In my last post The Story of Truth I made reference to the:
- Christian Myth, and my belief that,
- Meaning is not always Truthful, nor Truth always Meaningful.
This post is an attempt to amplify and illuminate these two thoughts.
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism in any form is anti evolutionary, even if it is Darwinian Fundamentalism as in the case of someone like Richard Dawkins. Fundamentalism closes the loop, it does not allow for the continual expansion of the imagination.
Fundamentalism seeks to trap us in a predefined and prescribed way of being. It is, by its very nature, backward looking and anti the growth of knowledge. All new knowledge threatens the fundamentalist at it contains the seeds of potential to crack the metaphorical egg shell.
Fundamentalism robs, if only temporarily, our divine birth right. It displaces our transcendence and transfers it to an external system.
In this sense there is truly something noble and sublime about the philosophical basis of science. Science only proposes a hypothesis never an absolute truth, and is ready to have this overturned the moment new evidence refuting the existing hypothesis is presented.
Regrettably we live in a world of fundamentalists and fundamentalism. The growth of the human spirit away from fundamentalism, if it is happening at all, is painstakingly slow. At least in human terms, possibly in cosmic terms it is moving along nicely.
We have had the benefit of many great spiritual teachers; however their teaching has been greatly undermined by its reduction to and practice as dogma.
Science has the advantage of the scientific method which is inherently un-dogmatic. And possibly this is one of the reasons that science has advanced as much as it has, whilst spirituality has remained, or appears to have remained, largely stagnant.
We live today in a time where secularism and material reductionism, have become fundamentally entrenched as the preeminent ideologies of our day. And although theses originate to some degree out of physical science and technology they are far from synonymous with it.
Material reductionism and secularism are the philosophical shadow cast by physical science.
The more time I spend thinking about the significance of stories in our lives the more amazed I am at how significant these stories are.
The first peak behind the curtain I got into this, was on a warm summers evening whilst I was walking through downtown Tucson. Under an azure sky splashed with broad strokes of pink and fine highlights of red from the setting sun. A comforting warm breeze blew as I walked along side a philosopher I had met on the conference I was attending at the University of Arizona, Towards a Science of Consciousness, in April 2008.
It would not be a lie to say that this man, who later disappeared as suddenly and as mysteriously as he arrived, was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever encountered. His name was Cary Winograd. Cary born into the Jewish faith, but non-practicing, was a Catholic Apologist and would often go on retreats to the Catholic Mission in California, his home State.
As we walked through an all but deserted downtown Tucson my thoughts were filled with an overload of information, from the conference, about such diverse topics as gamma synchrony, lucid dreaming, machine consciousness, quantum consciousness, Duality vs. Monism, the morphic field, the neuronal patterns of consciousness states. It was my first time in America and the experience, particularly on the evening in question, had about it an air of the unreal or the surreal if you will.
Cary spoke to me about many things that evening including the technologist Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the future being virtual and the forthcoming singularity. The philosopher Zizek’s arguments that reality is already virtual.
He spoke about the overbearing feminism of the American Jungian movement under James Hillman and about Derride, whom he had studied under in France. He spoke about Lacan and his conclusion that it was our neurosis which defined our humanity.
But above all else what he said that has really stayed with me and has taken me a year to assimilate is that God is not true or false, that He neither exists nor doesn’t exist. God, Cary explained, is a concept which is beyond truth or falsity, existence or non existence; even Nietzsche was too shrewd to deny God’s existence, he said God was dead not that God never existed.
I have always found it strange the way I can hear something, believe it to be true, and yet not assimilate it. And so it was with this concept, the concept of a concept beyond the concept of truth or falsity 
Part 2 of 2
The question is whether our experience of ‘meaningful’ coincidences, such as Jung’s synchronicity, is actually meaningful or is it merely a meaningless symptom of the laws of probability. And if conclude that it is meaningful what do we mean by that?
Meaning is not rational it is irrational.
Let’s look at how the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word meaning:
1) What is meant by a word or idea (isn’t that a tautology?) 2) a sense of purpose (ah now we’re getting somewhere)
And how about meaningful:
1) Having meaning, 2) worthwhile, 3) intended to express something
So straightaway we can see that there is in fact no difference of opinion between Jung’s synchronicity and physical science or rational philosophy. Something doesn’t need to be causally linked to be meaningfully linked. On the contrary synchronicity is expressly meant to associate acausal meaningful occurrences.
So what is the problem?
I suppose the problem is really between so called rationalists and those of a more esoteric disposition. The real debate is between those given to material reduction versus those given to spiritual expansion or amplification.
I can no longer hide behind rhetoric and must here confess that I belong firmly to the latter group. I am a strong advocate of the significance of synchronicity.
Let me tell you why I believe as I do.
This is part 1 of a 2 part post.
The question is whether our experience of ‘meaningful’ coincidences, such as Jung’s synchronicity, is actually meaningful or is it merely a meaningless symptom of the laws of probability. And if conclude that it is meaningful what do we mean by that?
I have long been fascinated by Jung’s concept of synchronicity , a term which has been almost wholly absorbed into the New Age Movement and is an expression in common usage in the world today.
It has become a modernised version of the word serendipity, although not, strictly speaking, what Jung meant by the term. Jung’s definition of synchronicity was an acausal meaningful coincidence, not exclusively serendipitous. It could just as easily invoke pathos, in the subject of the synchronicity, as joy.
Synchronicity in our Lives
I would hazard a guess that you, like most of us, have experienced synchronicity. It has become a very widespread experience.
You receive a phone call or an email the day after dreaming about a friend who has been out of contact for a while. You are thinking about someone and then ‘randomly’ bump into them. Or a very common experience is you become aware of a name, number or concept and then repeatedly encounter it over a few days, weeks or months. Even years, in some exceptional cases.
This type of experience, which was once the domain of the mystic or psychic, is something which is now the common property of everyman. However the question is, is it meaningful, does it denote something beyond its random or coincidental occurrence?
A Rational Perspective
The short answer from a rational perspective is quite simply no.
These strange (from the subjects’ perspective) coincidences, in common with much other intuitive or psychic phenomenon, falls under a branch of mathematics know as the mathematics of randomness.
A good book was published recently on this exact subject called The Drunkards Walk .
I’m not sure when I first realised that the old Greeks had it right, daemons (or dǽmons) do exist, but it was a while back. It came to me the way knowledge comes to us sometimes, slowly and quietly like a lover in the dead of night.
Even before the idea was fully formed though, I realised on some level that oftentimes the daemon and the splinter of light that shone in someone’s soul were one and the same.
I think what took me longer to figure out was that the daemon was, and is, also the genius. And as such, like the recklessness that accompanies youth, you cannot sacrifice the one without the other.
If the daemon is coaxed into slumber, so too is the genius anesthetised.
Daemons in the World
We all know that genius can fall on either side of the moral divide, hence the evil genius. However even when genius serves the greater good, it comes at a price.
Not being a historian I will limit myself to a very few instances. In all of these there are certain common features which I wager would stand good across the sub-species genius.
Foremost amongst these features is narcissism. Admittedly this is mostly sublimated and doesn’t remain puerile and as such ineffective. However genius has a belief in itself which exceeds the bounds of polite self confidence.
Anti-social. Whilst in the case of certain genius’ there is an almost demonic charisma and ability to charm and persuade, I wouldn’t confuse that for normal healthy social interaction. These are normally people who knowing (or believing) themselves to be innately superior to the great unwashed masses, shun the company of others. Except in the circumstances that that company serves their ends.
The list goes on quite a bit driven, impatient, arrogant and self centred, all common traits of the incumbent young genius. These people do not make good dinner guests, unless the rest of the company are happy to play the role of an admiring audience in the company of greatness.
Some examples:
• Salvador Dali; an un-denied arrogant maverick
• Mozart; vain and delicate.
• Michelangelo ; rough, uncouth, arrogant and constantly dissatisfied.
• Sartre; chauvinist, revolutionary and a notorious womaniser.
• Winston Churchill, egotistical and a bully
• Oscar Wilde, narcissist, immoral (by Victorian standards) and intellectually superior.
• Alexander the Great; doesn’t need any by line really, suffice to say he didn’t conquer the known world by rhetoric.
• Socrates; supremely arrogant (despite he’s denial of this), inciter and disturber of the peace.
• Steve Jobs; dictatorial, arrogant, perfectionist
• Maria Callas; aloof, superior and ruthless
• J. F. Kennedy, notorious womaniser (didn’t get on too well with the mafia either apparently )
The above is of course just a very small example of the more obvious characters that come to mind. But as you can no doubt imagine the complete list of the nasty genius class would fill volumes.
Jung, like the ancient Greek mathematicians, believed that number was sacred. Specifically that number was the first and most fundamental archetype.
It is in that spirit that I list the 12 most important things I have learnt about life. Things which have made my life richer, more meaningful and have helped me in the quest to understand the meaning of life.
Socrates said that we cannot teach anyone anything; all we can do is help them remember. Do you remember any of these?
1. God Exists.
Actually a friend of mine the philosopher Cary Winograd says God is a concept which is beyond existence and non existence. (Which I agree with). Nevertheless language limits my ability to express truth and so I say: God exists.
This is a painful admission for me because I am at heart an atheist and am very sympathetic to French Existentialism, in particular Camus and Sartre who preclude the possibility of God.
Nevertheless experience has taught me otherwise. Like Jung, in answer to the question ‘do you believe God exists ?’ I must say, I have no need of belief, I know God exists.
On the 29th June 1996 The Ministry of Sound, premier night club and dance music label, held their first ever event in Africa. The event held in an aeroplane hangar next to Lanseria Airport saw close to 10 000 people party through the night to the hard house tunes of Jim Masters and Kal Tholstrop.
The event was staged on by Global Dance Initiative an eventing company specialising in big dance parties (referred to as raves in those days), owned and run by my brother Michael Farah and myself.
The event took six months of planning and execution. It was by far the biggest event we had ever staged and it took every single resource we had, or could lay our hands on, to put together.
Many, many moons ago, when my wife and I were still young and the seeds of potential lay as yet unsheathed in our loins, we were teetotallers.
Not teetotallers exactly, not in the strict definition of the word. God knows we painted the ceiling of Time Square Cafe’ pink with the spray of several bottle’s of J. C. Le Roux. Prior to lifting David Duev, the proprietor, over the bar counter in a single move to urgently embrace him and demonstrate our passion for his fine establishment, on more than one occasion.
However my point is other than these overt displays of our youthful vitality where blowjobs, tequila and J. C Le Roux acted in thier role as social lubricants, we truly had no appreciation for alcohol. We never for example entertained the idea of buying alcohol for home and hardly ever drank except on special occasions.
I was fortunate through the good graces of a friend to spend 7 days in Tofu Mozambique recently. It truly is an unspoilt paradise and I found myself deeply moved by the awesome beauty of the untamed, natural coast.
Tofu is unmediated and naturally quite different to the virtual island experience of a 5 Star Resort. Anyway suffice to say it was breathtaking and for the week that we were there we existed in a sublime almost surreal state of expansive beaches, tropical weather, magnificent ocean and abundant sea life.
On one of these long slow languid days however a wind picked up and the ever friendly ocean turned decidedly nasty. The normal flat calm ocean was torrid with crashing waves and a strong undercurrent.
Perfect conditions for Kitesurfing, if somewhat intimidating for a novice like myself. So it was that I found myself walking along a deserted stretch of beach on the way to join one of the locals for some Kitesurfing.
As I walked along I was deep in thought about the frenetic action to follow once I got to my destination. I was actively imaging and psyching myself up for the session to follow. When out of the jungle emerges a young man. A man who might be described as a free soul unhindered as such by the constants of convention.
I have thinking quite a bit lately about the issue of relationships.
The thing that concerns me is the level of aggression that comes into our relationships. Not only aggression, or at least not only patently aggressive behaviour, but all the various subtle manifestations of this: social one-up-man-ship, character assassination, power struggles and so on.
A particularly vivid example of this was pointed out to me a few months ago. When anyone in a social gathering tells a story, how shortly afterwards (sometimes not even afterwards but during) another teller will jump in with a ‘better’ story.
Continue Reading