Philosophy, for me, has always been a means of putting PERCEPTION before JUDGEMENT.  In the Buddhist story of the man and the horses, where his horse runs away (Maybe BAD maybe GOOD) but later returns with a pack of six wild horses (Maybe GOOD maybe BAD) whereupon his son breaks his leg when thrown from one of the wild horses he is trying to train (Maybe BAD maybe GOOD) and is passed over as the local Warlord conscripts all able bodied men to go to war (Maybe BAD, maybe GOOD), a war in which all those conscripted are overcome and killed by superior enemy forces.

As the Tai-Chi symbol of the Yin/Yang NONDUALITY suggests, putting PERCEPTION (of the transforming relational continuum) before JUDGEMENT may make sense.

These options of PERCEPTION and JUDGEMENT arise the gap between PHILOSOPHY (investigations into ‘what could be’) and RELIGION (knowledge of what is’).

This difference can crop up in regard to THANKS-GIVING as is explored in the following;

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Mixing and matching (or attempts thereto) of philosophical investigations and personal theologically inspired emotions is pretty much impossible.  A segue is needed to pass from the one universe into the other.  A professing of religious belief that is based on love and faith is a powerful animating force.  It is a force that brings with if JUDGEMENT that can divide the people of the world into separate groups, each embracing with their full heart, the understanding of their particular group, as can divide them from other groups with differing understandings.

If one engages on issues philosophically, one opens up the discussion to the reality that the most sincere and heart-felt beliefs based on JUDGEMENT can be the source of division, since to fully commit to particular beliefs leaves no doors open for ambiguity; i.e. the reality that is committed to is understood as TRUE in which case it is incontestable.

This recalls the WESTERN CULTURE like belief in the abstraction of BINARY LOGIC wherein there are only TWO options; EITHER True OR False.  In this case, if one feels one has grasped something which is TRUE, then there is no logical ‘reason’ NOT to let oneself and one’s actions be guided by such TRUTH.

NOT ALL CULTURES embrace such binary logical abstraction as given by the EITHER/OR logic of the EXCLUDED medium wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO, and the findings of those philosophical investigators into this technique of BINARY LOGIC based REASONING have come up with the understanding, captured in what has been called Goedel’s Theorem, that all finite systems of BINARY logic are INCOMPLETE.  For example, it is TRUE on the basis of BINARY LOGIC that Jean Valjean stole the loaf of bread and that Robin Hood stole grain from the King’s granary, … but the incompleteness of such BINARY logic as affirms their actions of THEFT gives rise to an ‘opening up’ and BLURRING when we consider the unending NONLOCAL matrix of relations that characterizes the greater reality within which particular LOCAL events unfold, such as the relational imbalance between those with plenty of grain and those whose children are starving for want of it.

Hence the INCOMPLETENESS of the TRUTH that Robin Hood and Jean Valjean stole the grain and bread, logical propositions which fail to open up to the acknowledging of the relational imbalances; i.e. logical propositions that, like all finite propositions of logic, are innately INCOMPLETE.

Modern physics also opens our understanding of reality as an unending matrix of relations which requires a different type of logic; i.e. the BOTH/AND LOGIC of the INCLUDED medium. This ‘quantum logic’ takes into account that FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE (e.g. the hurricane and the atmosphere are ONE so that the  hurricane does not MOVE THROUGH THE atmosphere but is an ‘appearance’ within the transforming atmosphere.   Indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta employ this BOTH/AND logic of the INCLUDED medium wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE.

So, that’s where WEST and EAST part ways of understanding with WEST embracing the understanding of reality in the BINARY terms of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO while modern physics and the EAST embrace the understanding of reality in the NON-BINARY terms of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE.

These comments are ‘background’ to my following comments in GREEN TEXT, which are INTERPOSED and embedded in Janet’s, in discussing  THANKSGIVING.

 

[RESPONSE FROM JANET]

And be thankful. (Colossians 3)

Well I just happen to be reading this book The World According to God  by F.X. Cronin. One way of looking at it as F.X Cronin says all  reality —space, time, matter, energy –must trace its ultimate origin back to some initial cause. Yet this initial cause must necessarily be uncaused. As Thomas Aquinas said centuries ago, we call this uncaused cause “God.” God is the uncaused cause of every effect we observe.

[Ted] Note that there is no ‘initial cause’ in an understanding of reality as a Wave-field aka ‘the Tao’ since what is implied is ‘the transforming relational continuum’.  In this sense, the innate animating influence (God) is immanent in the transforming relational continuum.

 

For a string of effects  is like a string of dominoes: the toppling of all the dominoes depends on the toppling of the first in a specific way. That first domino must be toppled by an outside cause.

[Ted] The abstract concept of LOCAL cause-and-effect is a DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR as Nietzsche has pointed out, a device that makes it possible to ‘break into’ the INEFFABLE transforming relational continuum (Ineffable because it is a continuum) and substitute the FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO abstraction.  The FIRST ERROR is NAMING as when we name a boil in the fluid transformation (figure-and-ground-as-ONE) Hurricane Katrina and conflate this with the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR which conflates the first error by imputing to it “IT’S OWN POWER of SOURCING ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT”.   This DOUBLE ERROR substitutes a NEW REALITY that is EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT thanks to the FIRST ERROR of NAMING (which imputes persisting being) and the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR( which imputes local power of SOURCING actions and development to the NAMING-instantiated thing-in-itself [FIRST ERROR].     

 

Like the necessary uncaused cause there is the necessary ‘unmoved mover.”

 

Reason compels us to look for the beginning of all things, because we know that everything in the cosmos must have begun at some point in time.

[Ted] Reason is LOGICAL abstraction that is a useful tool but it is incapable of explaining the transforming relational continuum; i.e. it is only capable of RATIONAL explanation as where we say ‘Hurricane Katrina is growing larger and stronger and is devastating New Orleans’.  What is going on is TRANSFORMATION which is NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT and thus INEFFABLE, however, we invoke the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to come up with a SUBSTITUTE REALITY that is governed by REASON.  REASON is abstraction based on RATIO, as in the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR.

“Reason” in language!—oh what a deceptive old witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long as we still believe in grammar.  – Nietzsche

The concept of ‘things’ “in the Cosmos”, which is coming from the language formulation we construct, SPLITS the transforming relational continuum aka ‘the Wave-field’ aka ‘the Tao’ into TWO separate ontologies; i.e. the CONTENTS and the CONTAINER which is the work of BINARY LOGIC.   This BINARY LOGIC does not come from Nature, but from intellectual abstraction, and in particular from OUR NEED to render EFFABLE-because-EXPLICIT-and-LOCAL the relational transformation (the formings in the Wave-field) which is INEFFABLE-because-IMPLICIT and NONLOCAL.

 

So it is plausible and necessary to search out the initial cause of all that exists.

 

[Ted] The concept of EXISTENCE is an abstract a priori assumption, that we impose on our construction of reality by way of NAMING a transient fluid forming in the flow and compounding this FIRST ERROR with the SECOND ERROR of GRAMMAR to impute to the NAMING-instantiated (notional) thing-in-itself ITS OWN POWERS of SOURCING actions and developments.

 

 

Let’s begin with the beginning of the cosmos, for the logical law of cause and effect all but compels us to begin here in our search for answers about whether God exists.

[Ted] the so-called ‘logical law of cause and effect’ is abstraction that has no place in the all-including transforming relational continuum (the Wave-field aka the Tao) of our sensory, relational experience.  The ‘logical law of cause and effect’ is abstraction forced by the DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR to ‘get things moving’ after we have stopped the flow by using the DOUBLE ERROR to break FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE into FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.  For example, the boil may be distinguished from the flow but such distinguishing does not imply ONTOLOGICAL independence, … as the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar imposes.  In fact, by splitting FIGURE and GROUND (boil and flow) into TWO, we introduce an ARTIFICIAL POLAR OPPOSITE AMBIGUITY as to whether the boil sources the stirring up of the flow or whether the flow sources the stirring up of the boil.   The WESTERN CULTURE conservative – liberal SPLIT derives from this kind of thinking.  However, there is no such thing as SOURCING in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field aka the Tao, so there is no basis other than misinterpreting abstraction for reality behind the conservative – liberal split.

So for us inclusions in the transforming relational continuum aka the Wave-field, there is no basis for assuming a BINARY ON/OFF BEGINNING, and as pointed out by Nietzsche and others, there is no basis in our sensory experiencing of nature to impute the reality of ‘cause-and-effect’, an abstract construction which arises from a DOUBLE ERROR of NAMING and GRAMMAR (the NAMING gives us the LOCAL BING abstraction and the GRAMMAR imputes to the LOCAL BEING its own (notional) powers of SOURCING actions and developments.

 

This is one reason why the Bible begins with the origin of all things. When considering God, human reason turns almost automatically to questions of existence and origin. Such is our innate sense of rationality, our innate sense of cause and effect.

 

[Ted] Eastern Culture humans (indigenous aboriginals, Taoists/Buddhists and Advaita Vedanta adherents when considering God as the GREAT HARMONY which is ‘everywhere at the same time’, … GOD is the harmonic influence that permeates the universe, the GREAT HARMONY that is immanent in the world.  In the flowing understanding of the world, there are no LOCALLY EXISTING ENTITIES, there are only relational forms in the transforming relational continuum, and there are no questions of ORIGIN of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, … since the notion of LOCAL THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES is implied by NAMING which we then conflate with GRAMMAR to impute to them their or powers of LOCAL SOURCING of actions and developments.

 

 

What kind of a God is he? First we must decide if God is apart from the universe, a separate force, a separate being. Or is our God just a way of expressing the idea that everything is just a part of the whole cosmic consciousness, that we are all part of God who is everything. Pantheism is the theology of Buddhism, New Age spiritualism and other holistic religions and movements. So there is no distinction between God and what believers in God call creation.

 

[Ted] While Newtonian physics affirmed the independent existence of local material things-in-themselves (starting with atoms), as Benjamin Whorf points out, this abstract conceptualization in terms of LOCAL things-in-themselves derived from early Western languages which were based on the DOUBLE ERROR construction of NAMING and GRAMMAR.  As the writer points in the Pantheist view as in modern physics and indigenous aboriginal Taoist/Buddhist cosmology etc., … we are “one with everything” i.e. the Wave-field aka the Tao is ‘everything’ and the formings that are continually emerging and rejoining the flow as in fluid turbulence are ‘appearances’ as in FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE and never do become INDEPENDENT as in a FIGURE-and-GROUDN-as-TWO abstraction, … such abstraction being the invention of the DOUBLE ERROR of language and grammar which is very useful as a tool for sharing an abstract representation of reality made possible by portraying FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.    This splitting into FIGURE and GROUND as TWO is what renders forms EFFABLE-because-LOCAL-and-EXPLICIT, … whereas in the Wave-field reality of FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE, the forms are INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT (in continual relational flux).

 

 

As I happen to believe in God I am then thankful for his creation. And this Thanksgiving especially for this book by F.X. Cronin and for the many great books I have read this year, for the church,  for the doctors and nurses in the hospital here that I seem to frequent frequently and that the hospital is only a few minutes away. I am thankful for being surrounded by a loving family and friends and for all the treasured moments of the last year, for the new baby Thomas in the family, for the smell of the turkey cooking in the kitchen and for all my blessings…

 

And when I come to the end of the road, I hope to say “Hey God, thanks for the ride!”

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU ALL

 

[Ted] We share our life experiences in a world of many different people with many different understandings of ‘the meaning of life and death’ and also many different interpretations of our unique unfolding sensory experiences within the transforming relational continuum.

For my own part, I am persuaded that the relations that make our lives enjoyable and worthwhile have roots that run so deep they are ineffable-because-nonlocal and implicit and unique for each of us.  With that in mind, I would simply follow the indigenous aboriginal tradition and in response to Janet’s heartfelt sharing, responds ‘HO! 

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