneously: (one/two words inaudible) whole--] (We're not) recognizing an image of truth.
LDS: That's-- ok, that's what I mean.
S: What do you-- what do you think of when you think of image of truth? What are you considering that to be?
LDS: Any conceptual formulation of a vision that a Sage may have given us would be an image of truth, correct opinion.
AH: It's a conceptual formulation that's an appropriate intellectual vision of what the Sage experience as truth.
S (faint): Yeah, right.
AH: You still hold distinction between them.
LDS: Oh yeah, it's an image, it's not the truth.
AB: Like let's say you really understood the Hidden Teaching, not just repeat back all the words like, you know, we tend to do. And it was with this feeling as well as with your understanding. That-- maybe that would be what he's talking about as reason. It doesn't mean you experience mentalism but you've reasoned it out so that it's-- it's a valid presentation of a truth in the way you (experience).
LDS: That's the way I'm understanding it.
LH: Well then where-- wh-- where-- where do you get this hybrid faculty?
LDS: I didn't make it up, Larry. (bit of laughter)
AB: Well, if you could be, you know--
LDS: We had a full--
AH/S(?) (simultaneously): That's reasoned correct thinking.
S (faint): Ok.
LDS: Did you hear the quote? Did you hear the quote?
LH (simultaneously): Yeah. Yeah I did hear the quote but I don't think I would take-- interpret that quote to mean that reason is some kind of other function than correct-- correct thinking, I think it is guided by that mystical intuition.
LDS: You mean all thinking? All thinking?
LH (simultaneously): I don't think if you combine thinking and feeling [possibly one/two words inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): You mean the thinking that a businessman does is-- [LH simultaneously: That too.] has that mystical element in it?
S (very faint): Yes.
S (very faint): Uh-hm [couple words inaudible]
LH: If it's guided by that intuition.
S: [three/few words inaudible]
PD (simultaneously): I just want to say that a businessman's thinking is guided by sensible intuition and not mystical intuition. It's guided by the-- the intuitions of the sensible, [VM simultaneously: Well you can't make (one/two words inaudible)] the material intellect [one/two words inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): I think it's worse than that Paul. (laughter) I think you're giving them the benefit of the doubt.
RC: I'm glad I didn't know you when you were selling (stuff). (laughter)
LDS: I've had--
IS INTELLECT ALWAYS A TOOL OF THE EGO?
LR: Can we ask for changes?
RC: Yeah we're actually trying to focus, it's hard, on the intellect.
LR: Yeah.
RC: [couple words inaudible]
LR (simultaneously): And I'd like to know what it is.
RC: Yeah.
LR: And there's several quotes that state it in different terms. It's stated as being mostly subservient to the ego but also capable of being free from the ego and made to serve intuition.
RC: Capable of being purged of egoism, I think that's the one we just read.
LR: Impartial.
RC: Yes.
LR: What does that mean?
RC: Um--
LR: In other words--
RC: That was interesting, wasn't it?
HS: Just like a tool, you use it to [couple/three words inaudible] That's what it means.
S: Why does it not--
LR (simultaneously): When you say it's capable of being purged of the ego does that mean it does not belong to the ego?
RC: Egoism. [student assents, faint] Let's try to find that one.
AH: It's not used for the ego's postures, positions.
LR: Yeah but, if you say it's capable of being without ego, then that means it doesn't in fact belong to the ego per se.
S (very faint): [one/two words inaudible]
HS (simultaneously): But I think he's [S simultaneously: No he said egoism.] saying egoism though.
LR: What's the difference?
TS: Oh.
LR: What is egoism?
HS (simultaneously): Well he-- (and as) people established here, egoism is the lower absolute misconception [TS: Yeah.] and e-- and ego is so to say the unfoldment of your divinity [S simultaneously: Oh, (ok).] in the manifested world.
PD: Can you say that a little quicker, Herb? (laughter)
HS: If you hear quicker, I'll say it quicker. (bit more laughter)
AB/S(?) (faint): That's the way we do it.
[9¼ second pause with faint background student talking]
HS: So (he said) that-- that intellect does-- does not belong to egoism but it does belong to the manifested entity and the person.
LR: So it is the-- it is a proper possession of the ego.
HS: A proper possession? Might be ego, I don't know, [LR simultaneously: Faculty.] I don't know [couple words inaudible]
AH: I--
JA: Linda?
AH: It certainly seems to-- excuse me.
JA (faint): There's (always) another quote where he says the intellect fulfills itself when it realizes the conception [couple words inaudible] and it perceives. [student assents, faint] So that would be the-- that distinguishing (mark). I thought it was the ego [few words inaudible]
S (simultaneously, faint): (Well, uh-uh.)
HS: Well what do-- you have a notion of an impartial ego-- a impartial intellect.
PD: I like the former, Herb.
S (faint): Sure you do.
HS: We have the notion of an impartial intellect and how-- how do you understand (this/it)?
AH: Well let's say that that impartial intellect approached a-- a philosophy of truth. It wouldn't distort the ideas to ingratiate itself. If it-- if it wasn't impartial, it would twist the doctrine to suit its own beliefs. They said in one of the quotes the intellect has an amazing facility to doing that, ability to change the doctrine rather than itself.
HS: But does it have an ability to understand the doctrine?
AH: Insofar as the doctrine is an intellectual expression of truth.
HS: Well, I think it's been stated that-- that the doctrine can be expressed intellectually in some form but not the inner part of it, right?
AH: I was holding a distinction between image of truth and truth.
HS: Could an image of truth be the-- an actual image of truth that's, so to say, valid for where it appears?
AH: An image of truth is only appropriate to the image of truth.
PD: Could you make a distinction Herb between an image of truth you have in your mind and truth?
HS: I can't understand how truth could be image.
MB: Can't you speak of a true idea, an idea that is true, it has some validity?
HS: Yeah but what do you mean by that? There's some idea that you're holding, you've been holding for a while? What do you mean?
MB: I think you know what I mean by that.
HS: No I don't know-- no I don't.
MB: I mean, you pick up a philosophical text and it attempts to decide, you know-- or even a scientific text or even a PB text. It attempts-- it attempts to (lead you) through a reasoning process about the state of affairs. And you know that there are some ideas about the state of affairs which are true and others are not true. And you can never have--
HS (simultaneously): You think (you have that) time?
MB: You can never get a-- (bit of laughter)
S: Herbie, you might not be coming here if you didn't think that the truth could be imaged in some way.
MB: I mean we're not saying that you can have a permanent or a complete image of truth but you can have an idea that had some validity.
AB: Herbert you're--
CDA (simultaneously): Then you have to explain what kind of validity is (there). (student laughing)
PD: Herbie's descending into his sophistry.
AB: Your understanding of those [one/two words inaudible] to make a bomb.
HS (simultaneously): Hey, I've been trained to [one/two words inaudible] (bit of laughter)
AB: So it is true.
MB: But I think PB is distinguishing between the experience of truth and the ideas that are true. I mean that's a very big distinction there. So it's not a question of-- of mixing them up.
RC: Maybe just add a couple more into the fire here. (bit of laughter)
PB [V5, 7:1.184, RC reading]: "The intellect can present opinions--some very plausible and logical, others very weighty and fact-supported. But only the intuition can penetrate those layers after layer of spiritual experience which reveal the truth about man's link with God."
CDA: Could you read that one more time please?
PB [V5, 7:1.184, RC rereads]: "The intellect can present opinions--some very plausible and logical, others very weighty and fact-supported. But only the intuition can penetrate those layers after layer of spiritual experience which reveal the truth about man's link with God."
PD: See, but, in consideration of our dear friend Herbie, who's having a very difficult time understanding here, he would have a problem recognizing the validity of the intuition. Is that true or not? How does he know? He's still in a quandary as to finding out the truth of his intuition(s).
REASON CAN DECLARE CLEARLY WHAT THE OVERSELF IS NOT
LD: Yeah and further in the Hidden Teaching-- (laughter) in the Hidden Teaching he makes a very strong point that thinking is the arbiter, is the final court of appeal and that intuition has got to-- is-- the task has to be subservient to this thinking power.
CDA: It's reason he says, not thinking.
LD: The chapter is called "The Arbitration of Thinking Power" I believe.
CDA (faint): Yeah.
RG/S(?): No.
CDA (faint): Well I guess I didn't--
RG: But Louis, it is reason (in the) intellect.
LD: Yeah. But they're two-- he has [RG simultaneously: Two types of (stages).] two [one word inaudible] here, two stages of reasoning in there. He has the lower reason and the higher. Now I think--
RG (simultaneously): Yeah, the lower one he calls logic.
LD: He called sharp analytical thinking brought to its finest.
PD: But how are we going to-- (some laughter) how are we going to help Herbie recognize truth though, I mean that's the problem.
HS: Yeah, so I use my sharp analytic thinking brought to its finest using logic, I mean, how do I do it?
AH: Well, (if) it feels good then-- (laughter)
HS/S(?): That's Louis' point.
LD: I think there's false-- there's false intuitions, aren't there?
HS: He went down to [one word inaudible]
LD: I mean, it would seem that if it didn't hold to the laws of logic--
RG: You know, it seems from what these quotes said, reason brought to its sharpest pitch reveals the fact that any intuition given in a form could be faulty. But intuition that delivered some insight without a form would be prior to the rea-- would be prior to the imaging process and would be prior to the intellect. [PD: Uh-huh.] So reason can confirm that intuition could be true.
HS (simultaneously): Reason belonging to the intellect you mean?
RG: What?
HS: Reason belonging to the intellect?
RG: Well-- [PD: Even--] yeah, yeah.
PD: Please repeat it, Dickie, I didn't hear you. There's interruptions, distractions.
RG: That-- that reason brought to its-- its sharpest pitch focuses its-- its attention almost on what intuition isn't, and by the negation of what intuition isn't allows for the validity of real intuition to come through. But I don't think reason could affirm what intuition is, only what it isn't.
HS: So you'd say that's what he means by the recognition by intellect of truth?
PB [V5, 7:8.2 & Persp., Ch. 7 #29, TS rereads a part of]: "If metaphysics can never perform the task it sets itself--to know reality--it can perform the task of knowing what is not reality. And such a service is inestimable. The function of reason is ultimately a negative one; it cannot provide a positive apprehension of the Overself, but it can provide a clear declaration of what It is not. Reason [TS reads: It] can demonstrate that the Overself [TS reads: that it] can possess no shape and can in no way be imagined."
DB: See the other-- the other [possibly one word inaudible]
PD (simultaneously): So like our immortal Socrates, he's going to help people discover that possessed and full of ignorance and it's not going to unfold (them/it) to the knowledge.
TS: Well, is it just saying that it's unfolding ignorance or is it saying that through the careful thinking of one thought to the next, and since there's no intervening thought that can be held between the two, that these thoughts form an image of what is not that reality.
PD: And he's going to help dispel the inherent belief that will [one word inaudible]
HS: So you're assigning a positive functioning, Tim?
TS: I'm just reading here.
HS: Yeah so-- so you seem to be reading it-- ok he's really speaking here from innuendo, like understanding (here).
[13¼ second pause]
AH: Seems that the upshot of the quote was reason can point out that the Overself can be no kind of object. It can correct every misapprehension of the Overself if it has the courage to do so.
LD: But why-- what do you mean by reason there, what do you understand it to be? You mean the reason that you--
AH: The refinement of intellect to the extent that it's no longer subservient to the ego.
TS: Well what's the intellect?
PD: Oh it's the reason that's creating, Andrew, along the same lines as the-- it's that within you which recognizes the dispelling of an error. When you recognize an error has been dispelled, reason has been functioning and canceling that error.
S: But didn't you say that reason was a fusion between mystical faculty and the reason?
AH: That's the purification of the ego is the way I'm understanding this mystical capacity.
S: But not-- but not the purification of the intellect.
DH (faint): In this quote it seems he's talking about two different levels, Andrew. And I guess there is-- I think that there's a lower reason and a higher reason. And, there were different laundry lists (that were/of) talking about the different levels.
AH: I don't think it's a crisis, the distinctions he makes about the reason. I think that both function in a dualistic way and both have to have object. And insofar as they do, they leave images of truth rather than truth, I thought that's the upshot of this quote. Now if that's so, how should we talk about intellect or reason without seeing it in a negative way? How should we see [one/two words inaudible] [short pause] And 'cause we point-- point to its limitation does not necessarily imply that it's anything bad. [students assent, very faint] It just can't be truthful.
LR: Ok so that's good, so what-- so what is it then Andrew, do you-- what is it made of, what is it a function of, what kind of power does it have?
S (faint): Yeah.
AB: What are the two levels of it.
LD: Reason? Are you asking me?
AH (simultaneously): Well ask the pole.
LR: Oh I thought I was asking (everybody).
LD: Ok I didn't know you were, say.
LR: But--
AH: I can't describe that Linda, I-- I couldn't possibly--
HS (simultaneously, faint): [one/two words inaudible]
LR: Then are we at all any closer to seeing what it is?
AH: You mean reason or intellect or--
S: Intellect?
LR: The class is supposed to be on intellect (I thought).
AH: Yes.
LR: So are we any clo-- I mean there-- the--
AH: It's the-- it's the organ--
LR: It seems he's given a real clear delineation of what its stand can be, what framework it can be contained within but I'm-- I don't have any closer idea of what it is.
AH: It's a matrix of ideas and they could be related in all sorts of ways.
LR: But it's a function.
AH: It's a function, it's very--
LR: I mean (it's) a working [one word inaudible] about.
HS: So some-- what are some of the things it does? I mean if you want to define it by function, what does it do?
AH: Builds an atomic bomb, cooks supper.
LR (simultaneously): Yeah.
HS: Permits you to know philosophy.
TS/S(?) (faint): [few words inaudible]
S (simultaneously, faint): With plenty of confusion.
AB: I think it's reason that builds a bomb, not intellect.
AH: Oh I'm not (tangled in) that distinction [couple words inaudible] so.
AB: But intellect might distinguish.
S: Why do you say that, Alan? (bit of laughter)
S (faint): Let me ask a question.
AB: What?
HS: But wait a minute, [S simultaneously: Jonathan, (you're/your) (couple words inaudible)] if it-- if it's [couple/three words inaudible] (some laughter) function to give you an actual image of-- of a philosophy of truth.
LR: Herbert I can't hear you.
HS: Me? I can't hear you. (laughter)
S: But intuition--
LDS: Herbie, I think you're misphrasing it.
AB (simultaneously): I think when it comes in a pretty [one word inaudible]
LDS: Herbie's misphrasing the way PB characterizes intellect I think.
HS: Oh I don't know, didn't he say it could formulate philosophy?
LDS: Did he say intellect [HS: No I think it was--] could recognize truth?
MUST INTELLECT ALWAYS FUNCTION DUALISTICALLY?
HS (simultaneously): Recognize truth but it can't deliver truth was one of the quotes. Now that's a big-time function, you know, to recognize truth.
TS: Why do you imagine it has to [one word inaudible] recognize truth in-- in a dualistic way? What is the nature of that dualism?
HS (faint): Gee I-- I (don't--)
DB: Truth or falsity. I mean the function.
S (faint): Ok.
S (simultaneously): Can't hear you in back.
S (simultaneously): Can't hear.
DB: At this level the-- the duality he is talking about, remember he spoke about the intellect apprehending in a dualistic framework, you have black and that's only intelligible because you have a background of white and so on and so forth, the intellectual appreciation of truth would be in terms of what is false. You would say well this is-- this is a true statement.
TS (simultaneously): Well, yeah.
DB: Alright.
TS: How come it always splits things in two, what is the nature of the intellect such that it splits things into two? [DB: Because it--] And what is the nature of the knowledge of that relation of those two poles as different from the unit-- uniate [DB simultaneously: Well it's the one (one word inaudible)] idea prior to it being split up?
HS: But why do [one/two inaudible student words simultaneous with HS] you say-- whoa. (bit of laughter) Go on, John.
JL(?): He said-- I think there was a quote where he spoke of intellect as being a performing function of relating one idea with another.
TS: Yeah.
JL(?): Ok?
TS: And now wait, if it relates one idea to another each one of those ideas is not dual.
JL(?): I beg your pardon?
TS: Well if it relates one idea to another, each of those ideas is unique and in itself isn't dual. So how can it relate two ideas--
[Audio File 1983 1019a Ends]
[Audio File 1983 1019b Begins]
LDS: Its mode of operation is dialectical why?
TS: They say this intellect is getting two ideas and by the virtue of its dualistic mode creates [one/two words inaudible] Now each of those ideas wasn't dual [couple words inaudible] And yet we say its only knowledge, its mode of knowledge only comes through the relation of two ideas. Now how come?
S: Are you solving the problem of reflection or are you [few words inaudible]
TS (simultaneously): I have no i-- No I'm just [few words inaudible]
DH (simultaneously): But Tim, I thought the quote-- as I remember the quote it wasn't relating two ideas, he said that-- he said the intellect is the relationship of i-- of (thought--) [S: Yes.] thoughts and images. And that goes back to the-- you know, the more basic notion of intellect that Anthony was bringing up last time. It's-- it's the rela-- the relationship of thoughts and images, not elaborated.
TS: And how would you distinguish a thought from an idea? I mean it would just be real clear.
DH (faint): (Feeling.)
RG: A thought and an idea because we-- we have Platonic Idea.
DH: Right.
AH: How-- further, how shall the intellect posit non-dual circumstance as if there was an idea that was non-dual? Like, I thought-- what the intellect's limitation is to point to the necessity for it to function in regards to objects and subjects. [S: Right.] But it always functions in a dualistic mode. So to abstract a non-dual entity like an Idea from the point of view of dualistic thinking is to point out clearly that limitation. [student assents] It can only function dualistically. Even in its most rarified abstraction, they become objects to a knower.
RG: Uh-hm.
MB: I'm-- Tim, I'm not convinced that the ideas that the intellect relates are non-dual in themselves, I'm not sure that they are. Why do you say that?
TS: Well, if it's-- if something-- if two things are being related and those two things are in a real relation, then those two things must be units in themselves. Otherwise you'd have a relation to a relation. You have an infinite regress.
MB: Maybe that's what he wants.
AD (simultaneously): No, each of those units is dual.
TS: What?
AD: Each of the units is dual.
[students assent, faint]
TS (faint): Each of the units is dual.
MB: Yeah.
S (faint): Oh I see.
TS: Each thought is dualistic in itself.
AD: Yeah. If I say that the sky is white, implicit in this statement 'white' is black. I wouldn't be able to understand white unless I already understood that it included the contrast for its opposite.
MB: And even if you throw that statement apart, "the sky is white", it just probably pertained to the sky part of it. You only have the sky because it's related to the Earth. You know, each pa-- [S, faint: Yeah.] Yeah.
JB (simultaneously): No. No Tim asks in the duality of white compared to black, what is the dual-ness within white and within black that allows them to be known, each [AH/S(?) simultaneously: Neither.] separately. Is that--
TS: Yeah.
JB: Is that right?
MB: The du-- then what--
JB: And they can't be known separately [S, faint: Can't.] would be your answer. [MB simultaneously: Right.] They're not-- they're not known without the other.
S (very faint): Yeah right.
[students assent, very faint]
S (very faint): But--
MB: Yeah they're not-- it's not even like one of them is unitary. One of them is sort of a cart of a lot of impressions. And the only-- I think the only way you could relate them is that-- that the intellect can make are, you know, relations of parts.
[short pause]
TS: In a thought which is-- is dual in itself, is there any difference between an explicit dualism in thought and an implicit dualism in a thought?
S (faint): Uh-hm.
DH (faint): That's--
RG/S(?) (faint): Yeah.
TS: Well, you say the sky is white and the impli-- im-- implicit in a statement is that it's not black. That's different from saying the sky is white, not black. Or is it different?
PD: What is the meaning of white apart from black?
TS: Not red, not blue.
PD: I mean if you define the-- by its contrary qualities.
TS: Yes but I-- it may be contrary to more than one other quality, and I'm wondering.
DB: But that's still a function of this duality whether it's explicit or implicit, doesn't matter. It still only apprehends when within that-- within that framework.
HS: So Tim you're trying to say that the-- if the intellect works dualistically how could it formulate a truth which is not dualistic?
TS: I keep trying to understand what we mean when we say that the intellect functions dualistically before I try to understand what it means that it can't function in a non-dual way. I'm trying to see if I can understand a little more carefully what we mean by dualistic.
LH (faint): Well, you're-- look at the statement. I mean, the intellect has basically stated the sky is not black, not-not white.
S (faint): Uh-hm, yeah.
RC (simultaneously): So wouldn't-- wouldn't you say that--
S (very faint): Yeah.
RG: I mean inso--
LH (faint): Doesn't help that I stated it but the-- that in each turn the duality is still there.
JB: It would call for the realization about whether a thing without its opposite is also dual. That would be the virtue of stating implicitly. In other words, it's getting rid of the implicit dualism by saying when I mean good I mean not-bad. Now you can ask can you know good, is it itself-- is that term [couple words inaudible] in itself dual. I think-- I mean [TS simultaneously, faint: Yeah.] I'm trying to--
WY: (Then it) could be. Or asking why is it that the intellect cannot understand or grasp what is non-dual unless you understand-- enquire into its nature and in terms of its function of relating two different ideas, one to another, in terms of its substance perspective in trying to understand it. Well it's the transient thoughts that are always changing, shifting. So what does that-- it means it doesn't have a unity at all. And I think implied in non-dual is that there's unity. And so some sort of faculty that inherently does not have unity to it cannot apprehend non-dual unity at all. [student assents, faint] And that's the nature of the intellect in terms of a substance point of view.
S (very faint): Yeah.
RG: Yeah and from a functional point of view you would say its faculty is thinking. And any thinking implicitly connotes the thoughts that it's thinking and that itself is the prime duality that intellect is imaging. So any thinking process can never apprehend that which is without thought.
TS: Well, (it isn't) that a different kind of dualism to say thinker and thoughts as the thoughts having contrary qualities.
RG: Well I think-- I think one is the unfoldment of-- I mean-- The question was why can't intellect apprehend the unity in itself.
TS (faint): No-- oh ok.
RG: That's another question.
TS: First question is to me what is the intellect [RG: Right.] and what are its functions.
RG: Well wouldn't you say one of its functions is thinking?
TS: Yes.
RG: Ok.
HS: And when it thinks does it think as-- does it think of objects as the-- as [one/two words inaudible] point out, or does it-- or does it think the essence of the objects? Does it hold the object to be distinct from itself or not in thinking? I think that is why I'm not pointing out it's [TS simultaneously, faint: The last (one).] a dualism that's almost (in its) operation.
TS: Ok but now you're saying that the dualism between the thinker and the thought as not the-- is not the same, it's the same as a thought and its implicit object that [HS simultaneously: Is intellect.] is dual.
HS: But I think the duali-- the same, I think they're kind of-- I don't know, I'm sure you could differate-- differentiate kinds of dual-- you know, du-- [S, faint: Right.] I don't think there's any problem with that. I think pairs. But I think that-- the primary thing, it doesn't grasp its object I think is what Andrew said, you know. The object is taken as other.
JB: You mean that from that primary dualism brings the other?
AD (faint): No.
S (faint): Yeah.
HS: Well, yeah, it's including thought. I don't-- I don't-- I don't what the other part is here.
MB: Well objects that are taken as other are always juxtaposed against other objects that are taken as other. In other words you're dealing with the realm of appearances.
DB: On the other hand objects are traditionally defined as other, I mean, so--
MB: Right.
JB: I thought Richard was trying to end--
MB (simultaneously): In the intellect.
JB: --was trying to end the infinite regress that Tim pointed out by suggesting that the fundamental duality cannot be overrun. [AH: The fundamental--] And that-- and that does terminate the infinite regress, I mean that-- when you get to whether white itself is dual, you can turn immediately to there's me and white. And that duality can't be undone until a different way of knowing. I-- wouldn't you say you're suggesting [S, faint: Yeah.] that the infinite regress is terminated at that fundamental level?
AH: But to speak of knowledge-- to speak of anything that is known it necessitates dualism 'cause it must be in (the world). A fundamental and systemic situation.
S (faint): Yeah it seems that the intellect can't think creatively. [student assents] If you think of what is given to it which-- which experiences it-- it has already had or what has already been presented to it but that beyond that it can't creatively go so it's stuck in-- in what's given.
PD: And it hasn't been demonstrated, especially by our activity, that the intellect can think at all. (laughter, clapping)
S (amidst laughter): Very good.
AB: Now is that reason or--
S (amidst laughter): That's the intellect.
S: It's--
S: Or intellect.
S (faint): Though-- (some more laughter)
RG: On that note.
S: [couple words inaudible]
AB/RG(?): Continue.
S (faint): Continue?
HS (simultaneously): Who had the outline?
RG: Alright, where's (Ralph)? (some laughter)
PD: Oh.
RG: Here we go Paul, this is for you.
RC: We've made progress.
RG/S(?): Wait. (bit of laughter)
PB [V5, 7:1.96, RG reading]: "The intellect has to become baffled and exhausted by its own activity (laughter) in search of the Overself, [RG rereads:"The intellect has to become baffled and exhausted by its own activity in search of the Overself] must despairingly know that it has no possible chance of ever knowing the truth by its own self-defeating procedures, must realize that it is running round and round in a circle, and must finally abandon the effort altogether. At this very point a great opportunity awaits the seeker, but it is also here that so many go off at a tangent and miss their chance. Either they label the quest futile and illusory, losing further interest, or they take shelter in a hierarchical religious organization which imposes dogmas and demands complete submission to its authoritarian rule."
[short pause]
AH: You know Richard, it speak-- speaks in a despairing-- a despairing situation but there might be also a way of seeing a glimmer of hope, you know, like if the intellect truly got to that point that there could be a kind of joy associated with-- with knowing that hidden-- ferreted out error, you know? I don't-- I don't see it necessarily as a totally negative and despairing spectacle.
RG: But you know if the intellect has such joy in ferreting-- ferreting out the error it might also-- it might still believe that it could get further.
S (faint): Yeah.
[short pause]
RG/S(?): I don't see a thing.
AH: Yeah, there could be a kind of enthusiasm.
PD: Which would perpetuate itself.
S (very faint): Yeah.
AH: I was just trying to-- trying to add a positive note to that. (laughter, student words)
PD: You're changing your disposition Andrew. (laughter)
AH: Only my persona. (bit of laughter)
RG: Give-- give them (another one).
S (faint): Uh-hm.
CAN THE INTELLECT KNOW ITS SOURCE THROUGH MANIPULATING ITS OWN CONTENTS?
PB [V5, 7:3.211, RG reading]: "Are books nothing more than pieces of paper--as a famous Hindu saint once said to me? Have they brought no positive help to suffering men, no guidance to bewildered ones, no light to groping minds, no peace to agitated hearts, no truth to deluded seekers, no warning to misguided masses? If they have, this alone would be their justification. They have their place even in the most unspiritual and in many spiritual lives. The confusions arise only when the limitations of this place are ignored, or not perceived. Mystics who condemn intellect, and therefore books which speak for, or from, the intellect, should keep their condemnation within its own proper limits, too. With this plainly said as a safeguard, we may move over to the restricted standpoint of the Hindu saint. The need of silencing [the] intellect is paramount. If it is ignored in favour of the reading of endless books, or the writing of numerous notes extracted from them, the man keeps his intellect constantly active and thus prevents his mind becoming still! What is the use of accumulating notes and books, which are outside him, when the mind which must be conquered is inside him? Each book that is read represents a stirring up of thoughts whereas what is required of him is a silencing of them. There is no limit to the number of books that can be read or notes made. (some laughter) Even working twenty-four hours a day, (laughter) he could go on activating intellect until he died, thereby avoiding his duty in meditation. Reading is useful in the preliminary stages to convince him, to clear his doubts, and finally to tell him what to do, that is, to practise mind-stilling. (bit of laughter) But if he does not do it, his knowledge is wasted."
[11 second pause]
LR: So there Dickie the intellect is the same as the production of thought(s).
S (faint): Hm?
S: You know intellect--
LR: When he says silence intellect and silence thoughts he's talking about the [student assent, very faint] same thing, right?
S (very faint): Uh-hm, uh-hm.
PC: And yet but when we talked about it last week we talked about it as the manipulation of the memory contents.
LR: Yeah, no, I'm trying to get that in terms-- I don't see what we can have [few words inaudible] image-making here.
PC: You don't see intellect as being--
LR: I'm trying to connect it to last week's discussion.
PC: So you can see the intellect that we've been talking about tonight, not reason but just intellect itself as being the process of manipulating contents of memory?
LR: I'm sorry, what?
PC: I-- I'm saying-- (laughter)
AD: It's about time. (laughter) [few words inaudible]
PC: Could-- could you see the way we've been talking about intellect tonight, not reason but intellect per se, as being this manipulation of memory contents?
S: Right.
PC: A process of thought in which contents of the memory are manipulated.
LD: But it's not that the-- it's what he-- it's not that the intellect is manipulating itself, it's like the ego is manipulating the intellect so you never looked at the ego itself. Like the intellect is an instrument, that's the feeling I got from that quote, that the ego itself uses the intellect and he keeps throwing this out and then you never look at it.
S: What's the point again?
LD: It's like memory contents and desires, tendencies.
AD: Yes but he's asking the-- about the intellect, we know that [AH simultaneously: Well Peter's question--] the ego's behind its functioning. But if we leave that point aside now, we'll still want to know about the intellect. [short pause] Could we use an analogy maybe? Could we think of a computer? And it has stored in it, you know, an indefinite amount of bits of knowledge or pieces of knowledge. And, can you imagine that eventually the computer will be able to get to know its author?
CDA: Yes wouldn't it-- but wouldn't--
S (very faint): I wouldn't.
CDA (faint): (It would--) (laughter)
S: Computer will get to know its author?
AD: Yeah if it-- if it keeps it up sooner or later it'll get to know its author, right? (bit of laughter)
S: Its author being the intellect. (laughter, student words)
S: Its author being--
AD: There's a fellow over there, alright, he makes a computer. [CDA simultaneously: You say (it is)?] Now that computer keeps working and it has a million bits of information stored [CDA simultaneously: It had--] in it. And you think of every possible combination, [CDA: Yeah.] every variety. Do you [S simultaneously: Right.] think finally it will come up and say "I know who my generator is. It's Dr. Gupta." (laughter)
S: No, no, no I don't think so.
RG (simultaneously): If Dr. Gupta programmed it to know that, it would know. (laughter, student words)
S (amidst laughter): You would know Dickie.
RC: You know if-- the thing is that you could even get the computer to say that, but--
AD: I didn't say "say that".
RC: Well, I mean, could.
AD: Yeah but I didn't "say that".
RC: Yeah. But that's-- that's interesting in the sense of like there's quotes that said that when you do bring it into the realm of the intellect it becomes another thought mixed in with other thoughts and no more meaningful than any of them.
HS: So you would say that the computer can't know its generator. Is that what you're saying?
AD: Can't know what?
HS: Generator.
AD: Well, its author, composer, its creator. In other words, human being. The guy who made it. I don't know, I'm asking, I don't know. There might be such computers. (AD laughs, bit of laughter)
PC: But, if it had enough information it can come to the conclusion that it couldn't know that.
AD: I'm sorry?
PC: If it had enough information it could come--
AD (simultaneously): Will you talk to him? (laughter)
AS: Yeah.
PC: It could come-- it could come to the conclusion that it did-- that it couldn't know its author. That it couldn't.
DB: Or it could.
S (simultaneously): Maybe not. (some laughter)
JB: Or that it could but it would be wrong. (some laughter)
S (faint): (Represent.)
AH: But that-- to extend the analogy to the ridiculous. (laughter)
PD: That's pretty powerful.
AH: If you shut the computer off it is itself and it's-- it knows itself. (laughter) I mean it's not other than itself when you pull the plug.
S: [couple/three words inaudible]
S (faint): It doesn't know that though.
AH: Because we agreed that it can't ever know itself as an object. So it has to know itself by being.
S: It has to.
BS: Computer knows itself as a subject? (bit of laughter)
S: No.
AS (faint): Oh come on [one word inaudible]
JB: But isn't the problem with know and not the content, Dr. Gupta? It can-- I think Randy tried to point out that it could say "I know my creator is Dr. Gupta", the question is, what's the knowing?
AH: That'd be a philosophical doctrine.
AD (simultaneously): That's the last analogy I'm going to use. (AD laughs, laughter, student words) You go over it with a roller, a tank, (laughter) a locomotive. (laughter)
THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE LEADING IDEAS THAT DIRECT OUR THINKING
[Transcriber note: I am using After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1939.]
Aldous Huxley [After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, p. 326, RC reading]: ""It's extraordinary the way the whole [quality] of our existence can be changed by altering the words in which we think and talk about it. We float in language like icebergs (some laughter)--four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting [into] the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.""
[short pause with faint background student talking]
RC (faint): That's a quote from Huxley.
[12¼ second pause]
PB [V5, 7:5.52, RC reading]: "There is [RC reads: There's] a profound difference between using words because they have been understood and merely repeating them because somebody else has used them."
[short pause]
PB [V5, 7:1.153, RC reading]: "We cannot underestimate the importance of the leading ideas which direct and control a man's thinking. Man possesses creative power. He may pour his molten imagination into new molds, then solidify it, and through sheer intensity of will give birth to his own brain-child."
S (faint): Hm.
S: Randy, can you read that first line again please?
PB [V5, 7:1.153, RC rereading]: "We cannot underestimate the importance of the leading ideas which direct and control a man's thinking."
S: Will you read the last line? (some laughter)
PB [V5, 7:1.153 cont., RC rereading]: "Man possesses creative power. He may pour his molten imagination into new molds, then solidify it, and through sheer intensity of will give birth to his own brain-child."
[short pause]
HS: Does imagination belong to intellect the way (we're/you're) using it?
[9 second pause]
PD: Reified, you know, and it's a conjecture, but the reified images. But not the creative power. The dead images, the corpses, they get accumulated in the circuitry of the brain.
HS: And they-- and they're implanted by imagination, through the force of one's imagination, would that be the image?
RC: Yeah.
PD: Well, I mean something like that, I-- the power of one's will to--
S (faint): (But this--)
S (very faint): Uh-hm.
HS: But there's the effective imagination, is that-- is that of intellectual thoughts or is that something prior to the intellect the way we're using it?
[short pause]
AH (faint): I think that has a creative potential and could be distinguished from intellect.
[short pause]
S (very faint): Read that all over.
PB [V5, 7:1.153, RC rereads]: "We cannot underestimate the importance of the leading ideas which direct and control a man's thinking. Man possesses creative power. He may pour his molten imagination into new molds, then solidify it, and through sheer intensity of will give birth to his own brain-child."
S (faint): Hm.
S (very faint, possibly part of background): [three/few words inaudible]
AH: That sounds a lot like intuition.
JB: At least the first part. That suggests that the leading ideas are not his own. But then the second is about how it's all his own. It's a peculiar flip.
AH: I'm thinking of the creative power as an intuitive [one word inaudible]
JB: Oh and not his own either.
S (faint): Right.
RG: I thought the creative power was just the-- the totality of thinking.
AH (faint): Well it's both things, you know?
RG: Yeah.
AH: It hasn't concretized.
SD: Yeah but if it's intuitive it's receptive to something, here it's just spinning out its own preconceived notion except in a very intense way here.
S (very faint): Right.
RC: Well we-- we had one quote about one of the proper functions of the intellect is to unfold in details of what's provided by the intuition.
HS: When it unfolds the details does it have imagination as a-- as a faculty of use or does it just recapitulate previously u-- these used images?
RC: Well basically what we've said so far I would think that the intellect by itself [short pause] couldn't make the imagination molten, I mean it couldn't work with the molten imagination. I think that higher-- that higher phase that Louis was talking about it where you're really working with the molten imagination [one word inaudible] fire behind it.
[short pause]
HS: So the intellect the way he's using it is not creative?
[short pause]
PD: That sounds good Herb.
RC: Uh-hm, yeah.
HS: Thanks Paul.
[short pause]
RC: It's funny it's-- thinking of it more like-- like the difference between an arranger and a composer and it seems as if the intellect is capable of arranging but it's not capable of composing.
[students assent, faint]
[short pause]
JB: But what faculty is creative if the rest is given and then the rest is machination.
PD: The imagination.
JB: No, machination. I mean it sounds as if we've got two things, what's given and received through intuition and then what you manipulate like an arranger, where is the creative man?
S: Your reason.
PD (simultaneously): The imagination I thought in that quote.
RG: It's the reason, it's the reasoning?
S (faint): Ok.
[short pause]
RC: Yeah I would think at least that because of like-- till he talks about being able to think your own thoughts. And before you can think your own thought you have to have been able to discard all the other associations and so on that have come with it.
S: Randy--
S: You learn all the thoughts that you're experiencing.
S (faint): Just (ego), right?
S (very faint): I could do that.
S (very faint): (Of course.)
HS: But when you say you think your own thought isn't that you're infusing-- you're taking-- you're infusing something from, so to say, from your Overself into your intellect? [students assent, faint] As-- and you're differentiating that between the intellect's previously function-- you know, functioning previously in creating and giving you another thought? 'Cause that seems a lot of thinking going on here, [RC: Yeah.] (units of) thinking. [short pause] Do they both appear in the in-- in-- in the intellect or reason?
RC: Yeah I-- I think the intellect can be used to unfold and elaborate the intuition. Maybe you can really think out the details of something. But-- um-- It's almost like you-- you have to have a posture beyond the intellect like this Buddhiyoga that he's talking about where you have to be working with the faculty that's actually judging what the intellect is doing. Is this actually what's in keeping with the-- the intuition that I'm trying to represent in the intellect or not.
[short pause]
AH: Randy? May-- maybe in terms of this (molten--) notion of the molten imagination, I was struck with that image, it's molten because it hasn't yet been cast into form. What do you think is meant in that quote by molten imagination? Could you try for a more specific description?
BS (faint): [couple/three words inaudible]
AH: Start it?
BS (faint): He said it there.
AH: How? I-- it-- this objection to it being called intuition. What would we call it?
RG: (He/We) spoke of imagination, I mean-- Then what-- I don't see why you can't call it thinking.
AH: Well it's not formed yet, yeah. That's what's holding--
RG (simultaneously): But, isn't thinking imaginative until it forms its thoughts, isn't thinking the process by which images, thoughts or whatever get formed?
AH: I-- I think once those images form they're no longer molten.
RG: Right but the faculty which produces those forms would be the-- the functioning of that faculty which would be thinking or imagining or creating or whatever word you want to use.
AH: You mean there's a kind of pure potential.
RG: As an actual function that translates these leading ideas into the molten-- into the forms. It's the medium by which these leading ideas get-- get ossified.
AH: And leading ideas would be imaged ideas?
RG: Well the degrees in your chart, right?
LD: You think they could also be the-- like the prior ideas of space, time, objectivity and the imagination takes these prior and constructs a world for you?
RC: Yeah I think that IV.3.30 quote would be applicable. These ideas remain in the depths of thought unless reason takes up the task of developing them and unfolding them in the imagination. And perhaps reason, whose actualization always accompanies thought, has the function of grasping it, developing it, unfolding it in the imagination as in a mirror. Soul is always desirous of the-- of the thought. It's always trying to achieve this thought, it's--
LDS: Randy you're saying these leading ideas would be at that level?
RC: Well I think they could be if they really were the leading ideas.
LDS: Yeah. I think Dickie's suggestion, I-- the way I took it was it was something like the degree symbols in a person's nat-- natal chart, that those tendencies or those ways of viewing the world, as well as in the epistemological categories, all those would include what he means by leading ideas.
RC: Yeah but the soul has incarnated and then it's not as if you've just got an ego up there. And I can't believe that the soul would bother if there weren't (some/those) ideas that were worth manifesting.
S (faint): Yeah Dickie.
S (faint): Uh-hm.
PD: But that could even be a practice [one/two words inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): Yeah, I see what you're saying.
PD: I mean, that can be an exercise, to take an-- take an idea and visualize it within your own imagination and you will start living out that idea.
LDS: Kriya shakti.
PD: I mean, [RC simultaneously: Yes, that--] it could be taken at many different levels, [RC assents] I don't see the need [LDS simultaneously: That's right, I--] to locate it epistemologically, cosmologically.
LDS: Well we're just exploring the different levels that it could apply to, I see the point.
RC: You could almost think like one of those ideas is the-- the personality, if you took it at that level.
HS: But would it in that-- in that [LDS simultaneously: Yeah.] [one/two words inaudible] where's the intellect though? Especially in that IV.3.30. I mean it seems like there's-- (it's/is) within the image. [student assents, faint] Not the reason, not the, you know, thought copy.
[11 second pause]
AH: Would you mind doing the quote again?
DB: Um--
S (faint): Once again.
PB [V5, 7:1.153, RC rereads]: "We cannot underestimate the importance of the leading ideas which direct and control a man's thinking. Man possesses creative power. He may pour his molten imagination into new molds, then solidify it, and through sheer intensity of will give birth to his own brain-child."
HS (faint): Yeah.
[short pause]
JB (faint): That seems that can easily be seen to go across certain (lines). [students assent, very faint] And that may help to bring it back to that-- that quote because-- It does sound as if the first sentence is all about the molding forces (which need to be) or it's this idea of the-- the nature of cosmic thinking or take these ideas as elements of the chart or the vasanas or Louis' combination of the two ideas. But then the second part is all about the exercise of creativity, the freedom as it were, like the-- just the first sentence (is/was) all about the restrictions and the second sentence is all about the freedom.
RG: No but then An-- then somebody else brought up the point that the leading ideas would be something that you wanted to attain and the creative imagination has to attain it. [student assents, very faint] And then they're-- then they're conflicted.
JB: Oh I don't want-- I mean-- oh I see.
PD (simultaneously): Maybe the point is Jonathan that you're practicing that exercise whether you know it or not all the time. That's another way to interpret.
S (faint): Yeah it is.
PD: That the ideas that you're-- you're subject to, you're putting the intensity of your imagination into in every act of perception and experience. And you're enlivening and intensifying the inherent beliefs and ideas you have within you right now.
S: Inadequately.
JB: But if that were so it would reduce the sense of freedom, it would take away that idea of creativity so-- somewhat.
PD: To the extent that [S simultaneously, faint: Yeah.] you don't consciously investigate [S: Right.] yourself.
JB: Uh-hm. Right.
S: See (him)?
S (very faint): I think [few words inaudible]
[students assent, faint]
S (very faint): (Isn't it) [one/two words inaudible]
PC (faint): Probably now. 'Cause we're likely to underestimate.
S: Hm?
S (very faint): Well shouldn't that be--
S (faint): Well--
JB (faint): Keep going away because the conjunction's not there.
S (faint): Right.
JB (faint): Or the-- [S, faint: Right.] [S simultaneously: (one/two words inaudible) objective.] well I do have to talk. (some laughter)
DB (faint): Ran-- Randy?
S (very faint): [couple words inaudible]
REASONED THOUGHT CAN REVEAL WHY REASON IS NOT COMPETENT TO JUDGE REALITY
DB: Could-- could I-- could I backtrack a little bit? That [one word inaudible] but a little earlier, something said that like I would consider to have been my intellect before this class started that I thought I used to know that I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know any more about what I meant by intellect than I did when I got here. And-- (bit of laughter) No wait a minute. Now there was a recognition that I didn't know what was going on, right? Now perhaps some-- some of us share that. But now is that the-- [S: You have to listen to the instincts.] is that function of recognizing that it doesn't know something the function of the intellect there? Is that-- is that-- See I'm trying to get at what is the intellect.
RG: Well he did say it could be. He said the highest function of the intellect is it could recognize its own limitations. If you recognize that you don't know, [DB simultaneously: Right.] the intellect could have that recognition.
DB: Ok.
RC: The quote that that turned up in though was a little bit more complicated. 'Cause I think you would say the highest function of the reason was to recognize its limitations. And if reason worked with the intellect--
S (faint): Just read it.
S (faint): [couple words inaudible]
[short pause]
TS (very faint): [few words inaudible]
[9¾ second pause]
RC: Yeah.
PB [V5, 7:8.1 & Persp., Ch. 7 #28, RC rereads a part of]: "The final office of reasoned thought is to reveal why reason is not competent to judge reality and why thinking is not competent to know reality."
[students assent, faint]
RG: But here's another one, he says--
RC (simultaneously): And early [one/two words inaudible] and earlier in that quote it wasn't thinking.
PB [V5, 7:8.1 & Persp., Ch. 7 #28, RC rereads a part of]: "Reason is the right arrangement of thinking. Each thought thus arranged depends for its existence on another thought and is unable to exist without such a relation, [that is, it] suffers from relativity. Hence a thought cannot be considered as [an] ultimate in itself and therefore reason cannot know the absolute. The intellect can take the forms of existence apart [RC reads: The intellect can take apart the forms of existence] bit by bit and tell us what they consist of. … This is something which must be experienced, not merely thought."
[short pause]
MB: Randy?
RC: Yeah here it is.
PB [V5, 7:8.1 & Persp., Ch. 7 #28, RC rereads a part of]: "Therefore reason which depends on thinking is incompetent to comprehend the mysterious Overself."
RC: This was--
RG: But that's different than saying that I know something to say that reason [RC assents] can't comprehend the Overself.
RC (simultaneously): Well I think reason is-- is involved if you actually say my intellect is not reflecting anything meaningful. (bit of laughter)
RG: Ok, well here's the quote that says--
PB [unpublished, RG reading]: "The intellect cannot go beyond its own limitations, as Kant showed, but it can make the effort to see clearly what those limitations are. In this way it can avoid traps and pitfalls and then voluntarily make that surrender of itself, and especially of its thought-forming activity, which can open the way to enlightenment."
S: I have a question. Is there some part of intellect that's not the thinking, thought? Is there-- is it like-- are they going to have other functions that (produce other--) Can you say that intellect is-- is the same as thought? Is it-- is it?
RC (simultaneously): Yeah. That was what one of the quotes said.
S (simultaneously): Not reason but intellect is the same.
RC (simultaneously): Yeah.
S: What about the quote that Richard just read then?
S: I couldn't tell from that.
RC: If his-- if his intellect can make the effort.
S (faint): Right.
S: But I really can't tell. Intellect can what?
RC: This quote here he says intellect can make the effort.
PB [unpublished, RG rereads a part of]: "…and then voluntarily make that surrender of itself, and especially of its thought-forming activity…"
AD: Do you [S simultaneously: So--] think intellect would do that on its own account?
S: No.
RG: No.
[short pause]
TS (faint): Alright.
AH: It would've had to have been-- have been directed by reason, is that the--
THE INTELLECT IS THE TOTALITY OF BITS OF INFORMATION ABOUT HOW THE ORGANISM HAS RESPONDED TO ANY GIVEN SITUATION
AD: Well that's why it's important to understand what is intellect, even in the abstract way, even in an artificial way. What is the intellect? Is it enough to say it's the totality of our thoughts? Is that going to help us?
RG: No.
AD: Wouldn't we also have to say or add to it to amplify, to make it clearer, because evidently it's not been enough.
S: So it seems that it's the totality of our thoughts--
AD (simultaneously): Well you have to speak up, dear.
S: The totality of our thoughts that set up in relation to each other somehow. They're not just arbitrarily thrown into a heap but that somehow they are related.
AD: Well why not thrown into a heap? Do you feel that your thoughts are related in an organized systematic way? (bit of laughter)
S: Well it seems that the intellect does organize them, that say this computer that is the-- [AD simultaneously: But he said that--] the data and (makes) it--
AD (simultaneously): But now you're making it into some kind of a thing.
S: Well it's a function isn't it?
AD: Yeah. So it's not a thing, right?
S: Right. It--
AD: Now what's the function?
S: The function is to take the data given to it and to process it somehow for its own use.
AD: So then you're saying that the intellect in a sense is the response of the organism to the totality of the bits of information that it contains to any given situation?
S: Uh-hm.
AH: It seems also that those responses are organized to get a--
AD (simultaneously): Well why go on? Can we explore this a little bit first?
HS: Yeah what do you mean by bits of information?
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: Well what do you think I mean?
HS: Well, one thing I think--
AD: Do you-- do-- do you get the beginning, the middle, and the end when you examine something or you find out about something? Or do you get a little piece here and a little piece there?
HS: You get the slice contiguous to your (present).
AD: Huh?
HS: You get the slice in accord with your-- it's at the place where you're at.
AD (simultaneously): You're at a situation, an-- given any situation, or better still you're reading an article in the New-- New York Times, right?
HS: Yeah.
AD: You get little bits of information. (some laughter) You don't get the whole story.
HS: I just read the headlines, I don't-- (bit of laughter)
AD: Alright, you don't get the whole story, you get bits of information. This is what you store. Right, you're walking down the street, it's a steep incline. You know from pieces of information that you have stored that you better stop and turn around. These are bits of information that have been stored by your mind, right? And we're saying that the mind, so to speak, or this organism is responding to a situation and the response to a situation must depend upon these bits of information that he already has. Unless you're a Zen Sage of course and you operate spontaneously and just put on a shoe and walk over the incline.
HS: Ok. So you get bits of information from your memory and you get bits of information from what you read in the Times, that you read what you cognize in front of you is what you're saying?
AD: In other words, the interaction that's going on between you and your environment or between you and your thoughts, this-- this total blooming booming confusion is bits of information.
RC: Even reading that newspaper involves memory to-- to remember what the words spell or what the letters mean [three words inaudible]
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: Yeah it's too bad you don't take the computer analogy seriously.
(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1983 1019b Ends; Side 2 Begins)
[Transcriber Note: Older Pat Campbell 1983 partial transcript has the following, which was cut out when the tape was flipped. "(Re: the blinking response when a pillow is thrown)"]
LD: --pieces of information.
AD (simultaneously): But suppose I don't throw the pillow, you blink anyway!
CDA: Well how-- why would you say that's rational?
LD: Because it protects my eyes. (laughter)
AD: But I didn't throw the pillow. And you blink anyway.
LD: Yeah, ok, that's irrational, that response.
CDA: No!
S (simultaneously, faint): (But) no. (bit of laughter)
AD: You're just responding according to the pieces of information that are stored in you.
AB: And those pieces of information seem to be based on previous interactions of the organism with its environment.
AD: Ok so, go on.
AB (simultaneously): So, by the time you did throw the pillow--
AD: So you go all the way-- go all the way down or all the way back to your-- to the moment of birth, right? So then what would your intellect be if we said that it's the totality of all the thoughts you ever had?
AB: At the moment of birth it would be--
AD: Yeah, you go all the way back, why not-- why stop, go all the way back. Every response that the organism ever made-- As a matter of fact I don't know but I think von Neumann made an estimate as to how many bits of information (some laughter) are stored away. I can't even recite the number. (bit of laughter)
S (faint): Ok.
S (faint): Yeah.
S (very faint): Yeah so?
LD: Yeah but there's some responses that are-- are not learned and they're not-- I mean a baby (does not) blink.
AD (simultaneously): They were learned at another time, what's the difference to the argument.
CDA: Well the--
LDS (simultaneously): So Anthony, you're-- [S simultaneously: Wait (Louis).] you're saying that this intellect is nothing more than or less than what we speak of as a computer today.
AD: Well we're trying [LDS simultaneously: Right?] to understand what it is, yeah. [LDS: And--] We're trying to get some characteristics of what the intellect is let's say before it is pervaded by [one word inaudible] heated, you know, palpitations or fluctuations, you know--
LDS (simultaneously): Or any other faculties or any other-- yeah, faculties or elements [AD simultaneously: Uh-hm.] of the person that could-- that could begin to manipulate it or use it. If we just isolate it in and of itself, [AD: Yeah.] we have something like this computer that we all know about and experienced it. And all the computer is is this bank of information. It's a bank of information. And that information is useless unless something--
AD (simultaneously): Well no, no.
LDS: No, unless-- now let me finish (what I'm saying). (laughter)
AD: I want to know more about the bank of information.
RG (faint): It's more than just a bank of information.
LDS: Ok, there are certain relationships within that bank of information that are set up, things that are coordinated together, things that don't go together, that will never come together. There's all these, you know, laws and relationships that are contained within that bank of-- of data, depending on the author, depending on who created it and put-- stored things in it. But its responses are guaranteed once that has been established. All that-- that data, those relationships and ways of relating to each other. That-- then from then on all of its responses are absolutely determined.
AD: Well, I don't know if they're absolutely determined, let's say what we mean.
DB: They're relatively determined.
S: [one word inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): Or relatively, you know what I mean.
AH: All those [one word inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): I mean you could have a short or something, you know.
AD: But, isn't-- I don't know if that would be quite correct because, in this indefinite number of bits of information, it would seem that the possible responses that could be made would be almost equally large. [student assents, faint] But, [LDS simultaneously: Ok, ok.] if you notice the responses you make, they're usually very stereotyped.
[student assents, very faint]
S: (Good thing.)
LDS: Ok, I see what you're saying.
AD: So why say predetermined? Let's say that you got a lot of bits of information there, alright. And they can be combined in a variety of way which, you know, we won't go into right away but they can be combined a variety of ways and it would seem that the net result or the-- the end result of that process of permutation and combination would be almost infinite.
LDS: Yeah ok.
S: So are you saying that the bits of information are the intellect and the function or processing of those relations, those pieces of information is the reason? Or is the intellect both the--
AD: I'm not saying anything, I'm just-- I'm just trying to point out, is there something more here than-- in this example, we're just talking about these bits of information, the way they could be manipulated, right? That's all we're talking about.
LDS (simultaneously): Right, right, [S simultaneously: But--] just-- just that.
RG (simultaneously): (And) [couple/three words inaudible]
S (simultaneously): The manipulation of those take place within the intellect?
RG: If you use the analogy of the computer--
AD (simultaneously): But, isn't that what the intellect is?
RG: --it certainly does.
S: That's what I thought.
AH: Is a factor of those bits being organized in regards to a particular individual, it would seem that insofar as that's true, their organization would be directed towards self-preservation, either at the level of instinctive life or at the level of mental life or at some level its purpose is self-preservation.
AD: It's preservation of what?
AH: Preservation of the feltness of being an entity or a self.
LDS: But now you're bringing in life, it seems like you're bringing in a whole [student assents, faint] bag of, you know, principles that [AD: Well--] now are going to-- are going to work in relation.
AD (simultaneously): No, I don't think, I think it's just bringing in the ego.
S: Or [one inaudible student word simultaneous with S] the ego.
AH: Yeah.
LDS: I mean that's--
AH: It's not just a random collection of bits of information.
AD: No, it is random.
AH: But we-- but I selected the ones that I need to survive and you have also. You know, I discarded the ones that I didn't need and I kept the ones that help me to--
AD: But they're still around, huh? The ones you've discarded.
AH: I was trying to get to the point that there is a selectivity and organization insofar as an ego that chooses them and uses them.
IN A "EUREKA" MOMENT, TWO ABSOLUTELY INCONGRUOUS FRAMEWORKS THAT A PERSON LIVES IN ARE SOMEHOW BROUGHT TOGETHER
AD: Well the sec-- selectivity seems to be more like at a conscious level, you know, [PD simultaneously: Couldn't he--] or let's say just below the threshold of consciousness, the set or the framework with which the mind operates with, alright. But basically the bits of information that are stored are innumerable. If we take the example of Archimedes which is very famous now. As a matter of fact we can call it the Eureka example, you remember? (bit of laughter) [S, very faint: Yeah.] The king got this golden crown. [AH, faint: Right.] And he told Archimedes, I think they've got silver in here, alright, could you find out. [S, faint: Yeah.] Remember Archimedes kept thinking about it. [S: Right.] Can't take the gold crown apart, you know, you can't do that. Because of the filigree work and, you know, it was a-- an artistic work but still he thought there was silver in it somehow that came in, he wanted Archimedes. You remember that story. [S, faint: Yeah, I do.] And he pondered and pondered, alright? And then one day he went to take a bath, he took a bath every day, (Archimedes). (laughter) After all, I mean, [S simultaneously: Sure enough.] he was a favorite of the king. (bit of laughter) No, he was a favorite of the king and, I mean, to have a beautiful girl massage you, I mean I'd take a bath every day too. (laughter)
Then he noticed when he stepped in the bathtub the water rise, right, right? And he thought about that. And here was one framework, alright, everyday familiar experience, taking a bath, noticing the water rise, ok? And there was this business about gold, you know, the crown might have been mixed. Right? Might have been mixed with silver. And he knows the weight of gold, you know. Like he could easily say to himself, he says, "Well, if I take this gold crown and I melt it down into nice regular square bar, alright, now I could weigh it and if that weight isn't just what it's supposed to be I know that he put silver in it," ok, but he can't do that. He's got to do it this way, he's got to figure out how he could find out if that was all gold. And so he has this framework of knowledge, alright, a certain amount of scientific know-how. You know, it took almost two thousand years for the rest of the world to catch up to Archimedes. It wasn't quite seventeenth century, ok. And he had this in-- this common ordinary knowledge when he stepped in the bathtub, the water rise. He knows that. What made him connect them together?
AS (faint): He wanted these impulses.
HS: So the kind of knowledge is a-- are what you're calling your information bits, right?
AD: Huh?
HS: Those are your information bits?
AD: Yeah those are bits of information that he has, they're all part of the intellect, right?
HS: And one day when he's stepping into the bath he gets, what? He gets another idea?
S: The intuition, yeah.
AD: Well he gets an intuition. [students assent, faint] An intuition. Somehow or another he seems to be capable, or at least the intuitions seem to be able to point out to him that it was possible to relate these two utterly different matrices of thought or frameworks. Right?
HS: To come up with a way to-- to get the answer, right? What--
AD (simultaneously): Well, what you have to understand here is first of all, the matrices or the frameworks that he worked with are utterly different, one from the other. You follow that? I mean here's the scene from his everyday life, taking this bath, [HS simultaneously: The water rise.] getting a massage, [S, faint: Yeah.] watching the water rise. As a matter of fact when you take a bath like you-- you'll only put so much water because you know it'll rise and go over. (bit of laughter) Alright?
S (faint): Right.
AD: So he probably knew the same, only so much water otherwise it'll spill, you know. [S: Yeah.] No he knew that, you know, certain amount of water was displaced according to the body. Alright, that's one kind of experience, one framework, the everyday world, familiar world, alright, and then this other framework where he knew that, you know, different metals have different weights and volume and all that, ok. What in the world made him connect these two utterly di-separate, alright, and irrelevant bits of information together to come up with the law of specific gravity of a metal?
RG (faint): Uh-hm.
HS: Alright. At the moment he connected them that's when he found out that-- that metals have different weights?
AD (simultaneously): Well no he had to work it out. But he said "That's it, that's the idea!"
HS: And-- and you would-- and you-- would you allow anything within the bits to connect the two bits?
AD: Well, you mean one bit got attracted to another bit and says "You are like a lover, the two of us together make a team!"
HS: Like a substantial synthesis, yes.
AD: Huh?
HS: You wouldn't allow that?
AD: Well sure I'll allow it. Sure. If you can conceive it I'll allow it. (bit of laughter)
HS: No I'm trying to understand, you know, what you're talking about.
AD: Well, I'm trying to understand too, Herbie. Can you imagine two contents from your mind, so to speak, coming together, and what would bring them together? The law of association? But association won't work here. How would-- how would the weight of the specific metal and the displacement of the water in a tub, you know, how would they be associated together?
HS: Ok so they're separate enough so you'd say there has to be some sort of (new) thing that they appear in front of to unify them?
AD: Well, I'm asking, I'm asking, what happened at that moment?
S (faint): Right.
AH: There's a creative act of some kind.
AD: Yeah, I agree.
S: [one/two words inaudible]
HS (simultaneously): Well you want to bring in an act like--
AD (simultaneously): For instance, you know, like Franklin, he wanted to prove that, you know, up there there was electricity. So he waited for many years for them to build this big tower. But finally they wouldn't let him put his pointed steel up there. He says alright, I'll figure out something else, alright. You know what he came up with, right?
S: Kite.
S: Yeah.
S: Kite.
S (very faint): [one word inaudible]
AD: Kite.
S: Kite.
S (faint): [couple/three words inaudible]
S (simultaneously, faint): [couple/three words inaudible]
HS: Ok, like in Archimedes' case--
AD: I mean I can show you hundreds of cases where these absolutely incongruous frameworks that a person lives in, alright, are brought together somehow, alright. And then he says "Eureka," goes out-- let's call this the Eureka act, [HS: Ok.] ok.
HS: In Archimedes case he could have invented the drain. (bit of laughter, student words) Or, (you know--) (laughter)
S: Or the shower! (more laughter)
AD: Well that-- I really didn't want to get into the discussion of that, I really wanted to hear you people talk about the intellect.
HS (simultaneously): But, you're saying there's an x-factor that enters in right at that moment.
S: Anthony, (what is) this--
AD (simultaneously): I enjoyed it, I thought the first hour was very good. (bit of laughter) Very good. But as soon as you get away from a very specific point you get-- you-- you dissipate.
LR/S(?) (simultaneously): First hour is when he was reading the quotes out.
S: Right. (laughter)
S (amidst laughter): Right.
S: That was when he was reading the quotes.
LR/S(?): That was PB's hour.
AD (simultaneously): No, no, I thought the conversation in the beginning was very pointed and quite-- quite precise, I was really quite amazed. I thought for an hour the discussion was very good, I'm not talking about reading the quotes. The discussion all along was very good. Let me try something and if-- if you could answer this, ok, I'll-- I'll get to work next week. I'm going to read you a little quote. Ok? And I want you to make a comment on it. That's all. [three/few words inaudible] [flipping of pages] Yeah I have mentioned to Randy, we were talking about these and somehow I'm-- I didn't find in the quotes, and Paul went through them, I went through them, Randy went through them, I didn't find the quotes I was looking for. Maybe he has them, maybe he doesn't, I don't know. But, somehow that brutal punch that has to be delivered, that really smashes your face in once and for all wasn't there. But PB is kind of compassionate so maybe he doesn't want to do it. This is an article, and I just want to read a paragraph, alright? It's called "The Meaning of Everything". Avery would you read it? (laughter, student words) It's called "The Meaning of Everything". I'd like to hear your comments, I won't keep you very long. But I'd like to--
AS: Including the first paragraph?
AD: This and to the end of it.
AN EXAMPLE OF SOMEONE FOOLED BY HIS OWN INTELLECT
AS: "The Meaning of Everything." (bit of laughter)
S (faint): Here we go.
[Transcriber note: The following article, "The Meaning of Everything" by Arthur J. Deikman, is found in The Nature of Human Consciousness, Robert Ornstein (ed.), 1973, New York: Viking Press, pp. 317-326, and The Meeting of the Ways: Explorations in East/West Psychology, John Welwood (ed.), 1979, New York: Schocken Books, pp. 45-55.]
Arthur J. Deikman ["The Meaning of Everything," AS reading]: "When I once told a friend it was my intention to explain consciousness, he exclaimed,"But consciousness is everything!" After thinking about it, I agreed with him. (bit of laughter) Thus my title, for I will present a model of consciousness that explains what pure awareness is, what the self is, and the "I" feeling, and the mystical experience, and meditation, and other phenomena as well. (laughter) It is a serious attempt because that is what truly interests me. By its nature, it is also grandiose, for it is hard to see how one man can accomplish it all. However, I can make the attempt, and other people can complete the job."
AS: And this is--
AD (simultaneously): Yeah, go on.
AS: This is headed "Awareness".
S: Uh-hm.
Arthur J. Deikman ["The Meaning of Everything," AS reading]: "Upon reflection you will find that thoughts can cease for a brief while, that there can be silence and darkness and the temporary absence of images or memory patterns--any one component of our mental life can disappear, but awareness itself remains. Awareness is the ground of our conscious life, the background or field in which these elements exist. It is not the same thing as thoughts, sensations, or images. To experience this, try an experiment now. Look straight ahead and be aware of your conscious experience--then close your eyes. Awareness remains. (laughter)"Behind" [AS: Behind in quotes. ""Behind"] your thoughts and images is awareness. The distinction between awareness and the contents of awareness is crucial to the discussion that follows."
AD: I'd like to hear your comments.
DB: I think, I think I like the lyrics, it's got a great beat, it's easy [couple words inaudible] (laughter)
AD (amidst laughter): Huh?
DB (amidst laughter): [couple words inaudible] (more laughter)
CDA/S(?) (amidst laughter): He said he likes the lyrics, it's got a good beat. (laughter, student words)
AD: Go ahead, well [one/two words inaudible]
AH (simultaneously): I thought it was-- I though it was a very-- very clear and terse summary of the way things are. (some laughter) It's a little I think disarmingly naïve in it-- in its expression. But certainly a precise description of a-- of a distinction between awareness per se and all other contents.
CDA: Yeah but, I mean [JB: What?] if you-- if you can just close your eyes and find out what awareness is, I mean, he--
AH (simultaneously): I think that was offered as an analogy. Offered as an analogy of the cessation of thought. It seemed like if you close your eyes and you stop a visual image and that's analogous to the cessa-- cessation of an image in the mind.
S: Well that might be like one--
S (simultaneously): Depends (like/on) what--
PD: I think that demonstrated the need for philosophy.
[students assent]
AD: Yeah but I'd like you to be more price-- precise. Wouldn't you say that that demonstrates the need for him to understand (what) the nature of his intellect? [RG, faint: Yeah.] That he was beguiled, fooled, stupefied by his own intellect? [student assents, faint] Can anyone here, can anyone here say this?
AS/S(?) (faint): I think 45.
[short pause]
Arthur J. Deikman ["The Meaning of Everything," AD reading]: "To experience this [AD adds: awareness], to experience this, try an experiment [now]. Look straight ahead and be aware of your conscious [AD reads: consciousness] experience--then close your eyes. Awareness remains." (laughter, student words)
AD: Would anyone here in this-- (laughter) I mean would anyone here say anything like that to me? (much laughter)
S: We say it to each other. (laughter)
AD: I mean, can't you see that this man has taken the word for the thing?
[students assent, faint]
AH: Oh he's not using that as an analogy. (laughter)
AD: He's actually deluded. He's actually deluded. [AB simultaneously: But didn't he just-- but--] And this-- this of course shows the lack of semantic, you know, care but much more basic, self-delusion. Because if it was that simple to get out of this magic circle within your intellect, to get out of it, I mean all of us would be Buddha-heads.
S (simultaneously): (We can go to that quote.) (laughter)
AD: [one/two words inaudible] yes. Oh yeah. Then if you follow that, then we go to the-- into the nature of the intellect.
WHAT BRINGS TOGETHER INCONGRUOUS FRAMEWORKS IN A "EUREKA" MOMENT?
RC: Could I ask you a question about what you were doing before with Archimedes?
AD: Yeah, sure.
RC: The pre-- that synthesis that you talk about, that actual synthesis rather than the recognition, in the light of this quote where he says--
PB [V5, 7:1.67, RC rereads a part of]: "The faculty of discrimination [RC: that we're talking about using]…judges the intellect and rejects or confirms [RC reads: confirms or rejects] what it says."
RC: Would you say that in that example that the intellect made the synthesis and the faculty of discrimination recognized the truth of the synthesis?
PD: I would differ. I would say that only via the presence of consciousness there that synthesis would occur.
RC: I don't know, I'm wondering because that--
PD (simultaneously): That's what I-- that's what I'm conjecturing.
RC (simultaneously): Because it was-- because it had to do with things in the material world rather than this-- like this interior spiritual intuition about the self, if-- if the intellect isn't capable of making that kind of synthesis-- [few words inaudible]
PD (simultaneously): But the synthesis could only occur through the presence of consciousness to the intuitive light. [short pause] I mean, [S: (No/Yeah).] for in-- Kant speaks in very similar terms, whether synthesis of ideas or the synthesis in the imagination, it's all based on the apperceptive unity of consciousness being present.
RC: Uh-huh. But I'm trying to imagine the situation, like his ego is invested in one, his ego wants to know. His ego puts the main tool that it has to work on the problem, that's its intellect. Its intellect is shuffling all these things and it's bringing up this one. "Yeah that won't work." Then there's that one. "That won't work either." Bringing up that one, "That won't work either." So he gets in the bathtub--
PD (simultaneously): But taking a bath won't solve it either!
AD: Wait, go ahead.
RG: Let him finish.
RC: So he gets in the bathtub and his intellect brings up another one. It goes "Ah, that one will work!"
S (very faint): Yeah.
S (faint): Uh-hm.
AD: What brought these two things into relationship?
RC: Well [S simultaneously: Uh-huh.] I'm asking is--
JfL: The non-dual has to get in. You would have to be in a-- I'm afraid to say, meditative state or something. It couldn't be done from the point of view of the intellect.
CDA: Reason.
S (very faint): Yeah.
S (faint): What about reason?
S (simultaneously): Well that's evolving.
AD: Well, sure, we'd have to say he-- he was single-minded, he was preoccupied with the problem, sure.
RG: You know what's interesting is our intellect can now straightforwardly understand what he got in that intuitive grasp very easily.
AD (simultaneously): That's very true, you know, that's very true. You know yourself how the truths of today, you know, tomorrow they're familiarities, alright, and there's no problem grasping. But if you put yourself for instance in the twelfth century imagine trying to grasp that the Earth goes around the Sun. [S: But when--] Well anyway--
JfL: So wait, the idea that he was grasping wasn't the sensible idea. Was it? It wasn't really the idea of the specific gravity, he had to be grasping something immaterial [couple words inaudible] or that he had within that he was drawing out from himself, wasn't just the circumstances.
AD: I didn't hear what you said Jeff.
LDS: You mean like the reason-principle Jeff?
JfL: Yeah like the reason-principle.
S: It's where he got [few words inaudible]
RG (simultaneously): Then it's an advantage.
AB: But the fact that (he/he's)--
AD (simultaneously): (We were) coming up with an unknown.
JfL: What is unknown?
AD: Reason-principle.
JfL: Why is that an unknown?
AD: Do you know what they are? (bit of laughter)
JfL: I don't-- (laughter) Lou, no, it's not a reason-principle.
LDS(?): Ok. (laughter, student words)
AD: No, Jeff, I'm just-- I'm just trying to get to the definition or at least some kind of amplification of what these things mean.
JfL: Well--
AD: I know that we said reason-principles until our tongue turned purple. That doesn't convince me that I know or that you know what they are.
JfL: Well what made me think of that--
AD (simultaneously): How they appear, how they function when [JfL simultaneously: Well--] they, you know, are operative.
JfL: I was thinking that what Dickie said, that it's now available to us, we had (his whole--) but his work has made that conscious to the-- a certain point. The soul which has potentially these ideas almost under a certain threshold and that threshold let's say progresses (to/through) a certain time and those principles become available as a general understanding but the--
AD: Did you ever hear of men working for twenty years on an intuition that was wrong? [students assent, faint] Like Loewi for instance in organic chemistry? [Note: Otto Loewi, German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist who in 1920 discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter.] Or on the other hand someone like Pasteur, who immediately saw the relationship between the we-- weakened bacilli and the chickens he vaccinated? I mean if you're familiar at all with the history of science I'll bring you hundreds of cases of wrong intuition. Alright but, all I wanted to get was a feeling of how you respond to a passage like in that book, that's all I really wanted. If you can pierce through that kind of malarkey, (bit of laughter) then I'll talk about the intellect next week.
[students assent, faint]
S: But you didn't-- you didn't--
AD: Very, you know-- very formidable, you know, meeting of East and West psychology. And they're all very well-known writers, [S, faint: Yeah.] including Van Dusen, Ken Wilber. I think you know of him. You know of Tarthang Tulku. They're all very good writers in (there/that book). And they make statements like that?
S (faint): [one/two words inaudible] statements.
AD: It's words, words, words.
RC: You didn't answer though, would-- would you agree with Paul that it wasn't the intellect that made that synthesis?
AD: I wouldn't answer it because that requires not an answer but an exploring.
S (faint): Oh.
S (faint): Uh-hm.
S (faint): Right. Sure.
AD: It would be very nice if you could answer it but then it would be, you know, like choosing, you know, true or false on a test. And I think this should be explored. What exactly happened, alright, in Archimedes that brought together two utterly unrelated matrices or frameworks? Or for instance, you know, we could take-- I'll bring a half a dozen examples where the-- where the inability for anyone, even-- even after the achievement, how in the world these two things could be brought together, like Kekule. Is that how they say it? When he saw the atoms dancing and then they finally went into this ur-- uroboros dance and he recognized that the formula for organic compounds had to be written in a circular form. Now how-- how-- how that come about, I mean-- I'll bring you half a dozen examples and you will never by your intellectual understanding be able to bring these two matrices together.
JfL: [couple/three words inaudible] into one, like bumper cars. (laughter)
AD: We-- Look, I already took a ride and I agreed with you, they're ver-- that was a wonderful example. (laughter) Now, how do you want to use the bumper cars this way? (laughter)
S (faint, laughing): You have to go back again.
S (faint): Put it on its side.
JfL: Well, this may be hard to believe but, I had to put [one word inaudible] on that thing for three rides before I realized what had happened there.
S (faint): What?
RG: What happened? (laughter)
S (simultaneously): And?
S (faint): You tell me.
BS (faint): I didn't hear the consensus.
AD: You mean you thought of that as a good example for what I was looking for? (AD laughing)
S (faint): Right.
S (faint): Uh-hm.
BS (faint): Are these fun?
RG: They're [one word inaudible] (RG laughs)
HS: Anthony you're saying that the intellect--
S: Wait--
JfL: Well, there isn't the [one word inaudible] the-- the sense-- there was-- It's a formulation where it's already there, there's nothing to relate the sensible. Like it's not in the sensible. It's not in the sensible at all.
AD: It's not in those bits of information.
JfL: If it hadn't already been determined in experience there was going to be nothing there watching him drive the car back.
AD: But, aren't these two utterly (ap--) and divergent frameworks bits of information, they're already contained in the intellect? [JfL, faint: No I--] After all the intellect is not evolving haphazardly, I mean it's part of the World-Mind's Idea that that should evolve. So--
JfL (simultaneously): Well the circumstances are presented [couple words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): So the bits of information are in the intellect.
JfL: The bits of information. But I'm s-- Right, those bits of information (are in) the intellect. The formulation or the understanding of that is not and I'm saying that's prior before the World-Idea or the intellect presents the circumstances or the connections.
AD: The information is prior?
JfL (faint): Yeah, it's (the intellect--)
AD (simultaneously): Yeah but that's not going to help us, Jeff.
S (very faint): That's not going to help us.
AD: That's not going to help us. What we want to understand is how these things are brought together.
RG(?) (very faint): Right.
HS: Is the bringing together-- is the information that comes when the [one word inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): Is that part of the intellect? In other words, is it something within the intellect that brought these two things together, which may be, I'm not answering that. Or did something from the outside have to come in and relate these two things together? And then reason, which was now, so to speak, joined with the intellect in this, you know-- could expound what the intuition was saying. We just have to-- we have to discuss it, otherwise they'll be just, you know, true or false questions which-- answers which I'm not interested in.
AB: Why not both? (bit of laughter) I mean it-- it was highly haphazard and circumstantial that, you know, he was getting in the bathtub.
AD (simultaneously): Well, it has to be partly both because we already mentioned the fact that the information is already contained in the intellect.
AB: Right, and it was circumstances that those two matrices were contiguous at that moment. But what saw the connection between them wasn't previously in the intellect.
AD: Was or wasn't?
AB: Was not previously in the intellect. But either like brought them up at the same moment so that was its contribution. But they weren't connected.
AD: Could it also be thought of the other way, that the intuition, even though these two were not present at that moment were [AB simultaneously: Brought them together.] brought together?
AB: Yes, that could be true.
AD: Alright then, counterbalance. Alright. We'll see next week.
[few seconds of background student talking]
[Audio File 1983 1019b Ends]
1983 10/19 V14.1a: CLASS: PB Paras; Intellect. Copyright 2023 Wisdom's Goldenrod p. iii