Wednesday, October 26th, 1983

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

October 26, 1983

PB PARAS; INTELLECT

TOPIC: PB Paras

SUBJECT: Intellect

SUBSUBJECTS: Reason, Intuition, Intelligence, Scientific Philosophy

CONTENTS:

S. LANGER'S MATERIALIST VIEWS ON THOUGHT CONTRASTED WITH R. SPERRY'S NONREDUCTIONIST "MENTALIST" VIEWS

PB PARAS ON THE INTELLECT

A CRITIQUE OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM

INTELLECT CLASSIFIES AND DESCRIBES AN OBJECT, WHEREAS REASON IS CONCERNED ABOUT HOW THESE VARIOUS OBJECTS ARE RELATED

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN INTELLECT AND REASON

SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY, BASED ON REASON, EXAMINES ALL THE FACTS, NOT JUST SOME FACTS

CAN REASON EXAMINE ITS OWN PREMISES OR IS INTUITION REQUIRED?

HOW IS REASONING DIFFERENT THAN THE ACTIVITY OF INTELLECT?

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN INTELLECT, REASON, AND INTELLIGENCE

WHAT IS INTUITION?

IN THE EXPERIENCE OF INTUITION, THERE IS A MOMENTARY STILLNESS AND THEN A FEELING COMES TO YOU

INTUITION LIGHTS UP, OR VIVIFIES, AN IMAGE ALREADY IN THE MIND, THEN YOU HAVE TO APPLY REASONING TO UNDERSTAND IT

BOOKS / MAGAZINES 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 Some Paul Brunton Notebook paras are, as of 2020, unpublished, and are noted as such.

• Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art

• Roger Sperry, Yvonne Baskin, "Interview: Roger Sperry" (in Omni magazine, Vol. 5, No. 11, August 1983)

• Paul Brunton, The Quest of the Overself

• Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads

• Yajnavalkya, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

• G.R. Malkani (ed.), "The Philosophical Quarterly," Vol. 7

• Paul Brunton, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga

• Paul Brunton, The Wisdom of the Overself

• Bible, Acts 9

NOTES:

• Pat Campbell transcript from 1983 exists (Scan File 1983 1026-15R04.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• Unpublished PB paras should be sourced and proofread.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, fixes two notes within transcript, fixes minor errors. In 2025, MW adds Subsubjects and alters Subheads to make more accurate. Archival verbatim transcript – V14.1a.

AUDIO FILES: 1983 1026a, 1983 1026b. [Note: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes that were later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files.]

1983 10/26 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

PB Class; Intellect

Archival verbatim transcript

[Audio File 1983 1026a Begins]

S. LANGER'S MATERIALIST VIEWS ON THOUGHT CONTRASTED WITH R. SPERRY'S NONREDUCTIONIST "MENTALIST" VIEWS

RC: --thinking we were talking about at one point last week Susanne Langer. [short pause with faint background student talking] She says--

[Transcriber note: I am using Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art by Susanne K. Langer, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1942.]

Susanne K. Langer [Philosophy in a New Key, p. 40, RC reading]: "That man is an animal I certainly believe; and also, that he has no supernatural essence,"soul" [or] "entelechy" or "mind-stuff," enclosed in his skin. He is an organism, his substance is chemical, and what he does, suffers, or knows, is just what this sort of chemical structure may do, suffer, or know. When the structure goes to pieces, it never does, suffers, or knows anything again. (laughter) If we ask how physical objects, chemically analyzable, can be conscious, how ideas can occur to them, we are talking ambiguously; for the conception of "physical object" is a conception of chemical substance not biologically organized. What causes this tremendous organization of substances, is one of the things the tremendous organisms do not know; but with their organization, suffering and impulse and awareness arise. It is really no harder to imagine that a chemically active body wills, knows, thinks, and feels, [than] that an invisible, intangible something does so, "animates" [RC read: animating] the body without physical agency, and "inhabits" [RC reads: inhabiting] it without being in any place."

[39 second pause]

RC: On the positive side in the contemporary context, I have a copy of an article. (It's/This) interview with Roger Sperry who-- the fellow that did the split-brain research, who-- And there was a-- there's this cortex of nerves which joins together the right and the left hemispheres. And for a long time they couldn't understand how it was that you cut that thing, it's like hundreds of thousands of nerves, but there didn't appear to be anything wrong with the way the person functioned. So he got into doing more careful research and-- and noticed the distinct lack of integrated awareness. The right-- the left side could do its left side stuff, it could talk perfect English, learn other languages, schematize, conceptualize adequately the-- And the right side could have feelings and be intuitive and so on and so forth. But there was no synthetic-- they didn't talk to each other. [AS(?): That's right.] Really bipolarized personality and whenever one side would try to represent in its terms what the other side was doing there was obviously no contact. So anyway he-- he's got this interview with him. And he says--

[Transcriber note: I am using "Interview: Roger Sperry," Yvonne Baskin interviewing Roger Sperry for Omni magazine, Vol. 5, No. 11, August 1983, pp. 68-75 and 98-100.]

Roger Sperry, Yvonne Baskin [Omni Interview, p. 69, RC reading]: "Science was wrong [RC adds: in its interpretations of man]. Its interpretation [RC reads: interpretations] of man and the world were demeaning and dehumanizing… All physical reality, including the human psyche, was reduced to quantum mechanics. The richness, color, and beauty were all lost in mathematical concepts."

RC: He goes on. And then he-- he got into trying to research--

Roger Sperry, Yvonne Baskin [Omni Interview, p. 71, RC reading]: "…consciousness, ethical and moral values become a [RC reads: values as a] very legitimate part of brain science. [They're] no longer conceived to be [RC reads: to be conceived as] reducible to brain physiology. Instead, we now see [RC reads: see now] that subjective values themselves exert powerful causal influence in brain function and behavior. They're [RC adds: the] universal determinants in all [human] decision making, and they're actually the most powerful causal control forces now shaping world events. No other causal system with which science now concerns itself--earthquakes, chemical reactions, magnetic fields, you name it--is of more critical importance in determining our future."

RC: Uh-- He says-- at least according to him, there's been this change going on with regard to concepts of consciousness and the mind-brain relation. He says--

Roger Sperry, Yvonne Baskin [Omni Interview, pp. 72, 74, RC reading]: "It was the change involved in [the] so-called consciousness, or mentalist, revolution in psychology that took place during the Seventies, a turnabout in the treatment of consciousness. Behaviorist principles, which had dominated for over half a century, were overturned. Psychology suddenly began to treat subjective events--mental images, inner thoughts, sensations, feelings, ideas, and so on--as factors having a genuine causal role in brain function and behavior. … The key realization… [10½ second pause] The question is, What happened to change all [of] this from the status of occasional [RC reads: occasionally] scattered philosophy and minority science to its present status as the dominant doctrine?

"I think it was largely a matter of demonstrating a logical flaw in our seemingly airtight reasoning, finding a new, different logic that fit more widely and combined earlier threads into a new formula…

"The key realization was that the higher levels in brain activity control the lower. The higher cerebral properties [RC reads: processes] of mind and consciousness are in command. They envelop, carry, and overwhelm the physico-chemical details. They call the plays, exerting downward control over the march of nerve-impulse traffic. Our new model, mentalism, puts the mind and mental properties to work and gives them a reason for being and for having evolved in a physical system. … [29½ second pause]

"We have to recognize different degrees of freedom and also different types and levels of causation, including higher kinds of causal control involving mental and vital forces that materialist science [RC reads: materialism] has always rejected. Remember that the revised mind-brain model makes conscious mental events causal. It follows that the causal antecedents of any consciously willed act are not just physiological but also mental. [It's] no longer a matter of [the] laws governing nerve-impulse traffic or inexorable physicochemical [RC reads: physiochemical] mechanisms. We deal instead with a sequence of conscious or subconscious processes that have their own higher laws and dynamics."

[14¾ second pause]

PC: Who's the guy who wrote that article Randy?

RC: Roger Sperry, he won a Nobel Prize in 1978 or 77. 1981.

Roger Sperry, Yvonne Baskin [Omni Interview, p. 69, RC reading]: "…shared the [1981] Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for his famous split-brain studies has [RC reads: and he has now] turned his attention to battling the materialist legacy of twentieth-century science."

JB (faint): Wow. (bit of laughter)

HE/S(?): Definitely left-brain.

JB: That's according to Omni that he--

S: Right.

RC: Yeah. (laughter)

S (faint): Right, and who are actually [one word inaudible] he's talked to Omni at all.

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

AB: Randy I don't think the term 'mentalism' there is being used in the way that we would use it here.

RC: Most likely not. But, [S: (We/You) can update.] [AB simultaneously: Again causal(--/.)] in terms of that last-- the last way he put it--

[short pause]

Roger Sperry, Yvonne Baskin [Omni Interview, p. 74, RC reading]: "[It's] no longer a matter of [the] laws governing nerve-impulse traffic or inexorable physicochemical mechanisms. We deal instead with a sequence of conscious or subconscious processes that have their own higher laws and dynamics."

AB: Susanne Langer would say that those conscious mental processes are themselves derivative of brain physiology.

RC: Exactly, she'd say they're chemical.

AB: So you just have one part of the brain which is chemical directing another part of the brain which is chemical.

JB: Well Alan, Sperry does also. He calls [couple inaudible student words simultaneous with JB] (this) consciousness and (his) mental thing emergent brain functioning, [AB: Right.] which takes them out-- it just makes them a new black box although it's hierarchized, I mean-- The advance that he's made over primitive reductionism is that he now suggests that, see all the evolution isn't that the cells and electricity make thoughts, he's now allowing downward pressure, that is [AB assents] that thoughts can govern and manipulate the stuff of the body. It's very close. Although I agree that when he's defining mentalism as if it's a new term, he's not giving cognizance to [couple words inaudible, possibly another student]

S (very faint in background): Hey where's Dickie?

[13 second pause]

PB PARAS ON THE INTELLECT

PB [V5, 7:1.133 & Persp., Ch. 7 #13, RC reading]: "The intellect's finest function is to point the way to this actual living awareness of the Overself that is beyond itself."

S: Watch the-- (some laughter)

S (amidst laughter, faint): What?

DB (faint): Uh-hm.

S (very faint): Ok.

S (very faint): Ok.

S (faint): Why don't you finish it up.

S (very faint): Yeah, uh-hm. (bit of laughter)

PB [V5, 7:1.133 & Persp., Ch. 7 #13 cont., RC reading (simultaneously with S above)]: "This it does on the upward path. But it has a further function to perform after that awareness has been successfully gained. That is to translate that experience into its own terms, and hence into ordinarily comprehensible ones, both for its own and other people's benefit."

[58 second pause]

PB [V5, 7:7.59 & Persp., Ch. 7 #17, RC reading]: "Because philosophy aims to develop a fully rounded psyche, it does not share the fanatic and extreme points of view of some medieval Western mystics and modern Indian yogis who banish every intellectual pursuit from the aspirant's path and who regard study as not merely being useless but as even being harmful. It is true that if a student is forever reading and never digesting what he reads, or never acting on it, he will make little progress. Nevertheless he cannot be said to be entirely wasting his time, for he will be gaining information. And if his reading includes works by the great masters, he will also be gaining inspiration. If, moreover, he has learned to read properly, he will be gaining yet a third thing and that is stimulation [in] thinking and reflecting for himself. Yes! An inspired book and a good reader if brought together are not necessarily an unspiritual combination, but the qualifications which we earlier made should be remembered. What he reads should be digested. He should learn to think, to create his own ideas under the stimulus of what he reads. Otherwise the more he reads, the more bewildered he may become with contradictory ideas and doctrines. And again reading and thought must lead to action and not leave him uselessly suspended in the world of dreams and theories.

"Philosophy does not adopt the anti-intellectual attitude of so many medieval ascetics and their modern inheritors. For it declares that metaphysical thinking can lead the thinker to the very threshold of mystical intuition. It asserts that by persevering in abstract reflection he may earn the grace of the higher self and be led nearer and nearer to the highest truth. But there is one qualifying condition for such a triumphant achievement. The thinker must first undergo a self-purificatory discipline. His thoughts, his feelings, and his actions must submit themselves to a prolonged training and a constant regulation which will eliminate or at least reduce those factors which falsify his thinking or prevent the arisal of true intuition. Therefore his character has to be improved, his egoistic instinct has to be struggled against, [RC adds: and] his passions have to be ruled, his prejudices have to be destroyed, his biases [have to be] corrected. It is because they have not undergone this discipline that so many people have been led astray by the thinking activity into a miserable materialism. For philosophy asserts that the ordinary man's thinking is corrupted by his lower nature, with which it is completely entangled. Therefore he must free that thinking to a large extent from the thraldom of the lower nature if it is to lead to true conclusions, if it is to lead to the recognition of its own limitations, and if it is to invite intuition to arise and replace it at the proper moment. Just as education of intellect and practice of courtesy lift a man from a lower class of society to [RC reads: into] a higher one, so purification of thought, feeling, and will lifts [RC reads: so purification of thought and feeling will lift] his mind into a realm of higher perception than before. So philosophy welcomes and includes metaphysical activity into its scheme of things."

[18¾ second pause]

PB [V5, 7:1.64 & Persp., Ch. 7 #9, RC reading]: "But with [RC adds: the] stronger thinking power there comes also intellectual pride and egoistic conceit. He must offset them by humbling himself deliberately before the higher self. He must not hesitate to pray daily to it, on bended knees and with clasped hands, begging for its grace, offering the little ego as a willing sacrifice and asking for guidance in his darkness."

[short pause]

PB [V5, 7:1.123, RC reading]: "Let no one mistake intellectual understanding for the wholeness of knowing, rather let it [RC reads: that] be to him a spur [RC reads: be a spur to him] and a help to reach deeper within himself to the Overself in full surrender."

[short pause]

S: Randy, are these three different ones that you've just read or--

RC: Yeah.

[34¾ second pause]

S: Randy?

RC: Uh-hm.

MB: This is a silly question but I'm getting the tone from some of these quotes, like you said that if-- you've spoken about the intellect, that it-- it may be a good idea that we do not, you know, disagree with the-- the reasoning intellect. I haven't heard him say that here, that it's necessary to-- to do so.

S (faint): [couple words inaudible]

S (simultaneously, very faint): Right.

S (very faint): Yeah.

MB: Oh. (laughter) I'm just wondering, I mean, he had a much more-- you know, he says, well we want not to (keep/kick) it out but so far we haven't heard him say "Well, you must do this."

[short pause]

PB [V5, 7:1.45, RC reading]: "He must develop and nurture all the powers of intellect, (laughter) but without its pride, arrogance, or conceit."

S (faint): Yeah.

S (faint): Yeah. (bit of laughter)

S: Oh.

S: Did you make that one up?

MB: You bet. (MB laughs, bit of laughter)

S: But--

PB [V5, 7:1.161, RC reading]: "My criticism in earlier books of [RC adds: the] intellect as an unsatisfactory guide to truth, and of intellectualism as yielding a lot of contradictory opinions, was misunderstood. It was directed against intellect, not reason: I differentiate between both [RC reads: them]. Intellect uses logical method, reason uses a higher one. Theological philosophy is based on logic. Scientific philosophy is based on reason. I uphold rationalism against intellectualism, the thinking power in man against the classifying power, the mind which evaluates thoughts against the mind which merely collects and describes them."

[13½ second pause]

PC: Repeat that again.

PB [V5, 7:1.161, RC rereads]: "My criticism in earlier books of [RC adds: the] intellect as an unsatisfactory guide to truth, and of intellectualism as yielding a lot of contradictory opinions, was misunderstood. It was directed against intellect, not reason: I differentiate between both. Intellect uses logical method, reason uses a higher one. Theological philosophy is based on logic. Scientific philosophy is based on reason. I uphold rationalism against intellectualism, the thinking power in man against the classifying power, the mind which evaluates thoughts against the mind which merely collects and describes them."

[33 second pause]

PB [unpublished, RC reading]: "It is by no means consequential that those who are distinguished in debate, intellect, journalism or literature are therefore proper persons to discuss philosophic truths. The latter will forever remain an unknown land to those who lack intuition, the faculty wherewith we begin to apprehend the presence of a divinity."

[21¼ second pause]

PB [V5, 7:1.43, RC reading]: "The dangers of developed intellect are pride and complacency, over-analysis and over-criticism."

[short pause]

S (faint): Loud.

RC (faint): Here's another one.

PB [Persp., Ch. 7 #25, RC reading]: "The analytical study of certain metaphysical conceptions such as God, the soul, and the ego, is necessary."

[13¾ second pause]

HS: And that's juxtaposed to the quote where he speaks-- he fi-- he said he finds two kinds of intellect or something, the analytic and the evaluative? Right, is there two?

PD (simultaneously): The evaluative and the classifying.

RC (faint): Uh-hm.

HS: Now which-- [S simultaneously, faint: Uh-hm, ok.] the classifying and the evaluative?

RC: Yeah.

S: (Yeah/Ok).

HS: Ok now which one's the analytic one? [short pause] Would you say it's-- I mean, would you say it's evaluative (here) or--

PD: I would say-- I would guess analytical is analyzing the situation but you're evaluating the pros and cons or implications of the data versus the classifying which is the collecting, naming, you know.

HS: So analysis-- analysis has an evaluative function to it? [short pause] I don't-- I don't know, would you say that Randy? That to analyze something you evaluate?

RC: I guess you'd have to analyze it a little bit in order to know what class to put it in. I would think probably both of them involve some analytical operations but, if you're really like trying to analyze it in the sense of what is it, what does it mean, that would seem to be the evaluating rather than the classifying.

JanH (faint): Will you read the last one one more time?

RC (very faint): Um, one last time.

S (very faint): Yeah.

S (very faint): Can't hear anything (anymore).

S (very faint): Me too.

PB [Persp., Ch. 7 #25, RC rereads]: "The analytical study of certain metaphysical conceptions such as God, the soul, and the ego, is necessary."

[11½ second pause]

A CRITIQUE OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM

PB [V5, 7:7.90, RC reading]: "Logical Positivism is a school which has excellent critiques to offer concerning matters of purely physical reference but which is completely misleading and mischievous when it wanders farther [RC reads: further] into matters of purely metaphysical mystical and non-physical reference. According to Logical Positivism, words are formed to deal with what is visible and tangible to us, to what the senses can grasp. The presupposition here is that this is all that exists. But this presupposition is wrong, as metaphysics demonstrates and mysticism reveals, for an immaterial and infinite mind is the source and sustenance of the senses themselves. [RC: Maybe somebody group the notes (when they're) here but--] The high priest of this school writes:"Let us find out how we teach the meaning of expressions, words and sentences to children and [to] primitive people; then we shall know what is meant by meaning!" The fallacy here is that we are neither children nor primitives. Both these classes are naturally materialistic, [RC adds: and] naturally take appearances for reality. [RC adds: But] We as adults are capable of abstract reflection and profound enquiry which free us from such naïve materialism. We may now comprehend [RC reads: understand] why Logical Positivism, taking its cue from children and primitives, (some laughter) is such a materialistic school."

JB: Did you ask him who the high priest might be?

RC: Yeah.

JB: Probably Wittgenstein then.

RC: Yeah.

JB: Probably Quine and Ryle, yeah.

S (faint): (What?)

[22 second pause]

PD: What's he saying there, they-- they try to get back to the first verbal expressions primates learn? Is that what the Positivists try to reduce meaning to?

LDS: Aren't they saying it's strictly conventional, like it's-- it's agreed upon, you know, you give a-- a definition of something, you name something and conventionally it's agreed upon that that's a proper name now, an ok name or idea or meaning. So it's totally based on-- you know, after the fact. You presuppose a fact of some kind, physical reality, and then after that you can do things in terms of naming or creating meanings. There's no inherent meaning in the thing.

PD: I follow what you're saying, [LDS simultaneously: I think that's what's--] I thought he was saying something different there about where the Positivists try to go back to the original verbal expressions to find the origin of meaning.

LDS: He said the way we teach the primitives and the children. If we go back to the way we teach them. Maybe Randy could read it.

HE: You mean like Sesame Street?

S: Oh yeah. (bit of laughter)

HE: Black, red, high, low. Well concretely I would think that's what he's talking about, I don't know.

S (faint): Uh-hm.

AB: But even like God, you know, you grow up and they tell you what God is and it's got these certain words and the Logical-- I think the Logical Positivists would say what God is is just derived from these social inputs that you got by society and there's not this real thing that you can experience called God. And in a different culture they may ascribe it different characteristics.

[short pause]

PD: I don't follow what you're saying with the quote, Alan. Maybe that's me.

RC: This part here--

PB [V5, 7:7.90, RC rereads a part of]: "…"Let us find out how we teach the meaning of expressions, words and sentences to children and to primitive people; then we shall know what is meant by meaning!""

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

RC: I think that must be related to what he says earlier about--

PB [V5, 7:7.90, RC rereads a part of]: "According to Logical Positivism, words are formed to deal with what is visible and tangible…"

S (faint): Yeah, uh-hm.

[short pause]

PD: That's what Louie was saying, a conventional formulation in reference to the perceptible.

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

[short pause]

RC: I never got into that, did you get into that Jon, that whole business of--

JB: I understand from some friends that I used to be a Logical Positivist. (laughter) That's why I don't like talking about it, you know, and why I don't-- I don't know anything about it anymore. (laughter)

RC: What did you used to think about it? (laughter)

S (faint): I thought--

S (faint): Hey Randy--

RC: I don't know, I-- I worked with one guy who was philosophy major at Cornell about seven or eight years ahead of me. And, they thought he was so brilliant that they sent him to Vienna to study Wittgenstein's direct descendent. Two years later he came back and said he never wanted to hear anything about philosophy again. (bit of laughter)

[short pause]

S (very faint): [few words inaudible]

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

MB (very faint): [few words inaudible]

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

RC (faint): No he-- [S simultaneously: That's (the/a) punch line.] he was-- he became [S simultaneously: That's right.] convinced that, you know-- you know, words are (actually) the meaning of the word (you want to--)

S: (Right.)

S: Fabulous.

S (simultaneously): (I see.)

JB: So he was brilliant after all.

S (faint): (Right.)

S (simultaneously, faint): Uh-huh, yeah.

S (very faint): Oh yeah.

HS: Ok so the point being what though [couple/three words inaudible] (laughter) If I might (add/ask).

S (faint): [one/two words inaudible]

S (faint): Go ahead.

RC: Go ahead.

HS: Because he says at the beginning of the quote that it does have a kind of-- some sort of-- before it gets mischievous or something, [S, faint: Physical.] that it might be valuable?

JB: Can we look [couple words inaudible] in--

HS (simultaneously): (Oh/Or) look (at us), yeah.

JB (simultaneously): --in solving language paradoxes there's a principal use for it. I mean I think that--

S (very faint): [couple words inaudible]

HS: In solving language? In what sense?

JB (simultaneously): Yeah. To the extent that misunderstandings or confusions between people and seeing paradoxes can be resolved by an understanding of the use of the words, that's where the-- you know, their most important useful work (is). Is that-- is that clear? [students assent, faint] So if it's kept in the realm of linguistics and semantics, it doesn't-- it's not mischievous yet. But when you take those-- those notions which are e-- existent-- lean to existentialism, it's not nihilism, that there's no real meaning, there's only what we've decided to use as a word, that could be mischievous, right? Then you're-- you're using what you learn in one field and you manipulate your thoughts and not (what it means).

HS (simultaneously): These guys say in other words there's no reference outside the usage? Or do these guys say that the words mirror the-- what's outside?

JB: I don't know, I can't really speak for them. I don't mean to be coy. [HS simultaneously, very faint: No.] I don't mean-- I didn't-- [HS, faint: You're not coy.] no I didn't really study (them/it), I just-- just learned some things about it. Do they say the words mirror the outside?

HS: Well in fact is Logical Positivism the mode for the science, is that the scientific mode? 'Cause that was said a couple weeks ago.

RC (faint): Well, yeah.

S (very faint): Is that right?

S (very faint): Yeah.

RC: I guess it-- if it-- if it's a matter of conven-- if it's strictly a matter of convention, I guess if we go back to what we did with Sheldon, uh-- [short pause] If it's strictly a matter of convention to label something which is known directly by the senses and exists outside, you put your hands on it and so on, I guess it doesn't matter what you call it as long as I know that's what you want me to put my hands on. The presupposition that-- that the concept does have a reference that I can put my hands on. For a couple of reasons it would seem that when you tried to apply that to abstract thinking, it would really break down, on the one hand you could be producing something conceptually that is absolutely meaningless and you can neither put your hands nor your soul on it to communicate. [student assents, very faint] That would seem to be one choice I think. The other would be if you mean something you don't-- couldn't possibly put my hands on, then the only way that I could get some understanding of what you meant would be to have it somehow activated in me as-- in response to the symbol or the concept or whatever. There would have to be some direct relationship between the awakening of something within me as a subject which is not part of the world and the symbol that you chose to formulate it with. So that if you were an artist of speech or an artist of sculpture or whatever, that you could actually tap a meaningful inner reference.

HS: Ok now this is not the Logical (Positivism).

RC: Right.

HS: This is what-- and--

RC: So and I would-- but what I would be saying in that case would be it does matter what you call it. Because if you want to evoke a certain inner presence you'd have to evoke it with a proper form. And you couldn't-- I mean like we could all agree to call this pink as long as we know when we say 'pink' this is what we want to put our hands on, it doesn't matter that you call it that. But if we wanted to have an experience of devotion, it would be, you know, considerably different.

HS: In what way? What are you talking about?

RC: Well in a sense that-- again it wouldn't matter what the label was. Let's say like meditating on blue would be much more likely to precipitate an experience of devotion than meditating on pink.

S (very faint): Then you just [one word inaudible]

S (very faint): Yeah.

S: Whoa.

HS: I don't know what you mean by that, but you're trying to say something like-- (laughter) like when you're talking about so to say the Quest, it would be helpful to have a language that has meaning and carries meaning?

RC: Yeah.

HS: And the meaning as you pointed is about mind which is principial and outside, has to be able to be-- to enter the language?

RC: In fact, [HS simultaneously: But Logical Positivism doesn't?] I think what he's saying is as long as you're dealing with external reference you (can shop) with your labels, as long as you make your conventions ok everything will go smoothly.

S: Uh-hm.

S (very faint): Yeah.

HS: Ok let's say we have a green--

S (simultaneously): Hm?

HS (very faint): Well go on.

AB: Well there was a quote before where PB says that the-- the higher purpose of the intellect is to translate these-- the spiritual experiences into a language of its own. [RC: Yeah.] Within Logical Positivism that wouldn't be possible because there aren't any experiences of awareness [RC assents, faint] that could be described, and the language that is descriptive is-- is only deri-- derived from outside. [RC assents, very faint] [PD: But--] So, I thought he was saying that, in its own sphere it may be valuable to understand that pink is a convention, etc, etc, but that if you try and take it beyond that then it's mischievous.

RC (faint): Uh-hm.

S (faint): But--

PD: See I can't even follow the validity of-- of it at that level because pink-- the word 'pink' is meaningless, true, but the concept that you're employing will not be de-- derived from words. Or the concept that you're employing in your understanding has nothing to do with the word.

BS: Which level is that one?

AB: Yeah but what's the (construct)?

S (simultaneously): [couple words inaudible]

S (faint): Yeah.

HS: Concept is pink.

AB: But that's not a concept!

S (simultaneously): Yeah.

LR: That's not a concept.

AB: It's just an agreement!

LR (simultaneously): It's a la-- it's a label.

PD: No.

S: Yeah but [couple words inaudible]

HS (simultaneously): No, no, no, he's talking about pink.

PD (simultaneously): That refers to a very specific [S simultaneously, faint: But this is my (one word inaudible)] part of my experience.

S: Yeah.

AB (simultaneously): Right.

PD: And that's not a word. [AB simultaneously: That's--] So I don't even see how Positivism is valid at that level.

RC: Well this seems to be a good example of what you were saying before with the evaluative and the classifying power. As far as the classifying level goes, the labels are quite interchangeable. It seems like you're speaking more from the evaluative side and saying that that's what I mean when I use this word. I mean that-- that particular experience that I have that I refer to as that color. But it seems that it was in the classifying side that doesn't come in. Pink is one department and blue is another department and the contrast between their values isn't brought in.

[short pause]

INTELLECT CLASSIFIES AND DESCRIBES AN OBJECT, WHEREAS REASON IS CONCERNED ABOUT HOW THESE VARIOUS OBJECTS ARE RELATED

HS: All these functions, they take place in what we-- you were calling the intellect, the evaluation, the analytic, the Logical Positivism, the-- (bit of laughter) the appreciation of extra-intellectual mind, so to say?

RC (simultaneously): Well, in that quote that we were just referring to where he-- he says that he upholds the mind which evaluates stuff against the mind which merely collects them, he was comparing what he meant by reason as opposed to what he meant by intellect.

HS: Ok well-- so you would say that reason has-- having entered the intellect is the mind that evaluates and can properly evaluate? Or reason prior to intellect [S, very faint: Right.] functioning on its own?

[short pause]

RC: I keep thinking back to that quote we read last week where he says that the buddhi, that the mind that you do buddhiyoga with, [HS: Is that the (ego)?] evaluates and directs the functioning of the intellect, that-- that--

HS: But how do you make the distinction then between that reasoning and the intellect within-- on the wing so to say?

S: Hm.

[18¼ second pause]

BS: Are you implying that devotion would be something totally evaluative? And if you were, wouldn't you have to find it also conjoined with the physical object according [RC simultaneously: Yeah.] to your description?

RC: Yeah I would think like there were these two ways. Like I could be making an index of wherever the person uses the word 'devotion' in the book and I could get it right every time. I could get them all in the right-- on the right index cards and not have any experience of devotion whatsoever.

[short pause]

BS: Well I was referring to your example of the blue and pink.

RC: Uh-huh.

BS: So could you try that again please?

RC: Maybe do the question again 'cause I must have missed it.

BS: Well I missed the answer. (laughter) You'll find that-- you will find that devotion would be the evaluative-- would be the evaluative function of the mind let's say and-- in the example you gave. And if so, wouldn't you have to conjoin it with the physical object and not a physical object as no longer just conventional? (Well/Or) perhaps that is what we said.

(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1983 1026a Ends; Side 2 Begins)

S: Uh-hm.

S (very faint): Now what does that mean?

BS: I'm using devotion as an example, as something that if you could separate it and say it's non-physical.

RC (faint): Uh-hm.

HS: Just by the phrase evaluation, what do you mean there, that-- what are you trying to say, like what's better, so to say?

BS: Excuse me? Couldn't hear.

HS: Evaluation. Which is better, right, you see two things, you want to figure out which is better.

BS: No, meaning.

HS: Yeah-- well yeah. Yeah but you want--

BS (simultaneously): Not the-- just--

HS: Which has more meaning.

BS: No, just meaning.

S: Right.

HS: Which has meaning and which doesn't have meaning.

BS: Which has-- yeah. [MB simultaneously: I--] Meaningful being.

RC/S(?) (faint): Yeah.

MB: I think by evaluation is not meant comparison, because, maybe what the intellect does is by classifying and describing it-- it tells you about the thing, it tells you about its relationship, you know, in the old Platonic sense and studied at a different level. It doesn't talk about what the thing is in itself. And I think evaluation the way he's using it here attempts to get more towards what the thing is, the whatness of it rather than all about it, what it's related to, what it looks like, what its conventional meaning is.

HS: When a person evaluates something what does a person do?

MB: It depends on how you reason because I think that this is the way he's using it here. I don't think he's meaning this thing is more valuable than the other thing. [HS: Well what--] Or this thing can be used in such and such a way, I don't think he's talking about the usefulness of it. I think he's talking about what it is.

LDS: But in-- in a sense Myra I would say that if he's going to place evaluation as a-- a superior function, and I think he did in that quote, he says I think that the evaluative function is greater than the classifying, then there is something about it that places a value on things. [MB simultaneously: But maybe not--] Or it establishes levels of meaning to some of their qualities. So--

MB: But maybe in more than the conventional sense.

LDS (simultaneously): Definitely more than a conventional sense.

MB (simultaneously): Ok, I mean I think that's the distinction, that's right, but not in the conventional everyday usage.

LDS: What I'm say-- we're [MB simultaneously: Yeah.] speaking about the way he's using it [MB simultaneously: Yeah, right.] and I think the way he's using it, we would have to say it's beyond the conventional usage. It seems like the classifying thing would be like the notion we have of the computer, that that part of the intellect that does all the classifying and-- and describing is like the computer portion. And it's all on one level. There's no-- within that functioning there's no ev-- there's never any-- any step out or jump up into any other level. Where with the evalu-- evaluative function it seems that there could be the possibility of novel and creative knowledge or creative products or whatever you want to say.

MB/S(?) (very faint): Uh-hm.

[13½ second pause]

RC: Maybe I should read it.

PB [V5, 7:1.167, 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."

[short pause]

RC: (Like), I guess I'm using that as like a-- sort of a catch-all in the sense that this is the one part of my mind that's continually producing combinations of things.

HS: Concepts.

RC: Ok. And another part of my mind which is judging them. And, only when-- it seems that-- that only when that part that's judging confirms what the other part's doing is there any sense of [short pause] truth in the concept. The concept is a concept. And if it seems-- that if-- if the part that's judging actually finds something in that concept that-- that it can confirm, then the concept is taken as symbolizing something about reality.

HS: And that's what you call like the evaluative function or he-- I guess (it was) discrimination?

S (faint): Uh-hm.

RC: Yeah.

HS: One part of it?

[10¼ second pause]

BS: Buddhi would be part of the evaluative function, not something above?

[9 second pause]

HS: Well--

RC: Well maybe I'm wrong but I'm taking these two as parallel, that when he says we're supposed to use this faculty [BS: Ok.] that confirms and judges what the intellect says, and then in the other quote where he says "I'm in favor of reason and I support the mind which evaluates over the mind which classifies", I'm taking them as parallel.

BS: Ok.

ME: You're taking those two separate as absolutely distinct between each other or you think there's a blending and overlapping?

RC: Distinct I would go with but separate no. I mean at times there might be and-- in fact, in the moments when it seems like the buddhi is-- is just manifesting the world without any verbal or conceptual screens, that they would be separate I guess. [couple inaudible student words simultaneous with RC] But I'm-- in most cases I think--

ME: What-- what-- I don't know what you mean by buddhi is manifesting the world.

RC: Just see, you know, without conceptualizing but actually see. Like in prakri-- in, what is it, Samkhya, the function of buddhi is to manifest prakritic objects.

[9 second pause]

ME: And using buddhi here differently then you would say true reason, that he's using it as the same principle, seems different.

RC: I think-- I think it might help if we read a few more of the quotes where he talks about how the intellect works with logic, get into like how the intellect proves things to its own satisfaction or-- and you find yourself that-- I'm sure you've found yourself in a number of situations where you see a choice of alternatives and logic, that if A, then a certain conclusion was. If X, then a different conclusion. That the level of mind that's doing that if-then process is really not the same level of mind that-- that evaluates the validity of the A or the X [student assents] in the first place.

ME: That-- ok. And then in terms of judging between A and X, [RC simultaneously: That would be--] you would say that's-- that's, you know, we're talking about the meeting, you'd also say that would be coming from the intellect, I-- I mean, I think [couple inaudible RC words simultaneous with ME] when (you/he) use (those) word 'evaluation' we all put this real rational meaning on it, an intellectual meaning on the word 'evaluation' and it doesn't seem like that's the way he's using that word. But that's the way you're not using it either, I mean-- You say the reason is the intellect combined with let's say some kind of higher feeling or, you know, the way we talked about it last week, then that process is not what we normally speak of as our evaluative function and the meaning is sort of how you use it.

RC (simultaneously): Yeah. Usually what we mean by our evaluative function is just our instinctual [ME assents] [couple/three words inaudible]

ME (faint): Exactly.

AS: Yeah that's right. Yeah there seems to be a different use of the word 'judgment', like at the lower level you usually might mean by judgment say "This is a tree" or "This is an apple". And that's a judgment.

RC: Uh-hm.

AS: As [couple words inaudible] you determine from your memory or whatever but that's what this is. And that's a kind of judgment. But that's not obviously-- I mean it seems obvious that that's not what you mean by evalu-- evaluative. Although in some schools that would be called a judgment. [RC assents, faint] It's a judgment of this being apple or this being not apple or being tree or something.

LD: That seems mainly a classifying we aren't speaking about.

AS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's what Randy was saying, that that's a dis-- that's-- that would fall under the level of classifying.

S: Yeah.

AS: The one with the A, the logical A implies B to the-- like I see smoke and infer-- you know, inference, still that one's like middle term but it still seems to be on the side of what you would call the intellect.

LDS: Wouldn't just a fact of perception Avery be something like what he means by-- you know, it's not the naming or the classifying of the perception but that a thing is or that I'm perceiving something is like the level of-- or at least a representation of that level of evaluation.

AS (simultaneously): At what level?

LDS: You have certitude that you're in perception or that you're having a perception, but no qualification there.

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

AS (faint): No I--

PD(?): Well that seems like a reverse.

AS: Yeah I-- it depends on-- I think, I mean that may be just some kind of a [couple words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): Do we have a four-year-old boy around here anywhere?

S (faint): [couple words inaudible]

S (simultaneously, faint): What?

AD/S(?) (faint): Not now(./?)

PD: You have a few four-year-old minds.

S (simultaneously): [few words inaudible] (bit of laughter)

S: Yeah.

AD: Well if you ask a little boy, you know, if you watch a little boy, he'll ask you, "What's this?" and you tell him [AD hits pole] "It's a pole", right? And then you'll describe a pole, alright. And then you walk a little bit more and he'll say, "What's that?" and you say "That's a mountain," tell him what a mountain is. Describe it, ok. And you go on doing this, you know, all day long he'll be telling you, (laughter) "What this? What that?"

AS: That's the intellect.

AD: You got it? That's the intellect.

AS (simultaneously): That's the judgment, that's intellect. Yeah but that's-- that's exactly what the Buddhists call a judgment too. Basically this is--

AD (simultaneously): Well, we don't have to refine it that closely because there'll be an argument about that. But intellect is basically name-calling. Right?

S: Yeah.

AD: It's name-calling. And a description of all these things, ok. So I got a mountain now, big mountain in front of me there, alright, and the little boy says, "What's that?" and I says "A golf ball." He says "Oh good. I'm going to roll the mountain on a golf ball." What do you think of that? Yeah, what would you say? What would [HS simultaneously: Do it.] you tell your little boy, huh? (laughter)

HS: I would say do it.

AD: Huh?

HS: I would say you should do it if you're going (to--)

AD: You should do it, huh?

HS: But uh, (laughter) it doesn't sound really plausible. (bit of laughter)

AD: Well, I mean what's to prevent him from doing it?

HS: The actual [one word inaudible] (that he's in). (laughter)

AD: You brought in reasoning, right? Well, you see, you can't do that, right? [S: Hm.] So, there's a difference between intellect which is name-calling, classifying, describing an article, alright, and inter-- reason, which is something that's concerned about how these various objects can be brought into relationship to each other. I-- why do you have trouble with this?

CS (faint): So the time (with reason) [AD simultaneously: And--] (wouldn't--) reason(ing) can't bring in? [Note: Pat C. 1983 partial transcript has here "Is there a time when intellect wouldn't be needed?"]

AD: You may have difficulty. [CS simultaneously: No I (wouldn't do it).] Because someone will tell you "Get a chair" and you'll bring him the table. Why should you do without your intellect?

CS: 'Cause I was reading a-- a quote that PB said that-- that made me think that at one point you could let go of the intellect.

AD: You could what?

CS: Let go of it. You don't use it anymore. That it would be that you would have (some last time), that it wouldn't be any type of--

S (very faint): What do you mean?

AS: Wait. How could you function?

CS: I got the quote.

AS: But how could you function? How could you-- I mean how could you function-- if you couldn't attach any name to anything, you wouldn't even be able to function.

CS: Well you're at a higher realm maybe.

AD: When he said--

AS (simultaneously): Yeah but it's got (to/a) function in the world.

AD (simultaneously): When he said you had to let go of your intellect, you have the name of something you have to let go of, right?

CS: Can I read you the quote?

AD: I don't need it honey.

CS (faint): No but I do. [couple words inaudible] see if I could read it.

AD: Well, you don't need the intellect in meditation, when you're in trance, when you're in Nirvikalpa, you have no use for it. Because you're not going to call anything any name. (bit of laughter) Alright, don't worry about it, ok? Could you think of what else the intellect might be besides calling something, giving it a name, giving it a description? Like "This is a mountain, alright, this is a tree. That's a tree too. Then everything [CS simultaneously: (couple/three words inaudible) all the--] that looks like that is a tree. I see. Now I put them all in this class, I got all these different kinds, birch, maple, walnut, etc." That's the intellect, ok?

CS (simultaneously): Right. Ok but then you say it's also like a computer, right?

AD: Yeah.

CS: And that, you know, thinking will receive more data.

AD: Yeah. So then I find out that there's more kinds of trees.

CS: Yeah, how many trees are there, you know?

AD: Well, that's what-- that's the intellect's job, collecting all this data and classifying. "Ooh, that's a tree too." Then he goes on [CS simultaneously: And that too. What--] and sees these big-- what are they, the Susquehannas or-- (laughter)

S: Sequoia.

S: Sequoia.

AD: Sequoias? [S simultaneously: Sequoia.] Sequoias. (laughter) Susquehanna's a river, right?

S (amidst laughter): Right.

S (amidst laughter, faint): Right.

AD: Well I didn't-- you see? The intellect straightened me right out, "No, no, no, no. You're talking about something else. (laughter) You're talking about a river you-- and you're looking for trees!" Oh, come on, you can't tell what an intellect is and the reasoning about it? You just corrected me when I used the wrong word. You said "No, no, no, that's-- that's not a tree, that's a river. We want trees. Sequoias, they're big one(s). Every now and then you should plant one." (bit of laughter)

AS: But, I'm sorry. Can I ask you-- (bit of laughter, student words) Can-- can I ask a-- there's something about--

S (simultaneously, faint): First read Cindy's quote.

AS: Oh ok.

S (very faint): Read it.

CS: Anthony, please can I read you this quote?

S: Uh-hm.

AD (simultaneously): Read.

JanH: And the quote that--

CS: This is from The Quest of the Overself, "Path of Self-Enquiry".

AD (faint): Yeah.

CS (faint): I don't know.

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

[Transcriber note: I am using The Quest of the Overself by Paul Brunton, Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, Maine, 1995 printing.]

PB [The Quest of the Overself, "The Path of Self-Enquiry," p. 152, CS reading]: "Although we must first strive with sharpened intellect to pierce open the shell of the ego, we must nevertheless not hesitate to lay aside that instrument when we reach the point in our practices where we realize that it has now fulfilled itself."

CS: Do you want to see it? "To acknowledge…"

AD (simultaneously): You want to come look at it?

CS: No.

PB [The Quest of the Overself, "The Path of Self-Enquiry," p. 152, CS reading]: "To acknowledge freely the limitations of the intellect when one has reached the farthest boundary of that faculty is to invite the oncoming of something higher."

CS: So I thought that higher would be another-- I mean doesn't it sound like it's-- Obviously I've misinterpreted.

AD: No, no. Certainly what he's saying there is something like this. You read all about water and its chemical constituents, alright, how it's-- you know, where it's to be found etc, ok. But there comes a point where you're thirsty, and it's not going to satisfy you. You have to actually go to the faucet and get a glass of water and drink it. So if you're searching for the Overself there's a point where the searching that's been going on within is useless. Words aren't going to help you anymore. You've got to let go of the intellect there and just be still.

But we're not discussing that, what we're discussing here is a really very simple thing: [CS simultaneously: Alright.] what is the intellect and what is reason? Alright? And the intellect is something that helps you classify data, describe it, alright, check it out, sort of give it a name, all this is intellect, alright. [student assents, very faint] And then you have to bring in reason whenever you try to-- when the intellect tries to organize all this data to produce let's say some-- some sort of coherence, then you have to bring in reason because the-- the intellect by itself could be very mistaken about what it's doing. [couple inaudible student words] So you bring in a higher faculty. Now it was pointed out that intellect and reason can be distinguished but they're very hard to distinguish, alright. Nonetheless they can be distinguished, they cannot be separated. In one and the same mind reason and intellect is operating simultaneously. So don't start looking for different rooms.

LH: I mean, the example you use I like 'cause it shows-- the one with the-- the golf ball and the mountain because it's showing that reason can be valued-- or how that reason is valued can really vary. It can be valued by sense-experience or it can be valued by, you know, a like or a dislike, or it can be valued by something [one word inaudible]

AD: Reason will deal with the way the facts can be organized.

LH: Yes. But the way that that organization takes place is according-- it become-- become--

AD (simultaneously): I didn't-- I didn't restrict it. It could operate in any of the realms below itself. So reason could operate in the sensible realm as well as in the realm of ideas.

LD: Is it also not just the way that facts can be organized but what-- what is a fact? Do you-- do you understand what I'm saying?

AD: Yes. Sure. What is a fact and then you find out a fact is a series of relationships, alright, tied into one another. Sure, now you're bringing in reason again. But in the main I think it's relatively simple to understand what he means when he says intellect. And I think you're, you know, getting carried away. [short pause] Let's read a couple quotes.

PB [V5, 7:7.131, TS reading]: "Metaphysics gives itself the work of uncovering intellectually life's deepest secret."

S: Oh.

AD: Try again (with--)

S (faint): (Yeah/Go) Tim.

PB [V5, 7:7.131, TS rereads]: "Metaphysics gives itself the work of uncovering intellectually life's deepest secret."

[29 second pause]

PB [V5, 7:3.3, TS reading]: "The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, beyond-- belong…"

TS: Well I start all over.

S (faint): Yeah.

S (faint): Right.

TS (faint): I got carried away with (Larson), um--

MB (very faint): [few words inaudible]

PB [V5, 7:3.3, TS reading]: "The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrive at this fullness without a [TS adds: long] series of graduated stages."

[32¾ second pause]

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN INTELLECT AND REASON

PB [V5, 7:1.161, TS reading]: "My criticism in earlier books of intellect as an unsatisfactory guide to truth, and of intellectualism as yielding a lot of contradictory opinions, was misunderstood. It was directed against intellect, not reason: I differentiate between both. Intellect uses logical method, reason uses a higher one. Theological philosophy is based on logic. Scientific philosophy is based on reason. I uphold rationalism against intellectualism, the thinking power in man against the classifying power, the mind which evaluates thoughts against the mind which merely collects and describes them."

[short pause]

S: What else?

HS: Getting too-- getting hung up on the words 'theological' and the other one.

TS: Theological philosophy and scientific philosophy?

HS (simultaneously): Yeah. What do you think he means by that?

TS: Well from my readings I would think that by theological philosophy it meant a philosophy which attempts to understand doctrines as based on a religion.

HS: Dogma?

S: Dogma.

TS: Dogma. And tries to use that as its-- one of its cornerstones. And that what I understand is (meant) by scientific philosophy is a philosophy which embraces the (feel/field) of the scientific method in its analysis of the world to in-- to ex--

AD: So it must be based on fact.

TS: Yeah.

HS: Understand. But so the theological one would be based on what's-- what's being posed.

AD (simultaneously): On dogma. On dogma. Both.

PD: But couldn't you expand the latter so it's the one based on scientific and say any doctrine that could be verified. So a mystical doctrine, even though it's not scientifically verifiable in the normal framework, is verifiable in terms of mystical experience. That can be upheld philosophically. Whereas certain religious dogmas are not verifiable. But-- and he would not consider that philosophical. But only those tendencies could be upheld through ver-- verification inwardly or scientifically.

TS: Well I think just scientifically, yes, I mean-- I think scientific here would mean kind of reasoning or fact, whether interior fact or a phenomenal fact. [couple/few words inaudible]

HS (simultaneously): Yeah like an honest inquiry into [TS simultaneously: Yeah.] what [one/two words inaudible] is.

DB: Well, doesn't-- doesn't it seem like there's a possibility that the distinction between the two has to do with that the theological philosophy which depends on logic starts from a given statement, you know, somebody said something, and from that we could infer this and that and the other thing, you can just go on stating whatever you feel like depending on someone's original statement no matter how many times it's been translated and so on so forth. [RC, faint: Right.] Whereas scientific--

RC (simultaneously): [couple words inaudible] specifically trying to avoid inconsistency.

DB: Yeah right. But with-- within scientific philosophy I think what he-- what he would mean is something that-- it's unfolded from within the individual itself, it's not just-- it's a matter of being aware of one's sources, you can't really be doing philosophy if you're just remembering something that you read or-- You see I mean it has to be a living vital [RC assents, faint] process that's going on within your own [RC: Yeah.] awareness.

RC: Aurobindo had one-- one way of putting it, he said that nowadays when people who claim to be knowledgeable about a topic (if) you're going to be taught, they say well what do you think about such and such. And he said that the Sages the scriptures talk about would never ask each other a question like that. They would say "What do you know?"

[students assent, very faint]

DB: Right.

LDS: The question I would have I think related to everyone else's is, are we-- are-- is he suggesting there that ancient philosophy, traditional philosophy, like Vedanta, Buddhism, any of the ones that depend on scripture or revelation would be considered only theological or-- or could you also consider those as being scientific, [TS simultaneously: Well I think that--] if reason is brought to bear on-- on it.

TS: Well it says-- simply says scientific philosophy is based on reason. Theological philosophy is based on logic. So within those ancient doctrines that base themselves purely on logic, it would be theological. Those which base themselves on reason would be scientific. I don't think by scientific he means--

LDS: Anything in terms of (like) modern or--

S (simultaneously, faint): (Right/Yeah).

AS: Yeah see I-- yeah, well right. Well-- I always understood the technical distinction between logic and reason to be that in logic we start-- we have to start from a set of beliefs. Logic can't examine its own suppositions. So you must start with some dogma that somebody tells you. And you don't question those, you can use those to deduce other things, but you only do-- you only need logic to do that and you never get behind the presuppositions of the religion. [student assents, faint] So it's based on certain opinions and that only goes down from there. Whereas I always took reason to actually examine the-- the very-- the presuppositions themselves instead of just proceeding deductively A implies B implies C.

RC: Uh-hm.

RC/S(?): Oh ok.

AS: So you'd say-- you actually examine presuppositions and go backwards from there.

RC: Yeah. Well in that same-- that same section--

AS: It always is done in a preposition.

RC: In that Upanishads volume-- yeah, the Upanishads volume, Aurobindo was talking about-- basically he said any genuine religious system has a certain spiritual intuition that's underlying it. And everything about that system is an attempt to unfold in terms that the intellect can get, make access to that intuition. And that once that-- that intuition has been got and that spiritual experience has been had, then the person is ready to move on to the next higher system.

AD: Tell me, what [S simultaneously: Right.] intuition underlies Christianity?

[short pause]

PC (faint): What?

RC: You mean in terms of-- as exemplified by the life of Christ or this-- what the Church did?

AD: What-- what Aurobindo was saying there was that there is a truth that underlies every great tradition, alright. And we'd like to believe that.

RC: Yeah he said every true religion.

AD: Yeah. Every true religion would have an underlying intuition or truth, you know, which can be brought out. Now, Christianity for instance?

LR: The Logos.

LDS/S(?): Compassion.

AD: The Logos?

DB (faint): (Ego/There you go).

AD: Christianity? Well, tell me a little more, what do you mean?

[short pause]

LR: The incarnation of the Word, I thought that's that--

AD: No. It's the incarnation of the Infinite.

CDA: That God-- that the Infinite is actually (incarnated).

AD (simultaneously): That God, Infinite God incarnated in a human body. Now if-- assuming that this is their premises, how much truth did we get to?

RC: Are you-- should we read that Paul quote and then--

AD: I'm sorry?

RC: I guess--

AD: I know the quote by Aurobindo. It's also one made-- made by Guenon and Schuon and all these people, that underlying every religion there is an ultimate truth. But I think if you examine a few of them you may get disappointed.

RC: Yeah but he didn't-- I mean he didn't say that. He said there's the true religion.

LR (simultaneously): I think that's a misinterpretation.

RC: I mean-- [S, very faint: Yeah.] I can't know what he meant but I would assume that if-- if there isn't a spiritual intuition that's buried at the base of it it's not a true religion. In fact that-- that quote that we were looking at today about Saint Paul it said that everything that's followed upon his interpretation of that vision was a mistake. He misinterpreted it.

PD: But that's one thing PB distinguished mentalism from all the other religions in that mentalism, every facet of it could be verified through your own experience.

RC: Yeah.

PD: Whereas dogmatic religions are unable to make that statement.

[students assent, faint]

S (faint): But--

RC: I have a hard time thinking of religions, I always think of the-- I mean regardless of what they call themselves, that I think if the person has any genuine experience of the soul, the traditional language is that the various religions are sufficiently rich for him to be able to express meaning. To kind of like say that a, you know-- there's this entity called a religion that either knows or doesn't know something, it's just hard for me to deal with.

LD: Yeah it seems like a very general statement.

RC: Yeah, I mean--

PD: General statements or not they persecuted enough people throughout the history of man.

RC: Yeah. Well I wouldn't call those people religious people. I mean, I just wouldn't.

LD: Yeah but then on the other hand, PB seems to quote the Bible and Christ often enough to-- for me to wonder whether they might embody some truth. And, I'm not going to make a general statement that all of that is--

PD: That's the point under discussion here though is what can you verify employing your own intelligence, from your own experience and in your own experience. Some point or other you've got to bring-- you-- the intelligence you have, your own native intelligence to bear and try to understand and you cannot just believe.

AS: Yes.

LD/S(?): Well yeah.

RC: Yeah definitely.

SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY, BASED ON REASON, EXAMINES ALL THE FACTS, NOT JUST SOME FACTS

AD: That's why a scientific philosophy, and we're using the term in a broad sense, means that you examine all the facts, not just some facts. You have to examine all the facts. So the intellect has to collect all these facts, classify them, describe them, alright, and then the reason could get to work on them. But you have to have all these facts. Now, what are the facts concerning the fundamentals of various religions, and it may be surprising that the statement which is made not only by Aurobindo but like I said quite a few others may not stand up to that test. And when Louis was speaking about Vedanta, what Vedanta is he referring to? You know, I mean which school of Vedanta you referring to, which school of Buddhism are you referring to? [RC assents, faint] And then I'll-- I'll answer you accordingly.

LDS: No.

RC: It really comes down to which man are you talking about. I mean, did he have insight? Did he at least have some good intuition(s)?

LDS: Yeah, my point was that the scientific method that we speak of is applicable--

AD (simultaneously): Yes, does the Vedanta use the scientific method?

LDS: It depends on like you said, what school we're speaking of, which philosopher. It's not as if the ancients didn't use or employ reason on their scriptures. [AD simultaneously: Well, if they--] As a matter of fact that's a very important faculty in some--

AD: Well I would ask you point blank. Does-- is the Vedanta a scientific philosophy?

PC/S(?) (faint): No.

PD: No.

LDS: I would say certain schools.

AD (simultaneously): I would say yes. I would [LDS simultaneously: I--] say yes.

LDS: Yeah, certain schools are.

PD: I'd say it's dogmatic. Starts (with your) salvation.

AD (simultaneously): No, I would say (it is). Now it depends, who we [three inaudible student words simultaneous with AD] talking about in Vedanta?

PD: Any Vedantist starts with their sacred texts and goes from there.

LDS: But they look at it rationally, Paul.

PD (simultaneously): Now I'm not saying they don't employ reason.

LDS: Ok that's all I--

LD: Yeah but that means they examine their presuppositions and that's what we determine the scientific philosophy to be is that which de-- [LDS: Yes.] [student assents] examines its presuppositions and I think we can't-- there are a number who do that.

AD (simultaneously): You know, you take a very simple example, the Vedanta examines three states of consciousness.

LDS: Yeah.

AD: Western philosophies get satisfied with one.

PD(?): Yeah.

AD: So I would be inclined to say the Vedanta tends to be scientific in its premises. [PD simultaneously: But at the same time--] Tries to examine all its premises.

PD: But at the same time they uphold a certain dogma, and you-- like you read the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and they'll uphold the sacrifices of the Br-- Brahmanism.

LDS (simultaneously): But, one injunction they always gave, Shankara and all of them said, you must bring reason to bear on the scriptures, and to see if your reason will verify the scriptures, never take the scriptures dogmatically. I think that's a big injunction in that.

AD: The same with the Buddha, he said the same thing.

LDS (simultaneously): Yeah.

PD: I mean what--

AD (simultaneously): Not because a wise man said it but because it satisfies your reason [LDS assents] will you follow through with this. Now how-- how about Christianity? Hey, I'm not knocking Christianity, I'm just using an example because we could take any primitive religion. (laughter) What I mean by that is [LSD: Tradition.] any of the primitive mythologies that all of a sudden have assumed such importance because of the Jungian studies in mythology, you know, and all these studies. Now mythology is being justified too, alright. You can go out and stone somebody, it doesn't matter. According to the mythology it's alright.

LDS: Most of the sects in Buddhism-- or I mean in Christianity do not advocate intellectual effort or rational effort. But there are those that do, the Dominicans and Jesuits. But, you know, mostly to--

AD: What? (laughter)

S (faint): Oh no.

LDS: I mean--

S: You're in trouble Louie.

LDS: How about Saint Thomas? (bit more laughter) Saint Thomas Aquinas was not a rational philosopher?

AD: Yeah. You just said Dominicans and-- What does the Catholic Church base its faith on?

S (very faint): What does it base its faith on?

AD: Could you deviate from those premises?

LDS: Oh, oh, yeah I-- the Church is one thing but I was thinking--

AD (simultaneously): (So--) But they're exponents of the Church.

S: Yeah.

LDS: But I mean you could say the same thing of the schools of Vedanta and Hinduism. I mean Hinduism is a collection of sects.

AD (simultaneously): You haven't studied Vedanta.

PD: I mean the Bo-- the Buddha did over-- overthrow and go his own way apart from the Hindu tradition because it did become dogmatic and ossified and sacrificial at-- at (a certain/an important) time in history.

AD: Yeah but I think you're talking basically about the popular superstitious kind of Vedanta.

LDS: Yeah that's what we're-- definitely.

S: But is that--

AS (simultaneously): But isn't it-- isn't that criteria, maybe I'm wrong but it seems that the criterion is in a rational philosophy he turns to reason onto even his own presuppositions.

AD: Yeah.

AS: And he tries to-- he tries to reason about them and not just accept them. That the logic will take anything and derive consequences from it but it never turns itself to examine and compare the very premises themselves one with the other. It can't-- logic can't do that, it always-- it only can unfold what's-- logic-- you know, A implies B [one/two words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): What it-- what it accepts as its axioms.

AS: Yeah. And that-- I think Paul that was like-- [PD simultaneously: And that's (quite/not) true Avery.] except for-- except for one-- except for one thing you said I would basically agree, the thing you said about the-- you know, the mystical experience. I think even there PB would say well look, you could have mystical experience and you come out and say "Oh I'm God." And you can go on with that for ten, twenty years. So if you do-- even your own-- even your own experience has to have reas-- the test of reason. [PD simultaneously: But then--] Otherwise if it doesn't then that mystic is a-- a theological philosopher and not a rational one.

PD (simultaneously): But vice versa. The conclusions of reason are verified in your own experience.

AD: Yeah but, it is a standing procedure [AS simultaneously: But--] in Vedanta, alright, that the exposition of the doctrine is dependent upon reason. And if you bring in mystical experience they throw it out. They won't accept that.

[Transcriber note: The following quote seems to be from "The Philosophical Quarterly," Vol. 7, G.R. Malkani (ed.), published by N.C. Ghosh for the Indian Institute of Philosophy, Calcutta, India, 1931. I have no access to this magazine, quote should be proofread, seems like TS might be paraphrasing.]

[TS reading]: "Shankara is never tired of insisting that the mystic vision of unity does not admit of rational fruit and that thought when left to itself may lead to any conclusion in accordance with the excellence of the thinker. On the other hand, he is equally emphatic on the need of rationalization as a stage toward the attainment of the intuitional vision. Philosophy as the thinking consideration of things is for Shankara a discipline for helping the finite soul to give up its finitude."

S (faint): (I) like it.

AS: Tim, may-- I-- I think maybe the point seems to be there that there's a twofold thing. If you use reason but you don't have sufficient premises to examine with it, then you're going to run around in circles. [LDS: Yeah.] On the other hand if the reason does have sufficient premises, which in this case of Vedanta means a direct intuition, then the reason has a sufficient basis for-- to reason correctly. If-- you need both things. If you just have the reason without a basis of-- of enough-- broad enough or deep enough premises, the reason will lead you in circles. On the other hand if you just have the intuition without the reason to verify it and bring it out, you may get-- draw wrong conclusions out of the intuitions, like you say [TS assents] well I'm God. So, without both of those, you won't have a correct, you know-- you won't have as correct a-- a philosophy as you could have.

PD: So in the case like here with Shankara there-- he's verifying-- this discipline of philosophy is the continual verification of his own mystical intuition.

AS: Yeah. And without one or the other--

PD (simultaneously): And the unfoldment of it.

AS: --you won't have [one/two words inaudible] philosophy.

HS (simultaneously): Yeah but it's peculiar because that-- that verification takes the form of seeing your-- if his intuition conforms with a kind of a revelation that's been given too. It's [JanH simultaneously: But--] not that that's [one/two words inaudible] (view there).

PD: Well I don't see where he says that here.

JanH: Then I don't (know thing), what is the relation between intuition and reason, I mean--

S (faint): Yeah.

S (faint): [couple words inaudible]

[12½ second pause]

JanH (faint): Seems like it-- what he's saying, I mean reason seems to me to be part of the reasoning-- the reasoning faculty or what you call-- [short pause] And--

AD: I didn't hear a word you said Jan except the first four words.

JanH (simultaneously): I asked what is the relation between intuition and reason. I mean-- I understood reason to be-- to be using intuition as part of it, I mean-- intuition was part of the reasoning and-- faculty or-- [short pause] And--

AS: [couple words inaudible] I think they can be distinguished. If there's like lower end you would distinguish reasoning from intellect the way we're using intellect or classifying. The other you would distinguish reasoning from intuition. The reasoning can work with the intuition or work on it to develop it or analyze it and so on. Just as it works-- at the lower it could work with the classifying and decide if the classifying is correct and so on.

JanH: Yeah.

TS: I don't know if that would be right but I think in PB's framework, reasoning would be the (intense) and careful activity of the individual mind working with the contents which are (the--) as natural to it or interior to it. Where intuition would be that same individual mind passive to the wisdom of the Overself, the knowledge of the Overself [S: Would you take it?] receiving some knowledge within itself. And that an intuition requires both preparation and the natural obscuration that the fact that the psychology will bring to it will have to be just strained away by the activity of reason. Does that make sense to you?

JanH: Yeah.

LD: Do you think some of the confusion also is there seems to be two levels of reason where he spea-- refers to the Cambridge Platonists and he-- he's actually talking Reason with a big 'R' which seems more of an intuitive reasoning. But the reasoning I think we're speaking of here is more of a-- an explication of that intuition. But there-- there definitely seems to be two levels of reason that we can speak of and I find that confusing too.

[short pause]

NH: Yeah I would think that the lower level of reason would be almost parallel to the intuition where it too could be subject to faulty opinions brought in by the ego. But that the higher reason would be able to analyze that. [student assents, faint] [short pause] Is that what you mean by two levels?

LD (simultaneously): Well I think-- I think I mean the opposite here.

NH: What?

LD: You say the lower reason is equivalent to intuition?

NH: Well it would be parallel. It would be a parallel functioning that-- that is a problem.

LD (simultaneously): Well I think it-- what do you mean by parallel?

NH: Well, I--

LD (simultaneously): One is primary, I would say intuition is primary and reason unfolds that. So it comes after the fact of intuition. Whereas the higher reason I'm looking at, maybe wrongly, as an intuition. Dianoia.

AD: Well why make this division, Louis?

LD: I thought that's part of (where he's been going).

AD (simultaneously): Why not be sat-- why not be satisfied with the three-fold way of looking at the mind, as intuitive, [AS: Right.] rational, and opinionated? The lowest is the intellect, the middle realm is the reason and the highest the intuition. Also think of these three not as separate, although they're distinguishable within one and the same mind, alright. There's times when the intellect is dominant, there's times when reason or [Pat C. 1983 partial transcript addition: intuition are dominant. There's a mixture going on in various situations.]

[Audio File 1983 1026a Ends]

[Audio File 1983 1026b Begins]

LD: --who are. That's all-- that's all I said there, that he uses reason, just like that quote where he refers to the Cambridge Platonists. Reason he defined I think as an intellectual intuition. So all I'm saying is-- I mean I think I see what you're saying but he uses it both ways.

AS: That's may-- but it's possible that the both ways is because just as the Platonists say the reason can look both ways. It's not that there are two reasoning faculties. The reasoning can be guided or work with opinion but it could be freed from the opinion and work with the intuition. And depending on which it's guided by or what it's working on, that's whether you call it [one word inaudible] reason or [one word inaudible] reason but the reason itself may not be-- that power of reasoning may be, oh, as it were the same. But in one case it's blended with the intuition, in the other case it's blended with and working with opinion. When it looks up it's guided by the intuition, if it gets any. But if it doesn't get them it's got-- got to be guided by the opinions in the intellect, I mean (categories). This may be [LD simultaneously: Yeah, I can see that but--] a way to resolve-- that may be a way to resolve that problem.

LD: I could see that but in the Hidden Teaching [AS simultaneously: It's one--] it does refer to the highest level of reason as thought returning upon its source.

AS: Yeah.

LD: Now, I can't see that in what you just said.

AD: Why not?

AS: Well its source is the intuition. And when it turns itself-- when it points itself or turns in upon itself, it's turning itself in upon the intuitive nature of the mind itself. And therefore it will be guided by the intuition rather than being guided by and working with (thought). And finally it'll destroy-- and finally in the ultimate he even says you can have-- I mean I don't know this but he says in the-- I think he says somewhere that at first you have to test all the intuitions by reason. But ultimately you could reach a point where you don't-- where even reason is not necessary to be used. That's the intuition, once they're absolutely certain I guess one's a Sage. You don't have to go reasoning about the intuitions, they become so (extremely) certain and even for a Sage I don't know if he would have to [one word inaudible]

CAN REASON EXAMINE ITS OWN PREMISES OR IS INTUITION REQUIRED?

AD: Why can't reason examine its own premises without calling it or making it intuitive?

LD: Without making it what?

AD: Without making it an intuitive function.

[short pause]

AH: Seems that it can examine all its premises except the one that it itself is based on.

AD/S(?): Yeah.

AS: No. That's the funny thing, it may be even-- even do that.

AD (simultaneously): What do you-- what do you mean?

AH: Reason can examine all the premises or all presuppositions for its system. [AD, faint: Right.] But it can't examine its own premise.

AD: But that's what I want to know, what do you mean it cannot examine--

AH (simultaneously): It can't cognize cognizing.

AS: Oh but-- but Andrew that's-- the supposition there is that the cognizing is its own premise. And I would say no. Cognizing is just pure-- is the pure awareness, that's not what the primary immediate basis of reason is. I mean I don't understand, why can't reason examine its own premise? In fact that would be its highest function is to examine its own premises.

AH: The thought of it in an epistemological model where there's a subject and an object and a relationship between them, you know, reason must function that way.

AD: Yes.

AH: How can--

AD: Why can't reason examine its own premises?

AH: Because--

AD: We're not saying that reason should examine awareness [AS simultaneously: Awareness.] or consciousness. We're not-- we're not-- we're not s-- speaking about reason, so to speak, knowing the source of its being, we're speaking about reason as a knowing faculty, why cannot it examine its own basis.

AH: It can, if you describe it that way.

AD: Well, that's what we're referring to.

AH: I thought you were speaking of something else.

AD: In order for it to examine or understand something about its own source, then it ceases to be reason. (It/You) can't reason anymore.

AH: That's the point I was making.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah.

S (faint): [few words inaudible]

RC (simultaneously): Ok. So to make that very immediate, like when-- when I pass judgment on a concept that my intellect is working (with), let's say, ok, I confirm this one. Now if I was going to investigate my premises I'd turn around inwardly and I'd say "Why am I going to confirm this one? What is it about me or about this that appears to--"

S (faint): Yeah.

AS: Think there are all these premises, like you look at the chart. In fact thought-- you could go into a situation, say "Well I don't-- I don't like this guy" or something till finally one day you say "Well why don't I-- why don't I like him? What is there about him that--" But that seems-- well-- I think you could even do better than that.

AD: I don't think I really understood what you said.

RC: Well again I'm-- I'm following back to that one quote where he talks about the Buddhiyoga where he says this faculty of discrimination we're supposed to use isn't the intellect but it's a faculty that-- that judges, restrains or confirms the intellect's activity. So, as I am conceptualizing different possibilities (with/of) my intellect, at a certain point it seems that I'll be inclined to confirm a certain one of those. I want to say "Yes, this is the one that I think is-- is correct." Now, if I were going to try to turn my reasoning on investigating its own premises, it would seem to be at that point-- instead of going on with a concept but dropping it with satisfaction or whatever, that I would turn my light inward and say "Well now why do I find myself predisposed to consider this one correct?"

AS: But I don't-- I'm not sure I-- Do you think that's really examining its own premises or is that really the reason still examining the premises of certain beliefs? It still seems that's not the highest-- that's the best thing that reason could do. I mean even there it's examining and says "Well I always operated this way." But that operation was really the belief or the associated function of the intellect, it's examining that. [RC: Yeah.] And I think it could really do better if it really examines the whole basis of itself. I thought that was [couple words inaudible]

RC (simultaneously): I guess what I'm trying to describe is like the lowest level where, you know, in a very simple way you'd say well that seems very reasonable to me. Sort of like, if that very person is making a statement say "Well why does it seem reasonable? What is it about me or about the situation or whatever that seems reasonable?" And it would seem that would lead me to a universal if-- if it were truly reasoning. And if it didn't lead me to a universal it wouldn't be truly (reasoning/reasonable). It would maybe (fill) a complex or something like that.

[short pause]

NH: Why would it have to reason with something universal and not (reflect)? I mean couldn't it lead you to something relative to that time and place or analysis?

RC: I don't see why they'd have to be different. The time and place is the blending of universals.

NH: Uh-hm. So you're saying that the relative would be inclusive in that framework.

RC: No if we're talking about, you know-- and, certainly at-- at certain stages of their development the philosopher actually living the life of reason is meaningful, and manifesting the (reasoned) minds of the universal, [NH assents, faint] and in the experience, and embodying subjectively the-- the ones of subjective valuation, the values.

S: (Uh-hm.)

[short pause]

NH: But weren't you just talking about more mundane-- mystic reasons where you're [RC simultaneously, faint: Yeah I'm trying to.] analyzing the function of the intellect and then employing reason to-- to put that information together?

RC: I guess what I'm trying to get at is a difference between say-- say being nice to someone because my mother told me I should be nice to people, has taken me to task. [NH, faint: Yeah.] So it seems reasonable to me to be nice to people as opposed to I turn around and say "Well wait a minute, why does it make sense to be nice to people?" And by turning the attention inward and perhaps experiencing or getting some glimpse of a compassionate (or aspect of reality).

NH: Uh-hm. So you're saying that questioning is really the reasonable one whereas the other is simply the intellect taking what your mother told you and saying that's reasonable. That's not really reason, that's the intellect. That's an intellect thinking about a-- that's already something too. And then going beyond that and questioning, "Well why should I be nice to people," that's the reason.

RC: Well, yeah. Something my mother-- what is it in this that seems to make sense to me, what is it in it that seems to--

NH: Ring true maybe.

RC (simultaneously): Yeah.

AH: Are we still talking about the opportunity of reason examining its own premise?

RC: That's what I was trying to talk about.

AH: Well, I would like to pursue that point that I brought up a minute ago just a little.

S (faint): Yeah.

AH/S(?): Say it.

AH: It would-- I think he agreed that thinking cannot pursue its own premise in regards to the epistemological situation. I mean there-- there's a basis of thought that thought cannot have, so to speak. Well why wouldn't that not be so for reason as well insofar as reason is functioning with a knowing subject and various kinds of contents and a relationship between those two things? Seems to me that there's also a--

PD: So is it all those concepts, Andrew, are an elaboration of reason's activity.

AH: And that's the point I think what--

PD (simultaneously): That doesn't-- So therefore reason is not subject to the conditions of which it-- it is-- it has made itself conscious.

S (faint): Uh-hm.

AH: Or, it cannot examine its own--

PD: But you just said that it works through a subject and an object and its relationship, those are products of reasoning's discerning mentation.

AH: In the same way that subject and object are a product of thought's activity, in regard--

PD (simultaneously): Yeah, that's another statement by the-- the discriminating awareness operating in you.

AH: It seems to me that you're validating the argument that reason could not examine its own presupposition.

PD: No I'm disagreeing with you right down the line. Every statement that's made is a product of reason's functioning and the intelligence operative in you. That any-- any attempt to say here ends the operative intelligence in you is a-- is a joke.

[student assents, very faint]

PC: I think that--

LDS (simultaneously): Also, Andrew, I think what you might be doing is equating reason with the thoughts. And I think Paul's suggesting [PD simultaneously: Yeah.] that the thoughts are being ordered or guided by the reason. You think of reason as this totally impersonal discriminating function, discriminative function. It has no interest in anything but discriminating things. In that sense whatever thoughts come up, whatever situations it wants to examine, if it's truly done according to reason, then all the reason is doing is discriminating, evaluating without any reference to self-interest or feelings or anything like that.

AH: Yeah. I thought [PD simultaneously: And--] we (have/had) made a clear distinction between intellect and reason, I guess I missed that.

LDS: Between thoughts and reason. Or between this lower intellect and reason.

TS: If you said that reason cannot examine its own presuppositions, then either that statement itself is reasonable or dogmatic. If it's reasonable, then reason has already admitted that it can consider its own presuppositions.

S: Ok. (bit of laughter)

AH (faint): Right.

RC (faint): It doesn't (make for) logical-- (laughter)

HS (amidst laughter): But it's not your logic though.

S: It's your logic.

TS (simultaneously, faint): It's kind of logical.

S: It's your logic.

S: Right. (some laughter)

S: It's your logic.

NH: Would you do that again, Tim?

S (very faint): I didn't hear what you said.

NH: What did you just say?

TS/S(?) (simultaneously, faint): [couple/three words inaudible]

JB (simultaneously): He's not that proud of it.

S: No. (bit of laughter)

AH: If you say so, you know. (laughter) It's ha-- it's just hard for me to-- it's hard for me to make that leap of faith, you know.

AS (faint): Yeah you're reasoning it out.

AH: I'm awfully reluctant to let go of--

LDS: Which is the leap of faith?

PD (simultaneously): Let go of what Andrew?

S: Oh he made (a--)

AH (simultaneously): The--

S: Which one?

AH: The logic of the situation.

PD: Why that's the point, it's reason as the discriminative awareness operating in you is gonna force you out of the opinions you're locked into. Nothing else will. Pure mind doesn't care.

AH: Ok, let's take an analogy. (laughter)

PD: Do you follow what I'm saying (there)?

AH: Yes I follow exactly what you're saying.

PD: It's the discriminating intelligence in you that's between two realms.

AH: Let's take an analogy. That thought level, subject and object and there's a mind. Now we talk so glibly and freely about this mind that relates the subject and object. And the proof of it is the fact that we can know things and all that. But when you examine the notion of mind and look for whatever that symbol refers to, there's nothing there, you know, there's no "you".

PD (simultaneously): Well, that's because you're looking for a thing. If you-- if you take mind as a dialectical concept which your reason has brought you to [AH: Uh-huh.] in discriminating its own mentation, and don't attempt to hypostatize it into a spatial thing, then you wouldn't have that problem.

AH: Well you still got the problem of it being a concept.

PD: Yes. But don't make the concept referent to a spatial thing now.

AH: So somehow a concept of mind is adequate to what mind must be reasonably (thinking).

PD: No 'cause I'd have no need to hypostatize a concept into a thing. See you have no distinction between concept and percept.

AH: I think the-- I think to have a thought of what mind is is to already have missed it.

PD: To miss what?

AH: What you're referring to.

PD: So then you-- so then your critical awareness has a-- has a wedge in your mental activity.

AH: Yes. Ok now--

PD (simultaneously): Ok. That critical awareness is what we're calling reason, Andrew. Nothing else.

LDS: What else points to the dilemma in epistemol-- in the epistemological sec-- si-- situation? If you read the-- and appreciate the Hidden Teaching or any epistemological system and you appreciate the dilemma that you're faced with [couple inaudible AH words simultaneous with LDS] epistemologically, [AH: Yeah.] what is it that gave you-- allowed you that appreciation?

AH: Thought's frustration.

LDS: No [AH simultaneously: What--] but the very fact that thought could be frustrated, could-- could cognize the fact of frustration in its experience, says something about a faculty or a principle that it has access to that allowed it that perception, that cognition.

HOW IS REASONING DIFFERENT THAN THE ACTIVITY OF INTELLECT?

LD: Yeah but why [AH/LDS(?) simultaneously: What--] can't that all be within the intellect? You go through the Hidden Teaching, it's not something you've derived out of yourself, it's something you read, it's something-- somebody fed you these thoughts and now you're spitting them up at me and you're going to tell me you're using reason? It's all in the intellect!

PD: What the intellect Louis?

LD: We're-- we're calling it this mass of thoughts. I-- that's the way I'm looking at it, this classifying, analyzing of thoughts.

RC: What about digesting? [couple/three words inaudible]

LD (simultaneously): Digesting, I-- what do you mean, assimilating, understanding?

RC (simultaneously): Yeah do you remember that quote where he said if you read all these things, it's just, you know, so much intellectual activity. But if you're trying to digest it--

LD: Yeah what do you mean by that, understand it?

RC: Yeah.

LD: Ok. And doesn't he say to understand mentalism truly you have to experience it, until then you're a materialist? So now did you really understand it, digest it? No!

S (faint): Where do you see that?

LD: In-- in the Hidden Teaching he says until you experience mentalism, you are a materialist. So I know I haven't experienced it.

AS (faint): (No/Oh) but--

PD (simultaneously): Is it something to experience?

AS: No but-- I think there's three levels, again that's that distinction made of the three levels between intellect, reason, and intuition. To reason-- to rationally understand the Hidden Teaching as Randy is saying is higher than just-- is a-- a higher experience than just reading the words and not assimilating it. [couple inaudible student words simultaneous with AS] And that-- and reason can do that and can point that out and you can unders-- you can really-- why can't you say-- you can understand it. The reason can understand it. Now, you still might say well still that's lower than actually having a direct intuition or insight into the mind, an insight into the mind or intuition into it. But it's still just higher than just reading-- reading a book.

LD (simultaneously): Yeah but, can reason-- reason needs an intuition to unfold. Now if you do not have the intuition, what is reason going to unfold?

AS: No that's not necessarily-- that may be that order but it could also be the order that the understanding and the reason leads to the intuition.

S: Yeah.

LDS: Yeah that's the point.

S (simultaneously): Right.

AS: It's not necessarily that order. It may be. It may be that reason will unfold an intuition but it also may be that reason will lead to an intuition.

LD: No, but I would take the argument [AS simultaneously: Both ways.] that reason is always the unfoldment and it's always the arbiter. [AS simultaneously: Well no. No.] It's always the final judgment. [AS simultaneously: No. (few words inaudible)] So that presupposes that it comes after the intuition, [AS simultaneously: No, no.] not before.

AS: No but not only Louis because the way they use reason, again, I think, I mean my opinion is that the intellect using logic must have a premise but reason is-- does have the analytical power to search out its own premises and therefore to push you back to the source rather than pushing you out into the empirical.

PD: That's the whole (point).

AS (simultaneously): So it can lead, a deepening of reasoning can lead to an intuition. Or a reasoning can unfold an intuition you already have. I think it can work either way.

PD (simultaneously): But reason employs the scientific method right [AS assents] along with what Avery said that it'll take an idea and verify it, and that's the whole conjunction of science and philosophy in this-- in PB's approach. That through verifying the consequences, you find out. And that's what's different about logic, the intellect, opinion, and reason. Reason is not afraid to verify its activity.

LD: Ok I'll buy that. I--

PD (simultaneously): Don't buy. I don't want you to believe anything Louis!

LD (simultaneously): No, no, I'm sold.

AS (faint): Sure you do.

LD: I just (some laughter) misunderstood you and Louie before very easily talking about reason like you use it constantly. That's where [LDS simultaneously: Oh no, no, no. That--] I'm arguing about, that's the way it sounded to me.

PD (simultaneously): Yes, yes. It can be employed daily in your life.

LD: Do you do it?

PD: Jeff is here! (laughter) It's not-- it's not something out there. What are you afraid to reason? (laughter)

LD: No I want to understand what you mean by reason when you say you're using it but--

PD (simultaneously): It's an activity, it's the application of your intelligence. It's taking a situation and doing what you think is right in the situation based on all the available facts I have.

LD: Yeah but--

PD: And then taking the consequences of that and seeing what happened.

S: Right.

LD: A computer can analyze and classify and soon as you say--

PD (simultaneously): A computer--

LD: Wait, if you want--

PD (simultaneously): Don't give me a computer Louis.

LD (simultaneously): If you want to discuss, Paul, you have to let me talk or a discussion is impossible. (laughter, clapping)

BS (amidst laughter, faint): That's [few words inaudible]

LD: But I think that was beautifully (done). (laughter)

HS: I don't know why you guys didn't work this out years ago. (laughter)

S (amidst laughter): [three/few words inaudible]

LD: I'm-- I'm not-- No the point--

PD: What do you know about computers?

LD: The point I was (making) (laughter) about the last few weeks we've been hammering on intellect, it's a computer, it collects data, it organizes this data, it's a very-- you know, it classifies it, you know, organizes it. Now show me where in your life you're using all this reason, that's what I want to know because I want-- I want to know--

PD (simultaneously): That's none of your business.

LD: Well I want to know-- (laughter)

PD: That's none of your business. (more laughter)

S (faint): I'm sorry.

AH: Paul, maybe you would-- maybe you would--

AS (simultaneously): That's compassion for you. (laughter)

AH: Maybe you would describe or distinguish again the difference between intellect and reason because I-- I still don't understand it either. I-- I hear-- I hear the words and you keep saying and others are saying that reason is higher than intellect. But the way it's described I-- I just--

PD (simultaneously): Well I won't, I won't talk about the difference, I'm just saying that reason is the application of all the intelligence you have in the analysis of a situation, taking all the known facts you have to work with and making a judgment based on that. And that measuring the consequences of that judgment the succeeding day, the succeeding week, in your diet, in your dealings with others, that's the application of the intelligence in you. And you can't hypostatize that into some thing. 'Cause that's what you've got to live with and live by.

LD: And I would maintain you're living by belief and opinion.

PD: Speak for yourself.

LD: Well I am, that--

PD: Ok.

DB: Is it possible that the one thing that the reason can do obviously that the intellect can't is to recognize the absence of knowledge, to recognize the absence-- recognize the problem.

LDS: Yeah.

DB: It's a-- it seems like the way we've been talking about intellect is give it data, it'll jerk it around and do something with it and really not do anything creative but it seems like the reason is employed the first thing it does is say "Wait a minute. There's something missing here," or "Wait a minute, there's a consequence that could follow from what we have that I haven't grasped yet." And it's at that point that the reason starts to evaluate what material it has to and come up with some new solution, some better understanding, something like that.

PD (simultaneously): That's kind of like the scientific method.

DB: Yeah.

PD: It takes a given problem and tries to see how to resolve a problem.

DB: Yeah but it's always--

PD: And that's the practical application.

DB: Right. But it's guided by what it-- by what it is aware of, like reason kind of knows what question to ask next, alright, whereas the intellect by itself wouldn't-- didn't care, you know, because it doesn't-- it's just [PD simultaneously: Yeah.] dealing with itself.

PD: The intellect won't solve a problem.

DB: It won't recognize a problem.

PD: That's even more important, yeah. Ano-- I think another indication of the activity of reason is the sublation of an error. The intellect won't recognize that.

DB: Right.

PD: But the recognition of a mistake or something inappropriate in you is the activity of the critical intelligence operating in you. Now that's not the intellect either.

LD: Computers have "do not compute" when they read out.

PD: Louis, what do you know about computers?

LD: What do you mean?

S: Oh my God.

PD (simultaneously): Well, you seem to be such an authority.

LD: No I'm just a--

PD: I work with them all day long and they're down, they're useless, they're breaking down all the time. (some laughter) They can't even classify anything right!

LD: They sound like people, don't they? (laughter) Don't they sound like people?

PD: Well, I don't know.

LD: Well--

S (very faint): [three/few words inaudible]

LD: Well-- well what? Seems like the time you get sick, you break down. (laughter, student words)

PD: You're not able to what?

[short pause]

LR: Anthony, what do you offer?

S (faint): Anthony turns. (laughter)

S: Wow.

S (very faint): What (happened)?

S (faint): Anthony turned.

S (very faint): Into a thousand [one word inaudible]

LR: Well some people don't-- (laughter)

AS (faint): Well he's a big boy, (come on).

PD: Well I don't see the fear in dealing with this concept of reason. PB keeps speaking about it. He speaks about science as the practical application of reason and it's employed in scientific experiments all day long. And then there's-- there's the theoretical at the metaphysical end and that's the abstract employment of reason. I mean he speaks of a twofold application of reason in the Hidden Teaching, in the Wisdom and then in a lot of his notes.

HS: Ok so would you say that one of the things that reason is or is about is that if you have a grasping of anything that's true it's through the reason af-- so to say as-- it's your reason that permits it entry into your mind, so to say. You know, like-- like a real grasping might not have any particular mark but it's the reason that permits it to unfold within you. Because you're using this word-- this word-- you know, using reason to evaluate, and it's got to have a criteria that it-- that it's looking towards, you know, something that's true, because it's evaluating-- it's eliminating false-- it's making judge-- like you say it's making judgments. You don't want to put false stuff or unreasonable stuff into your life, you know, according to the way you're using it. So it has to be-- has to be looking at something to say this is reasonable, this is in accord with the truth. Would that be so?

PD: Yeah, seems to be that which recognizes.

HS: Or is it looking at itself do you think?

PD: Well it always seems to be applied towards an analysis of some object, whether it's an abstract idea or a practical situation. So it's analyzing let's say thought in one of its modes.

HS: Thought taking as the word 'intellect' and concept formation? Is that what you mean by thought here?

PD: Well at its metaphysical end it would be analyzing ideas.

HS: Ideas.

PD: Its practical situation (is to) be analyzing a given scientific experiment, you know.

HS: Ok [one/two words inaudible]

PD (simultaneously): Why does the-- an object fall (so foot). (bit of laughter)

HS: You took about-- [S simultaneously: (As a--)] you speak about a philosophy as scientific. Is this-- is-- and you're saying it's the employment of reason, reason turning upon itself, reason turning upon the concept of the philosophy, right, that doesn't just-- that marks it as scientific.

PD: The verification I think he's calling scientific aspect.

HS: Which you're give-- which you're assigning to reasoning.

PD: That's the practical employment of reason.

HS: This capacity to verify truth or falsity?

PD: In a given situation, yes.

AB: Isn't the problem that the intellect will behave in a way which acts very reasonable so that it's hard to distinguish the two in our own experience. Like if I look at all these facts after conducting an experiment, if I'm operating with my intellect I might leave out certain things and arrange the facts in such a way that it supports my intention in conducting the experiment and think that I'm reasoning. So that there's a need to distinguish the two and that's hard.

PD: But, you know, it's-- in a practical situation when you have a problem thrust in front of you that you bring whatever you have available in trying to analyze that situation and do what you think is the best course of action. Now if you follow through with the habits, you know, your personal interests and investments, I mean then you're sliding according to a belief system.

AB: Right.

RC: It seems a real pivot too in distinguishing them is the-- the relationship of each to their-- to their like personal interests or the ego interests maybe you could say, that the intellect will definitely be in service to the ego but to its own devices, whereas very often reason-- and part of the reason it's so unsuccessful is that the-- the moment that you actually touch upon reasoning you might have to act differently or subordinate the ego and--

PD: You may have to go against your own interests.

RC: Exac-- well personal ones.

PD: Yeah.

RC: Yeah. And you may see clearly that that's actually what would be reasonable and then say well I have no intention of doing anymore.

S (faint): Uh-hm.

HS: Or it might be reasonable and say I have everything [couple words inaudible] and you might give up a belief.

NH: Can we just-- like for an example say a scientist is doing an experiment and he-- he thinks he'll come up with a certain result. And he does the experiment and makes his deductions and they are different from what he anticipated. Then the deductions he comes up with would be the results of reason. But if-- if he came up with the results he wanted to come up with, that would be the intellect?

RC (faint): I don't know, it would depend if they were true or not. [students assent, very faint] If he came up and discovered the truth about the phenomena, then I would tend to think that his reason was operating. [NH assents] And that, the extent to which it-- it was true, then his thinking would have been made rational by the presence of the (intellect) in its operation.

NH: But I wonder if intuition would be included in that.

RC: I don't know, they're going to be real hard for me to-- those two are going to be very hard for me to differentiate too.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN INTELLECT, REASON, AND INTELLIGENCE

TS: There's a nice quote that has all three of them.

RC: Oh good.

PB [V5, 7:1.14 & Persp., Ch. 7 #3, TS reading]: "Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this teaching. The first [TS reads: Intellect] is the lowest faculty of the trio, the third [TS reads: intelligence] is the highest, the second is the medial one [TS reads: reason is the intermediate]. Intellect is logical thinking based on a partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a union between reason and intuition."

PC: Want to do it one more time?

S (faint): Uh-hm.

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

TS (very faint): Doesn't point to the intuition. Definitely [couple/three words inaudible]

PB [V5, 7:1.14 & Persp., Ch. 7 #3, TS rereads]: "Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this teaching. The first [TS reads: Intellect] is the lowest faculty of the trio, the third [TS reads: intelligence] is the highest, the second [TS reads: and reason] is the medial one. Intellect is logical thinking based on a partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a union between reason and intuition."

[short pause]

S: Tim?

TS: Guess I have-- Do you mind if I read two more?

S (faint): Uh-uh.

PB [V5, 7:2.1, TS reading]: "The cultivation of intelligence is one of the supreme duties of man. Fact-fed thinking--hard, deep, rational, and thorough--is what converts vague surmise into unbreakable certainty, blind belief or tormenting doubt into irrefutable knowledge, and native error into new truth."

TS: Then the third one.

PB [V5, 7:1.126, TS 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."

TS: And one last one.

PB [V5, 7:3.2, TS reading]: "We must think before we can understand the soul's existence; we must understand before we can realize it."

TS (faint): That seems to take-- yeah. I think I understand here the use of reason the way Paul was speaking about it, that, you know, that it is a thinking process which is distinguished from intellect in that it is impartial or is as impartial as it can be given its examination of what it finds to be the facts. And that when that reasoning is aligned with intuition, then there is a-- some kind of relative truth that seems to be provided, whether that truth is practical or mystical or philosophical.

MB: Where do you think he mentioned [one word inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): Let's read it again. Let's read again, (huh/ok)?

[short pause]

PB [V5, 7:1.14 & Persp., Ch. 7 #3, TS rereads]: "Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this teaching. The first [TS reads: Intellect] is the lowest faculty of the trio, the third [TS reads: intelligence] is the highest, the second [TS reads: and reason] is the medial one. Intellect is logical thinking based on a partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a union between reason and intuition."

AD (faint): (What do you know?/Read it again.)

[short pause]

JanH (very faint): Between reason [one word inaudible]

AD: Just stay with that. Just stay with that quote.

AH: It seems that all of these three are subject to the same description in regards to a subject and an object.

AD: Could I, could I say, is it three or is it four, I kind [AH simultaneously: Well--] of got lost there.

AH: I would say the fourth one is-- is exempt from this-- the categories of subject and object and dualistic kind of [HS: Well--] activity.

HS (simultaneously): Just name the fourth one Andrew?

AH: Intuition.

S (faint): Intuition.

PD: That means the intelligence (as) the union of intuition and reason is also free from that category too.

AH: Well insofar as there's a verbal expression--

AD: Well wait, wait, be-- before we get into the argument I want to analyze the sentence, I want to see what he's saying. Now, what-- what was it you said?

PD/S(?): Both?

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

AH (faint): Who said?

AD: Paul, what did you just say?

PD: No I was going to respond to Andrew but equally impertinent.

AD: I just want to analyze the sentence first, what-- what does it mean, you know.

AH: He's describing three functions and then a fourth one where the last two are combined.

HS: Now which are the three [S simultaneously: No.] functions (now)?

AD: I thought he-- [S: No.] he--

S (simultaneously, faint): No, not really.

AH: Intellect, reason, and intelligence. And intuition is the marriage of reason [S, faint: No.] [S, faint: No.] with--

HE: Intelligence was the marriage [S simultaneously: Intelligence.] of reason [S simultaneously, faint: No intelligence.] and intuition.

AD: Intelligence is the result of the marriage of intuition and reason.

AH: Right.

AD: Uh-huh.

AH: And I-- [S, faint: Start over (again).] I wish to make the point that intelli-- reason and intellect would seem to be-- first two of these seem to be functioning in a dualistic framework, the subject and object in relationship. There's content. [S: Yes.] [AS: That--] His intuition is exempt from that.

AD: No, you have an intuition of something.

AH: But that-- the content--

AD: I have an intuition that, you know, War-Horse is going to win tomorrow. It's an intuition about something. [AH: Alright.] It's still-- it's still in the same realm.

AH: Ok so--

AD: I have an intuition these things should be combined rather than those. But I'm still dualistic.

AH: That's still a dualism.

AD: I'm just curious why he brings in intuition here and what does he mean.

S (very faint): What does he mean?

S (very faint): (Read it) again.

S: Uh-hm.

PD(?): Can you read it again for me?

S: Yeah.

[short pause]

PB [V5, 7:1.14 & Persp., Ch. 7 #3, TS rereads]: "Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this teaching. The first [TS reads: Intellect] is the lowest faculty of the trio [TS reads: three], the third [TS reads: intelligence] is the highest, the second [TS reads: reason] is the medial one. Intellect is logical thinking based on a partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a union between reason and intuition."

[short pause]

LDS: Tim, how do you understand-- what-- what is it we've said about intellect that would make it the way he speaks of it there, a partial and prejudiced collection of facts, what would make it prejudiced?

RC: In service to the ego.

LDS: Does it have to be in service to the ego?

TS: Well if you say that it's always-- in itself there's a more self-preservative instinctual process it would seem to be-- tend towards the-- (the) ego.

HS (simultaneously): Is there anything--

LDS (faint): Ok, I guess--

PD: Seem to be like the bits of data that's already contained, as we've spoke before. It's only working with the-- the given memory images let's say it has of a situation.

HS: Is there anything of [LDS simultaneously: Ok.] intuition in it, [S simultaneously: Yeah.] in intellect?

S (faint): Ok.

TS (very faint): Is there anything of intuition in intellect?

HS: So yeah there's intuition in each intellect, the way we use it, partial data bits.

LDS: Well you got another-- you got another-- practically another situation there.

HS: Huh?

LDS: I mean--

TS: In other sections I think that he discusses that possibility but I don't think that it-- it would come up here. Then he speaks about intuitions under (auric) experiences and stuff like that and I think there's--

MB (faint): Can't hear you, wait.

HS (simultaneously): Ok so intuition is the realm of-- of reason per se?

AD: But isn't that what we're trying to find out [student assents, faint] Herbie?

HS: Yeah.

S (faint): Is that correct?

S (very faint): Uh-hm.

AD: Just out of the blue intuition comes in, right?

TS: Out of the blue? I mean-- in the quote you mean?

AD (faint): Uh-huh.

S: Yeah.

TS: Uh--

AD: I mean you have three-- three faculties, he's referring-- he's referring to these three faculties of the soul or three aspects of the soul, right? But now strangely enough, intelligence is the product of intuition and reason.

[short pause]

AH: Is it as if [S: Yeah.] reason is everything that can be done by way of self-help so to speak, [S: Go ahead.] you know, in regards to this work. [S: Well--] But when it's guided or directed then we speak of intuition making that reason into a kind of intelligence? It's no longer a personal function?

S (very faint): Yeah.

S: Uh-hm.

CDA (faint): If reason is the (medium/median), you'll find that you have to-- has authority to have contact with [one/two words inaudible] with intuition and the ability to unfold the intuition. [student assents, faint] So if intellect is (interfering), reason unfolding intuition-- intuition is obviously the source of any true knowledge at this level that we're speaking of so-- so for--

WHAT IS INTUITION?

AD (simultaneously): Yeah but I'm still trying to get an idea of what he [RC simultaneously: Yeah what intuition is.] means by intuition.

HS: Yeah.

RC: Yeah.

AS (faint): What is intuition?

AD: What does he mean by intuition here?

S (faint): Uh-hm.

PC/S(?) (faint): Really doesn't say.

CDA (simultaneously, faint): (Seriously.)

AD: It doesn't say, well, what do you think it might possibly mean? Reason I would assume is reasoning about the data that has been collected by the-- the intellect, right?

S: Well--

CDA: He-- but [S simultaneously, faint: He's saying--] calls it a me-- a (medium/median).

S: [couple words inaudible]

S (faint): [couple words inaudible] (getting/maybe) too hung up in words.

AS: That was a--

CDA: Well I'm also taking that as Plotinus does, that reason [AS simultaneously, faint: Well--] can unfold.

AS: Yeah but the funny thing about the quote is that reason was called a medial between the intellect and intelligence. It wasn't called a medial between intellect and intuition. So in the schema of three, when he brings in intuition it's not really clear what he-- well-- where it fits into the [one word inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): Precisely, I-- he first says it's [PD: No.] an aspect and then he says it's product.

AS: That intelligence is a product of intuition and reason combined.

CDA: And the other is? One is a product and the other is what?

AS: No, he just says-- all he says about it-- he says that intelligence is the fruit of [S simultaneously, faint: He hasn't got that far.] reason combining with intuition and that reason is a medial between intellect and intelligence.

HS: And each of the three are separate.

AS (simultaneously): But he just brings in intuition. And that intelligence, intellect and reason are distinguishable. But when he brings in intuition he doesn't-- he doesn't say anything about intuition in itself, only as combined with reason.

AD (simultaneously): Alright so, then--

AS: And I don't-- I--

NH: Well he says that reason is logical and complete. There must be something about the intuition that-- that adds to that completeness but is out of the realm of logic.

AH: Isn't it included--

NH (simultaneously): That reason [AS simultaneously: Yep.] can operate on its own within its realm of logic but that reason can also be conjoined with-- with a function separate from that function of logic.

AS (faint): That intuition.

JA: That's the way I should [couple words inaudible] based on all available facts.

AD: Alright, so we have reason operating on the data--

(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1983 1026b Ends; Side 2 Begins)

JA: --so far?

PD: And, you saying Jeanne that it's-- it's reason that's going to recognize that intuition in a given situation? Is that what you're saying? The intellect couldn't recognize it.

JA (simultaneously): I don't know, I'm asking. Yeah.

S (faint): Uh-hm.

AB: But couldn't intuition--

S (simultaneously): I'm sorry, go ahead.

JA: Avery used that example before where the mystic will-- you know, the-- one of the intuitions delivered to a mystic might be "I am God", now is that going [AS simultaneously: No.] to be--

AD (simultaneously): Now-- now-- now look, just follow me because we only have five minutes, alright? What is this intuition? What does he mean by it?

S: Inspired thinking.

VM (faint): No.

S: This is [few words inaudible]

AS (simultaneously): I think he means a lot like what the Scholastics mean when they talk about penetration into say the essence of a thing. Now reason can deal with that. But that faculty is more of a direct faculty.

LDS: Yeah it's direct, immediate.

AS (simultaneously): More immed-- uh--

AB: Isn't it something that gives you a result which is not derivable from all the available facts, which are both what reason-- reason and lo-- and intellect both deal with the facts. Reason is more complete. But there's sometimes things that you can't derive from the facts and that would come through intuition. So the reason that was guided by intuition would come to truthful conclusion.

AD (simultaneously): Again, granted. What do you mean by intuition?

S: A flash from the Real.

AD: A flash.

S: From the Real.

HS: Contact with the World-Idea.

RS: Intuition is one idea at one instance. And when you put that idea through reasoning and come up with some solid--

AD: Now you're saying intuition is an idea, right?

RS: Right.

AD: How do I distinguish that from reason?

RS: Reason is a faculty and reasoning is a process of putting that idea into (reference), or understanding it with whatever. The intuition, when you get, you get intuition of one idea at one time.

EC: Well, how about Archimedes, was it, is that his name, had the two ideas and when he said "Eureka!" that was the intuition.

RS: Right.

AD: But--

PD: That was a mind possessed of the problem [EC: Ok.] that recognized the intuition.

EC/S(?) (very faint): (Could refuse) that.

AD: Look, [S, faint: No?] I think we're getting a little closer. You said Archimedes had these-- all this data and all his thought was (doing/do an) experiment on it, alright? And then a flash of light came. He says it was a-- an idea that flashed in, you say a flash of light, and you said what?

EC: I don't know what the flash was, he said "Eureka!" and he had it and he got it. I don't-- it could have been light. But the-- or idea, idea, that too.

AD (simultaneously): Well, if we say it was an idea, if we say-- if we say it was an idea, alright, the way Ram wants us to think, yet when an intuition comes, it-- I mean when the in-- intuition came, then what Ram would be saying was that it was this idea that these two matrixes or two different frameworks could be both subsumed under the universal law, and this was the idea that came into him. Is that right Ram?

RS: Yes, go ahead.

[13½ second pause]

AD: So every time I have an idea then, I got an intuition.

[students assent, very faint]

RS: Well, it depends what your definition of idea.

AD: Alright then, what's the definition of idea?

RS: The infusion that you-- the infusion more or less we say coming from Overself. Like we see everyday, everybody sees an apple falling down. And Newton also might have seen hundred times before. But one day (got/struck) to him. And the intuition came and it struck that all of sudden apple fell down, why? To him it--

AD (simultaneously): Yeah he-- yeah he said intuition but you say an idea. The idea didn't drop down, the apple dropped down.

RS: Yeah I-- well, again it seems like--

AD: Ram-- now don't get nervous Ram.

RS: No, no, no, I'm not nervous. (laughter) There is a misunderstanding. Probably the way I put it-- put it in. What I said was intuition is not a big faculty or a big process or something. Intuition is one particular-- again if-- if I say "I get it" again becomes the very word.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah but you see-- yeah but you see that's the problem. I'm trying to understand what intuition is, alright, and if we use the term 'idea' in a colloquial sense I-- I-- I don't think you're using it in the Platonic sense, you know, Idea capitalized, I don't think you're using it that way. So an idea if it comes in in this co-- the meaning of the term 'idea', alright, then I wouldn't be able to say-- I wouldn't be able to distinguish between when I say "Gee I got a flash," you know, the bulb lights up, or "I got an idea," because then any time I have an idea I could say I got a flash, I got an intuition. But it could be just an idea.

AH: Anthony, I think--

RS: Well yeah, idea could be intuition or hunch or anything.

AD: Yeah but that's--

RS (simultaneously): That's the distinction we need to make.

AD (simultaneously): That's-- that's what I'm trying to draw out, what is "hunch"?

RS: Hunch is mostly coming-- a product of intellect and ego, some-- mostly within [one word inaudible] Andrew. Seven definitions are usually by intellect. It's then the product of intellect. But most of them I don't like and reject the intuition. (And/An) intuition normally is product of direct from Overself. A clear idea, understanding coming from there, which is not wrong or misleading or anything like hunch. However, seems to me to grasp that properly we need to do the reasoning. That is a process.

PD: Could you say the recognition of the true relationship of the different elements of the problem or the ideas of the problem? That recognition of the true relationship is on the one hand reason as the recognizing act and the true relationship between the ideas or elements of the problem is the intuition.

CDA (faint): No.

S (faint): [few words inaudible]

CDA (faint): Yeah, no.

LDS: Or you could say something like the content to intuition is something novel and of another order from the contents of the-- either the intellect or the rational reason. It's-- it seems to s-- suggest something novel has come in and something of another order in terms of [AD: Well--] the content.

AD: Ok the-- you're referring to another order.

CDA: What about [couple words inaudible]

LDS: Well I'm speaking of-- of a content that would have to be coming from the soul or-- I don't know how better to characterize the intuition.

AH: Yeah. It might be helpful--

LDS: In other words from a-- like a spiritual order.

AD (simultaneously): That's very helpful if you say we don't know. But go on.

LDS: The-- it would have to be something from a spiritual order.

AS/S(?): Yeah.

S (very faint): Lou, Lou--

S (simultaneously): No.

LDS (faint): I don't know how else to phrase it.

AS (simultaneously): But that thing that Ram said, I think maybe the objection to saying it's an idea is that at the moment of the intuition, it isn't characterizable at all.

LDS: Right.

AS: It's only when the reason joins with it that it gets characterizable. So it's almost like saying the intuition is a non-functioning. I mean it's almost (in that--) you almost-- from the intellect's point of view or even from reason's point of view, you have to say it's a moment of non-functioning of the-- of the normal mind in order that whatever the light of the soul or whatever it is can shine through. But at that instant-- without this-- I think that's why he says intelligence is the conjunction of the intuition with reason. Because intuition without the reasoning would not be the-- would almost not be characterizable. Whereas reason without the intuition will not have that basis of reality to it. So the intuition really seems to be in itself from the point of view of the-- of the empirical mind, the person, is un-- is an uncharacterizable. You-- once you said fla-- when you said flash, it's just that flash and without-- without a reason to develop it it would be missed, it would go by.

MB: Well, is it a faculty or is it a content?

AS: Yeah. [S simultaneously: No, no.] No I think it's more of a faculty.

MB (simultaneously): Somebody said it was a content and now you're saying it's more of a faculty.

AS: Well I think he's using all-- if he's using them all in the same kind of [RS/S(?): Exactly.] area then they would-- it would be a faculty. [student assents, faint] That would be another reason for not exactly equating it with idea which you normally think of more as content.

JA: See earlier--

AS: But what is the faculty of?

JA: See earlier I spoke of it as the faculty of the grasping presence of divinity.

AS: Yeah that-- well, there you go.

JA (simultaneously): But if you were going to speak about intuition as a content, wouldn't you already be speaking of it [AS simultaneously: Right.] as grasped by the reason in the ego?

AS: Yeah. That's why I said it's not a content.

JA (simultaneously): And I would think maybe by the intellect. (What's--)

AS (simultaneously): Yeah that-- yeah that's why I said it's not a content, it's [JA assents] that-- just that-- that what you said, the faculty of grasping the divinity. What do you mean by that? He somehow--

AD: But when I get-- when I get an intuition about-- let's say like Archimedes, I'm not grasping the divinity.

PC: Yeah right.

JA: Well--

AS (simultaneously): Grasping an idea.

JA: So?

AS: No.

JA: Is that more intuition?

AD: Well he-- [AS simultaneously: Yeah.] he says intuition there.

AS: I think it is, I think it's a grasp of an idea. And I just-- [HS simultaneously: Well--] the only objection to Ram's statement I think is that it's not the i-- the intuition isn't the idea, it's what delivers-- Only I'm not using idea as concept. I'm using idea as like the way we talk about the level of the mental-- the mental being.

[short pause]

PD: So then, you know, go back to the-- what I tried to say before then, that the-- the ability to recognize the resolution of the problem is the functioning of reason. But the resolution or the-- the bringing together an interrelationship of different facets of the problem is the intuition.

AD: I didn't disagree with that. I just feel that the word is an unknown.

AS: Yeah.

AD: I don't think anyone here understands what intuition is.

AS: Yeah.

LR: One thing is that when he says intelligence it seems that he's talking about a combination of a very active process and a very receptive process. [student assents, very faint] An intelligence doesn't just imply an active discrimination alone, nor does it imply a merely passive reception of-- of an idea. But it's a combination of both those two.

HS: You say intuition is the passive reception and reason is the active discrimination?

LR/S(?) (very faint): Yeah.

AS: Huh.

LR: But I think you have to be somewhat open to catch an intuition, I think, [students assent, faint] you know, [AD simultaneously, faint: Yeah.] that there is a certain-- [AD simultaneously: Yeah I agree.] you can't be actively looking elsewhere. Right?

BS (simultaneously): Is it a principle of manifestation?

LR: I'm not hoping to say what an intuition is, I'm just talking about intelligence the way he's using it here.

S: Could you--

HS: Seems to be an experience here which the structure of-- of the Nature in which a person finds himself has really entered into his understanding, intuition.

AD: Say that again Herbie?

HS: I mean experience in which the structure of Nature and in which a person finds itself has entered into the understanding of that person. The real Nature now, the real-- you know, the World-Idea in which he finds himself. To present this--

AD (simultaneously): You say an intuition-- an intuition now-- in an intuition the World-Idea is informing me?

HS: Yeah I would say-- I would say some sort of, yes, information is coming from the World-Idea into my-- into the soul.

PC: But couldn't that be on any of various levels from--

AD: Is there any-- I mean you got any example that we might be able to point out where the person felt as though the World-Idea or the cosmic mind came into him when he had an intuition?

HS: Well, would you like the Archime-- I would say the Archimedes example is what you've been pointing to, where some sort of real information about the structure of Nature was presented to this man's mind.

MB: His mind or to his soul?

HS: Well to him.

AD: Presented to him, alright, but nonetheless-- [S simultaneously: (You said) the World-Idea.] I mean, he says "I've got it!", he didn't say "I got the World-Mind." (bit of laughter)

AH: Well that was a [one/two words inaudible]

HS (simultaneously): But it was specified in accord with the preconditions that were available, so to say.

AH: It was a scientific intuition, not a philosophic or spiritual one.

HS: He was-- yeah he was attending-- he got concentrated upon one particular idea, [AS simultaneously: Yeah.] one particular line of intellectual thinking.

AD: Yeah I think I follow what you're getting at because some-- something about the basic laws that govern, you know, physical phenomena or natural phenomena was being revealed to him. You're saying well, now that's what an intuition is.

HS: In that particular case that would be-- yeah, I would say that would be an intuition.

IN THE EXPERIENCE OF INTUITION, THERE IS A MOMENTARY STILLNESS AND THEN A FEELING COMES TO YOU

AD: But, Herbie aren't we doing the same thing though? Aren't we taking-- aren't we taking a point of view of some sort of idea coming in? And I think that most examples of intuition, rather than say that there's a non-functioning of knowledge, I would say there's stillness, momentary stillness.

AS: Yeah well that's-- yeah. I think that's what I was trying to-- stillness of the mind. [HS simultaneously: And--] Stillness of the lower mind.

TS: There's a knowing of [one/two words inaudible]

AS (simultaneously): That-- I didn't mean non-functioning of the higher knowledge, I meant non-functioning of-- of intellect and reason.

LH/PC(?): Which allows [couple words inaudible]

LDS (simultaneously): But what about the stillness?

AS (simultaneously): Which allows-- which allows this idea which is in the soul to [AD simultaneously: But--] get that-- I would-- yeah, only in retrospect I--

AD (simultaneously): Again, again, idea. [AS simultaneously: Of (couple words inaudible)] Which allows this idea which is in the soul to come down, you know, (concepts).

CDA (simultaneously): And you're-- and are you--

AS (simultaneously): But what's-- I don't see what's-- what's [CDA simultaneously, faint: What--] the problem with that.

PC: Isn't it the--

AD (simultaneously): Well I-- I got-- I got a problem, I mean it's only a personal problem so I don't want to make it your problem.

AS: No, no, but I'm just wondering what's the problem with that formulation.

AD: That an idea is coming in?

AS: Yeah. If you mean by an idea the stillness. See, I don't-- not-- if we-- I'm not thinking of an idea as a concept or whatever, I'm thinking about the soul-- In an intuition it's true-- you know, you may say the experience is of stillness but what happens in the intuition is, I would say that an idea which is in the soul is going to come in. (Well) the idea at first is experienced in that stillness because that's the truer nature of the idea than what later on gets unfolded from it. The i--

AD (simultaneously): But isn't it more true to say that it's a kind of feeling that comes in than an idea?

AS: But that feeling would be part-- one of the components of that idea. By idea you mean a conjunction of feeling and know-- a kn-- a-- a cognitive and a felt and a-- and a cognitive component. I mean by idea again if we don't mean just concepts I-- you know, the true notion of ideas, they have power, they have a certain feeling quality to them and so on. This is not a concept or even what the reason deals with.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah well-- alright, it's not a concept, alright. You're saying it's the presence of an idea.

AS: Well-- I mean I know that's not saying anything, I just don't see what the objection to say-- I don't see what the objection is to saying it's the presence of an idea, as long as we understand what idea is and of course that throws the whole thing back again because then what's an idea.

AD: Well, when I say an intuition is more like a feeling, I mean-- and he says that enough times, he doesn't say it's like an idea's coming in, he says a feeling comes to you.

AS: Yeah.

AD: And you're equating this feeling with the presence of an idea.

AS: Well I'm just-- I'm just asking what's wrong with saying that. Just as reason is [AD simultaneously: I didn't say anything is wrong.] one way of grasping an idea, and intellect is the lowest way of grasping it because it's completely conceptualized. But I'm just saying it's more like-- despite the fact that we call it feeling, I think it's more like what you would call-- what a real idea is than what the intellect or reason could grasp.

BS: Unless the real idea is the function of reason coming in, there it would be the conjunction of reason with intuition.

AS: Yeah but then you're-- you're almost saying that it-- that the idea is a lower phase than--

BS: No.

LC: No, the intelligence, the [AS simultaneously: Yeah.] third fa-- the higher faculty. You're describing here (the law) of a higher faculty, the marriage of intuition to reason, that's the highest--

AS: Well-- Except by-- that by idea [one/two inaudible LC words simultaneous with AS] I guess I don't mean just that positive or conceptual notion.

PD: Could we say it this way, that the psychological state that one's-- when one is conscious of it is that the intuition is characterized by a feeling. Is that what you're trying to say Tony? That the--

AD (simultaneously): Well, we've all heard that that, you know, intuition is characterizable by a feeling. And, I was trying to see if we can get a little beyond-- a little deeper into what that intuition might be because it's going to be used a lot. Alright?

LR: We've also said that intuition is always of something.

AD: Yeah. [student assents, very faint] Yeah if you're speaking about intuition you're speaking of something.

LR: There's some content--

AD (simultaneously): You're not speaking about insight.

LR: Right.

AS: Right.

LR: So, I mean again--

PC: Well it's got a specific content of knowledge even if that's not conceptually formulated.

LR: I mean--

RC/AH(?): [one/two words inaudible]

TS (simultaneously): But is that content of knowledge commensurate with the-- the state of consciousness? Is the intuition a cog-- a-- a-- the knowing consciousness of it and the content of that intuition in the intellect?

PC: Say that again?

INTUITION LIGHTS UP, OR VIVIFIES, AN IMAGE ALREADY IN THE MIND, THEN YOU HAVE TO APPLY REASONING TO UNDERSTAND IT

TS: Is it-- when you say that intuition al-- is always of a content, is that content in-- intrinsic to the knowing that is the intuition or is it that the knowing of the Overself or the soul temporarily lights up contents that have been in the in-- intellect?

PC: No I don't think of it [one/two words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): What do you mean-- what do you mean lights up?

TS: Well it's always [one/two words inaudible]

AD: You know just imagine in the walls of your mind there's all kinds of etchings scrambled, you know.

TS: Yeah I'll try to imagine that. (some laughter)

AD: And a light comes in, right.

TS: Yeah.

AD: There's real darkness there and for a moment a light comes in, ok? What happens?

TS: Yeah I got scrambled.

AD: Huh?

TS: Now all the scrambled etchings are lit up.

AD: Well let's say it only, you know, a little corner of the mind, a little piece, you know, not the whole mind. I mean you're asking for too much. (AD laughs, some laughter)

TS: So one scrambled etching gets lit up! (TS laughing, some laughter)

S: That's probably the case.

AD: Yeah.

S (faint): Yeah.

TS: And to the extent that there is an order, a reasoned order in that--

AD (simultaneously): Well, what do you mean gets l-- light up?

TS: Well, if I could try to (go/do) it again.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah that's what I want you to do.

TS: That all the time the mind and the senses would have to be, as it were, lit up or an-- an unfoldment or manifestation of that knowing consciousness which is the soul. But it seems as though that when that lower mind or the reasoning is in motion, that it has difficulty in recognizing its progenitor.

AD: No, no, no, let's concentrate on the light illuminating one of these scrambled etchings.

TS: Yes. Well I'm saying the light is always illuminating all the scrambled etchings but they're so frequently in such random Brownian movement that it's real hard to notice the light. But if you hold one of them still long enough--

AD (simultaneously): No matter how familiar you are with it. Could you ever get that familiar with it?

TS: With the etchings?

AD: No with the light [TS simultaneously: Oh. No um--] which is conjoined [CDA simultaneously: Well I'm--] to the etchings. (AD laughs a bit)

TS/S(?) (very faint): [couple words inaudible]

CDA: I would say something different.

AD: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me take advantage.

TS (faint): Uh-oh. (bit of laughter)

S: Yeah.

AD: (Hold/Paul), read the quote on Saint Paul.

RC: It's on the kitchen table. Oh I've got it here too. No need to go back.

S (faint): It was a different notebook.

AD: Yeah here it is.

RC: Yeah?

AD: Avery read it.

AS: Huh. Second one? "It must be said…"

S: Yeah.

PB [V12, 17:5.95 & Persp., Ch. 17 #25, AS reading]: "It must be said, and said quite plainly, that the Western and Near Eastern worlds would have had a better history, and Christianity would have had a stronger foundation, because truer, if Saint Paul had never been converted but had remained a Jew. For the vision on the road to Damascus, although a genuine one, was totally misinterpreted. It was a command ((AS adds: a command) to stop persecuting Christians) of a solely personal nature; but he went much farther [AS reads: further] and not only began the construction of a new world-religion but shifted its emphasis from where Jesus had put it (the kingdom of heaven within men) to Jesus himself, from faith in the Christ-consciousness to faith in a crucified corpse."

AD: Evidently while he was going to Damascus--

AS: He had an intuition. (laughter)

TS (faint): That's what (I) [few words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): I'm glad Randy found this because a lot of people thought I was being a little severe. But, evidently this man was going to Damascus, and on the walls of his mind there was a lot of etchings, ok? [S, faint: Yeah.] And one of them got illuminated more than all the others, right? And that illumination was the Christ crucified.

TS: Right.

AD: Which if he ever did get crucified would be interesting.

AS: Yeah.

AD: But--

AS: And that was the intuition.

AD (simultaneously): That was a light, right, thrown onto that? But what would happen if a light was thrown onto this dark-- imagine inside a cave with all [AS simultaneously: Yeah.] these etchings and a light [AS simultaneously: The light (one word inaudible) (that).] was thrown onto one image.

AS: Gets lit up.

TS: Mistaken as real knowledge.

S (faint): Uh-hm.

BS: Oh I see.

TS (simultaneously): Mistaken as--

BS: So that would be a light [LC simultaneously: All the attention.] thrown on the intellect.

S: Pay attention.

AS: (Not really.)

AD: Yeah to contents in the mind, you know, with all these images and pictures.

BS (simultaneously): Partial and prejudiced, I see.

AD: But then what is this light?

HS: It would seem to be more--

AS: But the light is the-- the light of the I AM.

S: More?

AD: The soul, the light of the [student assents] soul [AS simultaneously: The light is the light of the I AM.] is go-- is-- is impinging on that wall etching, illuminating it. But then what happened that he misinterpreted it?

AS: Because that alone-- I think that's the point. That's why he distinguishes that from intelligence. Because that alone is not intelligence. You're saying intuition is just the soul lights up some content of his mind but unless reason interprets it for him, the intuition could be anything.

S: Oh but--

AD (simultaneously): But according-- according to most of the remarks we made here, the intuition comes and then reason explicates it.

AS: That's what I just said.

TS (faint): No reason [one/two words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): You said the same thing?

AS: Yeah [TS simultaneously: Reason examines the--] I said and the intuition comes--

AD: I just was curious if they were with me. (bit of laughter)

AS: The intuition comes, and if-- no. But when you said-- that-- the second thing you said was not an automatic following. If the reason comes and explicates it, then it's called intelligence. But if the reason doesn't come and explicate it, it's just called intuition and that may or may not be intelligence. In this case it wasn't a case of intelligence, it was just a case of an intuition, which got misinterpreted and therefore has no validity to be called intelligence. So it's called a misinterpreted intuition.

RC: Unintelligent intuition.

PC (simultaneously): But not the content.

AS (simultaneously): Yeah and that's-- yeah.

PC: The content though that-- that was delivered with [AS simultaneously: (couple words inaudible) (distinct).] the intuition was not--

AD: What content was delivered with the intuition? [PC simultaneously: I thought--] Back again. Let's back again. [AS simultaneously, faint: I heard you say it was not an idea.] What content was delivered with the intuition?

PC (simultaneously): I thought that the content that was supposed to be delivered was not to persecute the Christians.

AS: No but--

PC: Isn't that right?

AS: Yeah but see this is-- I think (we/he) would say--

AD (simultaneously): What was delivered [S: The content.] with the intuition?

PC (simultaneously): Content of the intellect.

S (faint): Light goes from [couple words inaudible]

AD (intensely): You keep bringing in something. I want to know what it is you're bringing in!

PC: Well he said it was-- the meaning of the intuition was not to persecute the Christians and that--

LDS (simultaneously): But that's [S simultaneously: Said it was-- please don't ever (one/two words inaudible)] said from a rational--

S (simultaneously): [couple/few words inaudible] way.

LDS (simultaneously): That's said from reason. That's said from reason about intuition.

AD (simultaneously): Isn't-- isn't that the intelligence!?

AS (faint): Yeah.

S (very faint): Yeah.

AS: Intelligence wouldn't have done that.

PC (simultaneously): Well-- well now--

AD: Again let's go back to the-- the main point. I better let you people go.

LR/S(?): No, keep going.

[few students at once, few words inaudible]

LDS (simultaneously): No.

AD: Friday-- Friday I'll continue.

S: No.

LDS: No let's keep going.

AD (simultaneously): Friday I'll continue. [few students at once, few words inaudible] Because it's going to take a long time to get this clear in your mind between intellect, reason, and intelligence or intuition. It's not going to happen overnight. Look, intuition has been operating in us from the moment we've been born. The light has been constantly illuminating all these images that are in your mind, alright, and this-- despite the familiarity of this happening it never occurs to you that these intuitions are always going on. So what we want to do is really zero in on what is this intuition. We just got rid of a content, we just got rid of the whole notion of light coming from the soul. If a light came from the soul, what would happen? It'll say "Here's a message for you"?

AS: It doesn't say anything.

AD: The message is already there! All the images are there, everything that it needs is there.

PC: All the images that are in your mind already are-- that's always what's going to be delivered when the light--

AD (simultaneously): No that's not going to be delivered, [PC simultaneously: I mean--] that's always there. Right?

PC (simultaneously): It's al-- it's already there.

AD: These are the-- these are the paintings in the-- in the w-- in your mind.

PC: So this isn't just what's stored up in you from your own past experience.

AS: Yes, it is.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah it's what's stored up in you.

PC: It is what's integrated.

AS (simultaneously, faint): That's what he said.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah, yeah.

AS: That's [PC simultaneously: So that--] the point he just said [couple/three words inaudible]

PC (simultaneously): So-- ok but now wait.

AS: It's there, that's what-- that's where we were mistaken before when we talk about ideas and all this, I think the corrective is he's saying, no the-- the content is always-- all the contents are there in your mind. Now this light comes and lights some of them up.

PC (simultaneously): So if you-- if you interpret it correctly, if you interpret it correctly through reason, that--

AD: Correct-- I'm sorry.

PC (simultaneously): If you interpreted the intuition correctly by using your reason--

AD (simultaneously): What do you mean, interpret the intuition correctly [S simultaneously: Reasoning.] with reason?

S: Use reason.

AS (simultaneously, faint): Yeah, what is the (reasoning)?

AD: Say it to me.

PC (simultaneously): Yeah, ok. If you did that, the content that you would be getting--

AD: Not if you did that. What is it doing? (bit of laughter)

PC (simultaneously): But you want to know what that means.

AS: It means that something's thrown up before you [PC: Yeah.] by this light and now the reason has to interpret it, [PC: Right.] correctly or incorrectly. In Paul's case, it was interpreted incorrectly, the Saint Paul's case, it was interpreted incorrectly. (laughter)

PC: Ok, content is already a content. It's already in your mind, [AS simultaneously: But unknown.] is lighted up for you--

AS: Is lighted up and that's called intuition.

PC: Ok.

AS: And now the reason knows it.

AD (simultaneously): Let's say it's vivified.

PC: Ok.

AD: It's vivified.

PC (simultaneously): The content that was already there is vivified. And then you have to interpret that with the reason and understand what that content is that would light it up.

AS: What it means.

AD: What it mean(s).

PC (simultaneously): What it means.

HS: You're using the word-- you're using it-- for etchings in the mind you're using memorized impression?

PD (simultaneously): It appears what--

AD: Yeah you could say that, you could say genetic images, you could use any words you want.

HS: And-- and the-- and the--

AD (simultaneously): You know what I'm talking about, right?

HS (simultaneously): Yeah. And-- and what are the--

AD (simultaneously): One of your past experiences.

HS: Ok and one of these things is actually part of the intuition you're saying?

AD (simultaneously): No. One of these things is lit up by the intuition, it's not part of the intuition.

HS (simultaneously): Ok does-- does the intuition contain a-- an etching necessarily?

AD (simultaneously): The intuition doesn't contain anything.

HS: Doesn't [PC simultaneously: Well--] contain anything.

AD: No!

HS: It's more like a (prism).

AD (simultaneously): I'm shining a light on that guy's face! [HS: Then what--] The light doesn't contain him!

HS: So it doesn't contain like a right interpretation or a wrong interpretation.

AD (simultaneously): Otherwise when I put the searchlight in my pocket I would have Peter in my pocket! (laughter)

HS: So if you immediately said, so to say, you got the right intuition or the right unfoldment there, it didn't contain that either in the intuition.

AD: The intuition isn't right or wrong [HS: Right.] according to [HS simultaneously: Or wrong.] this, right? [S, faint: Ok.] It's just illuminating a content.

PC: Ok now [couple words inaudible]

HS (simultaneously): Well wait a minute, wait a minute, why is it illuminating a content? Excuse me Peter.

S (faint): Must have taken a nap.

HS: Any-- why--

AD: That is the function of reason.

S: But--

HS: That is the [LDS simultaneously: No reason--] function of reason that--

HE: No.

S: To-- to [one word inaudible] stop--

HS (simultaneously): --to recognize that intuition illuminated a content?

AD (simultaneously): That problem is being forced on him, alright, the crucified Christ was presented to him, illuminated. Now he had to understand what the soul was telling him.

AS: And it's not arbitrary. That light of that [LDS simultaneously: See that's the point.] intuition, [S simultaneously: It's not arbitrary.] Herbert, is the [HS simultaneously: Nice.] soul pointing something out to the personality. But it's got to be the personality that has the reason that's going to un-- interpret that.

HS: But you're saying the soul is pointing out something to the personality that's already within the personality.

AS: Yeah because there's lots of stuff-- I mean his experiences-- yes!

HS (simultaneously): Taken as the memorized impression.

AS: No. It's like he's got all this content. The soul uses that to point something out to him, something he already knows, it can't-- the soul can't point out something he doesn't already have in himself.

PC: Ok but when it lights up--

AD (simultaneously): So every man is as rich as you are, right? Because if you think-- if you think momentarily just about your genetic psychology you can see it's a storehouse of all kinds of images. And the soul or the light of the soul can illuminate any one of those, vivify it, bring it to life for you. And once it comes to life, you're going to have to do something.

PC: But when it lights up [S simultaneously: Is it--] that image [S simultaneously, faint: But Anthony--] of the crucified Christ, it-- are you saying that right in (here--)

AD: Now comes in, now comes in what?

PC: The reason.

AD: The ego with its intellect and its ability to reason.

PC: Ok. Right. Now is it inherent in that image of the crucified Christ that was lit up the-- the understanding that he should not be persecuting Christians?

AD: Uh-hm.

PC: It's inherent--

AD (simultaneously): Was it--

PC: Is it inherent right in that image of the crucified Christ that he should not be persecuting Christians?

AD: Plus what?

PC: Plus what?

AD: Plus what?

CDA: His misunderstanding.

AD: Well no, his misunderstanding's something else. Wouldn't he have to apply the reasoning to that [PC simultaneously: But the-- ok but does the reasoning--] crucified figure and try to understand--

PC: Yeah.

S: Yeah.

PC: But does the reasoning draw that truth out of the image that was in his mind or does the reasoning have to bring in something else?

AD (simultaneously): Well, how [AS simultaneously: Well that--] about-- how about this way?

PC: I mean I'm trying to see--

AD: Yeah [couple inaudible AS words simultaneous with AD] how about this way, alright. Imagine you're Paul, you're walking on the road to Damascus, alright. You fall off your horse and you remain in a state of ecstasy. You get this vision, alright, and you see the crucified Christ. What would it mean to you? To start a belief in the crucified Savior?

PC: Well, ok. What I'm saying is--

AD (simultaneously): Just stop.

PC: Yeah.

AD: Just stop, for a moment, quiet. Imagine the image in your mind. What would you come up with? How would you interpret it? [AS simultaneously: Some part of me is dying.] To believe in the resurrection from the dead?

AS: No, some part of me is dying.

PC (faint): Well maybe it would evoke compassion. And that (was maybe) enough to want to do it.

S (faint): No.

AD: Alright, we'll continue Friday.

HS/S(?) (faint): Might look at your personal life.

AD: We just started on this.

LDS (simultaneously, possibly part of background): But-- (what) [one word inaudible]

S (very faint, possibly part of background): [one word inaudible] on personal life.

[Audio File 1983 1026b Ends]