Damiani

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This intensive week-long series of classes examines the three fundamental functions through which consciousness relates to an object: knowing (the discovery of an object as an accomplished fact, independent of any subjective construction), willing (the constructive, projective function that creates an object that remains dependent on it), and feeling (the relational principle that establishes a unity between consciousness and its object).

Led by Anthony Damiani, with significant contributions from students, the investigation begins with discussion of two articles by T. R. V. Murti on knowing, willing, and feeling, and illusion as the confusion of subjective functions. These articles are themselves elaborations of some of K. C. Bhattacharyya’s articles. Murti argues that in the “snake-rope” illusion, there is a confusion of feeling, which unreflectively feels an indeterminate “this,” and knowing, which knows the universal essence of snake. The illusion is possible only when these two functions are confused (“this is a snake”). For Murti, this confusion is known to be a confusion only as the two functions are distinguished when the illusion is canceled.

Damiani seizes on the idea that illusion arises when the subjective functions of knowing, willing, and feeling are confused but criticizes the term “illusion” as inapt: rather an “appearance” arises. Appearances can still be facts. The crucial notion is that appearances arise when there is a combination of distinct functions (e.g., knowing, willing, an feeling), just as a musical composition arises when melody, rhythm, time, etc. are combined. Murti says that matter is the confusion or self-alienation of these functions, the utter lack of all determination. Damiani reinterprets this more positively to mean that matter is the indeterminacy that enables these functions to combine in an indefinite number of ways to produce appearances.

The investigation innovatively correlates these three functions with the trans-Saturnian planets—Uranus with knowing, Neptune with feeling, and Pluto with willing. An illustration of the way the combination of these functions gives rise to appearances is when two or more trans-Saturnians are transiting a natal planet. The appearances that arise are very specific ideas, feelings, or moods, perhaps even an inspiration. Damiani exclaims: “But isn't it amazing that these aspects can go on and something will arise in your mind. There'll be the actual creation, an appearance, a vision, whatever, that wasn't there before. . . . Something arose like out of nothing. You have the actual creation of phenomena taking place in your very consciousness.”

Damiani is also skeptical of Bhattacharyya’s notion that the Absolute is an nonunifiable triplicity of absolutes, where the absolute for knowing is truth; for willing, freedom; and for feeling, value. PB’s notion of insight, in which these three functions are fused and transcended, might be a more appropriate way to conceive of our access to the Absolute. Prior to developing insight, the soul is forced by the World-Idea to develop these three functions as ways in which to relate to and assimilate the World-Idea.

The series also explores a hierarchical view of the three functions, in which knowing is correlated with the universal Ideas that the Cosmic Soul is bringing into itself (or Buddhi in the Samkhyan system), feeling with the functioning of the Cosmic Soul (or Ahamkara), and willing with the functioning of the individual soul that participates in the world fabricated by the Cosmic Soul (Manas). But other correlations are discussed too. There is also an attempt to correlate septiles with knowing, quintiles with feeling, and regular aspects with willing, and a discussion of knowing, willing, and feeling at an unreflective, reflective, and superreflective level.