Building Blocks of Reality ~ Part 5

I ended my last blog with: “It is a given that contemplation of the macrocosm and the microcosm has been taking place through the centuries …” Heraclitus had said, “Many do not understand such things as they encounter, nor do they learn by their experience, but they think they do. Indeed, they do not process the information they receive: having heard without comprehension they are like the deaf; this saying bears witness to them: present they are absent.” And, “Though the logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own”.

Other observations of Heraclitus include: “Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trials of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.”

Further, “Concerning the size of the sun: it is the width of a human foot”. An example of how information can be interpreted in different ways according to its receiver: one person could assume that Heraclitus is referring to the sun in a literal sense and (whilst chuckling) respond along the lines of, “well, isn’t that silly? I mean, we all know that when things are far away, they can look smaller than they are, but to determine that the sun itself is so small…” Another person could intuitively sense that Heraclitus is indicating that potential for illumination in an individual will vary according to a person’s will or obfuscation (example of foot in this case as being representative of ‘stamping out’): a person will see what they choose to see, not necessarily what is; Heraclitus had attributed this failing to collecting of knowledge but without being able to decipher content and comprehend its meaning.

One of Heraclitus’ sayings has been translated along the lines that a person’s character will determine their destiny; Heraclitus suggests that through ethos, a person’s character is not fixed, meaning that they can determine the course that their experience of life will take. His point invites enquiry; it suggests that what we might refer to as a transcendent element (whether this is consciousness, being or mind) is perpetually interacting with known or observable elements of nature in order to experience meaning in the world. Heraclitus appears to have contemplated on relationship between Logos (implicate order) and its appearance or whatever meaning which a human assigns to it in the world; he used language in a variety of ways, knowing that what was said would have multiple interpretations or overlay, but with insight would retain its capacity for common meaning.

Heraclitus’ teachings brings to mind the words of the poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Heraclitus followed the precept of the Delphic Oracle and ‘searched himself’ for knowledge of reality (truth) and encouraged for others to do the same. With respect of his idea of unity of opposites and all things in flux, I perceive similarity in a modern day concept of self-actualisation; alternatively an image which begins with a muddy or opaque reflection of an ego or self which becomes clearer or illumined through a process of active enquiry.

Parmenides’ teaching suggests that reason (and not sensation) is what reveals reality by discerning whether the subject of enquiry is an expression of being-ness which exists by necessity (Truth) or is otherwise a human fabrication and contradictory (Opinion).

Still, I find that I am often inspired by images which assist in comprehension, such as the purging of a hard drive, the purposeful shedding of habitual modes of thought which are no longer fit for purpose; perhaps reason and sensation are not entities in themselves, weighing in as some would-be measures of human intelligence, but are partners and equally valid in what constitutes as cognition?

The 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger said that Heraclitus and Parmenides belong together in ‘thinking the true’; He said that to think the true means to experience the true in its essence and in such experience, to know the truth of what is true. This should not be skipped over: Heidegger is pointing towards wholeness; an inter-relatedness of what is true and which incorporates thinking, experiencing and knowing.

Heidegger points out that even with some 2,400 years passing since Heraclitus and Parmenides, time has not changed the essential nature of what they thought. He refers to what is thought in their thinking as primordial; historical: preceding and anticipating all successive history; the beginning in that it does not reside back in a past but is in advance of what is to come. This is another important note: Heidegger is pointing out that in essential history the beginning comes last; to a mode of thinking that is acquainted only with the form of calculation (logical-analytical), the proposition of ‘the beginning comes last’ is nonsensical. The beginning is often taken to be something that is unclear, imperfect, unfinished and ‘primitive’. In the course of Western history, later thinking is not only distant in chronological terms, but is removed from its beginning i.e. distant to what is thought, in that each generation becomes more alienated from early thinking.

Heidegger suggests that ‘to think is to heed the essential’, which is where essential knowing resides. He suggests that popular interpretation of knowing is being acquainted with something and its qualities, so as to determine its structure and usefulness. He points out that this type of cognitive mastering, science or ‘knowledge’ tends to seize, dominate and surpass, if not completely bypass a being, in the manner of objectivity. This represents a technical attack on a being, for the purpose of ‘orientation’ towards activity and some form of gain.

He says that the character of essential knowing on the other hand, is entirely different; it concerns the being in its ground and is a retreat in the face of this – it intends Being. Essential knowing does not lord it over what it knows but is solicitous towards it; consequently we see and perceive more, this being quite different from the product of modern science. Thoughtful heedfulness is to pay attention to a claim which does not arise from separate facts and events of reality or the superficiality of everyday occupations.

Heidegger stresses that it is only when there is experience of this essential thinking of what is true, can knowledge of what was being said in the poem of Parmenides have justification; to know the truth of what is true. Without heedfulness of what is essential and true, any clarification of his thinking is occurring in a void – it has not touched the beginning, which is the being in its ground. I would like to add an observation here: I have not come across any other message that so clearly portrays an essence of what is true in thinking, experiencing and knowing that is timeless, a cycle in itself - as opposed to ‘multiple beings’ requiring interpretation and cognitive mastering of what is true within the space-time that is referred to as history; it is sobering.

Consider for a moment what it means to ‘bring into language the word of the goddess’. If such an event is visualised, perhaps there is an impression of resonance – harmonies that are enlivening, clarifying and potent – or the Fibonacci sequence, commonly referred to as the golden ratio? Something quite different from the popular children’s game that is known as ‘Chinese Whispers’, whereby whispered messages are passed along a line of receivers and what is interpreted at each stage and by the last in line is vastly different from the source and is often quite funny – perhaps not so in the case of humanity ‘thinking the true’ and some of its repercussions throughout history!

Heidegger refers to the goddess in Parmenides poem as ‘truth’ – that truth itself is the goddess; there is no fragmentation of what is being. Heidegger is purposefully using language to avoid speaking ‘of the’ with regards to truth. Instead of perceiving goddess as a custodian or messenger of truth, he is inviting the comprehension that truth is not a ‘tangible’ construct in itself i.e. cannot be grasped or possessed, but is essentially thinking from the ground of Being itself; goddess is that in which dialogue arises. Consider for a moment how a pantheon of gods and goddesses could be contrived, so as to account for the changing facets (or resonance) of Being that is perceived: not only of message but of appearance also. Humans are accustomed to a sense of the ‘personal’ through the formation of relationships with that which they can touch and interact with; this goes back to what Heidegger was saying about how Western culture has sought to take ownership of that in which knowledge arises.

There is an invitation to pause in the midst of a stream of thought in order to engage with thinking itself: what is the source of contemplation – does it have a beginning? What is the nature of inspiration and how does that move into awareness? Heidegger said “It is distinctive of the thinkers who later, i.e. from the time of Plato, are called ‘philosophers’, that their own meditation is the source of their thoughts. Thinkers are indeed decidedly called ‘thinkers’, because, as is said, they think ‘out of’ themselves and in their very thinking put themselves at stake. The thinker answers questions he himself has raised.”