Category: Reading

Gödel’s Incompleteness and the Realm of Wildlife

Reading | Philosophy

Yaakov Lichter | 2023-12-24

In the spirit of Newton’s call to build more bridges rather than erect more walls, here an analogy is suggested between the stratagem of Gödel’s proof of his Incompleteness Theorems and the modes of behavior that enable animals in the wild to effectively be one with nature while still spreading their intentions and signaling their status. I suggest that Gödel’s most fundamental intellectual insight—which resides in the world of human thought—parallels what animals possess naturally.

The language in what follows is intended to be accessible to non-mathematicians and provide a preliminary introduction to Gödel’s revolutionary and profound work.

 

Direct sensations and language

Simone de Beauvoir proclaimed that “humans are the talking animals.” We do not know of any other animal that uses abstract symbols—such as written letters and spoken syllables—as a means of communication, which members of the species have deliberately pre-agreed on. It would be far-fetched for us to think that any other living creature uses abstract words such as mind, consciousness, justice, happiness, sorrow, and so on. In that respect, humans are a unique species. Dr. Doolittle, who allegedly conversed with animals using human concepts, existed only in Hugh Lofting’s fictional books. Being talking and thinking creatures ourselves, when we read Lofting’s books Dr. Dolittle’s talking animals become a sort of reality for us, but a reality in our mind.

Abstract symbols combine in linguistic formulations—such as words, sentences, formulas, etc.—to eventually create for us, humans, stories of various types, ranging from tag lists and simple accounts to legends, narratives, novels, and theories. These abstract symbols—whether written or spoken—do not mean anything to any other living creature.

A human baby is born devoid of language. However, the potential to understand language and use it is inborn in it. Babies start internalizing language the moment they first hear it. This rather cryptic, even mystifying, process is profoundly influential; it creates our framework of thinking. Humans are very self-reflective: they think about themselves, about their experiences and about their very existence. Language causes us to process all of this in a consistent way, thus creating one of the two sources of our knowledge.

Indeed, two essentially different human experiences feed, increase and sustain human knowing. One is our inborn, unmediated, direct natural sensory experiences that are naturally ‘engraved’ in our consciousness, very much like any other animal. This source is not conditioned by knowing any language or the products of language, such as tales, narratives, or theories. The other source emanates from our linguistic experience of becoming acquainted with an ever-increasing number of words, names, statements, etc.

Søren Kierkegaard spoke of the outstanding change that takes place in one’s mind when, for the first time, the fact that everything in their life depends on the way they think invades their consciousness, where they understand that the absoluteness of thought—which stems from the absolute definitiveness of language—takes the place of alleged reality.

Two essentially different realities—one stemming from our direct sensory experiences, and the other from our language-thought experiences—meet and interact in our consciousness in a very complicated, intricate and, in fact, mysteriously entangled way. This interplay yields tremendous human capabilities, with qualities that are unmatched by any other living creature. These unmatched creative capabilities span from profound artistic, literary, and scientific works to horrendous acts of killing and destruction.

One of the most brilliant human achievements of all times is Kurt Gödel’s analyses of the foundations and structure of mathematics as a formal language, as well as its properties. Gödel published his revolutionary work in 1931, thus changing forever not only widespread popular beliefs about mathematics, but also shattering for good what world-leading mathematicians and logicians thought about it.

Gödel’s outstanding logical genius is discussed in a plethora of books, papers, essays, lectures, movies, and video clips. However, perhaps something unique has been overlooked in at least most of them. When comparing Gödel’s most fundamental stratagem—without which the very body of his work would not have been possible—to the way animals get along and ‘communicate’ in nature, an interesting and rather instructive parallel may be drawn.

 

Metatheories

When Aristotle wrote his teachings about nature—which he called “phusika” (φυσική, in Greek)—he realized that it was impossible for him to explicate nature’s concrete causes and effects, as discerned by the senses, without inventing abstract concepts indicating entities and properties that cannot be directly sensed by us. In order to formulate his philosophical teachings about nature, he had to incorporate these abstractions as an integral part of his text. His disciples decided to gather the definitions and explanations of these abstract terms in a separate section or volume, and then place it right after his physics teaching. The word ‘after’ in Greek is μετά (pronounced ‘meta’), and thus the word ‘metaphysics’ was created. As such, the metaphysics of a certain physical theory is concerned with the investigation, analysis, and description of the theory itself.

This is not exclusive to physics and metaphysics. Each theory can have a metatheory, which investigates, analyzes, and critically describes the concepts, symbols, and inference rules of the theory itself. A particular case of a metatheory is metamathematics.

Understanding that any theory is eventually a story made of language, Rudolf Carnap suggested the following definition for a metatheory: “if we investigate, analyze, and describe a language L₁ [and call this study L₂] … the sum total of what can be known about L₁ and said in L₂ may be called the metatheory of L₁.”

For a variety of considerations, which are out of the scope of this essay, we will refer to mathematics not as a theory of quantities, but as a theory of abstract symbols free of any interpretation, practical agenda, or empirical experience.

We are now setting out on a journey that takes place solely in the world of human language and thought. Later we will contemplate this abstract world from a standpoint located in the concrete world of direct sensory experiences. Both these worlds constitute the contents of human consciousness.

 

Formality, consistency and completeness

Historically, the development of mathematical thought has always been accompanied by the emergence of  paradoxes. The intensity of this process surged during the 19^th century, to the point of becoming a fundamental problem in mathematics and related sciences. David Hilbert, a leader in the community of mathematicians and logicians, called on them to prove that mathematics can be simultaneously a formal, consistent, and complete theory.

The adjectives ‘formal,’ ‘consistent,’ and ‘complete’ are not what mathematics—either as a theory of quantities or a theory of symbols—is about. They are, instead, metamathematical.

What do we mean when we say, ‘formal theory’? The Collins English Dictionary states that it is “a system of uninterpreted symbols and combinations thereof, whose syntax is precisely defined, and on which a relation of deducibility is defined in purely syntactic terms.” That is to say, the truth or validity of one such a theory stems solely from rules and laws related to symbol manipulations, which the theory considers legitimate. A famous example of a formal theory is the basic geometry of the plane, formulated by Euclid thousands of years ago without reference to drawings or plausible experiences. Euclid’s theory is taught in high schools to this day.

It is much simpler and seemingly more intuitive to define ‘consistency’: a theory is consistent when we believe that its text is free of contradictions (it will be understood later why we use the words ‘intuitive,’ ‘believe’ and ‘seem’ in this supposedly simple definition).

The third terms is ‘complete.’ We say that a theory is ‘complete’ if all of its propositions (or formulas) can be proven to be either true or false based on the theory’s axioms and inference rules.

We want to relate the above to mathematical theories. The root of mathematics is arithmetic, so we can widen our field of interest to any theory that includes arithmetic in it. Including arithmetic in a theory simply means that the list of symbols (alphabet) of this theory should include the symbols for the natural numbers (), plus the multiplication, addition, and equality symbols ().

For the sake of brevity, in what follows let the acronym FCAIT denote a Formal, Consistent, Arithmetic-Including Theory.

 

The fundamental stratagem behind Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems

In response to Hilbert’s challenge, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead published their monumental three-volume book, Principia Mathematica, about the foundations of mathematics. Their book included their new “Theory of Types,” which emanated from their insight that paradoxes exist only in the world of language and thought, their source being self-reference, which language allows. In the context of language, a self-referential statement is one that entails a reference to itself. The ancient symbol of the Ouroboros—a dragon that eats itself—denotes self-reference and illustrates the paradox of something defeating itself.

Russell and Whitehead’s Theory of Types seemed like a complete solution free of self-referential propositions, thus avoiding the paradoxes that arise from them.

When Russell and Whitehead published their book, Kurt Gödel was a child. After having read their book not many years later, he felt—with his extraordinary intellect and mathematical intuition—that it must be impossible to get rid of self-reference in mathematics and, apparently, in any FCAIT.

Gödel’s brilliant intellect led him to a profound stratagem, which enabled the proofs of his revolutionary Incompleteness Theorems. He decided to adopt Plato’s philosophical view that natural numbers should be regarded as a special type of reality in themselves. Though they do not belong to kind of direct sensory experience that we intuitively accept as reality, we should still consider them ‘real’ in our world of language and thought, which ceaselessly interferes with our sensory experiences.

Thus, Gödel devised a code that converts any alphabetical statement or formal proposition into one unique natural number, and vice versa, in a one-to-one mapping. The code he suggested is very simple indeed, and based on the rules of arithmetic. For reasons of brevity, I will not go into its details here (in any case, there are many different methods to create such a code, so the details are less important). The profound point is Gödel’s understanding that such a code is a necessary condition for proving his theorems. It is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. He came up with additional ingenious ruses, which are not mentioned here so we can focus our attention on the code only.

By converting formal statements into natural numbers in a bijective way [Editor’s note: i.e., in a way that ensures that each and every formal statement corresponds to one and only one natural number, and vice-versa], it becomes technically, or symbolically, possible for us to replace (a) the verbal concepts and statements with numbers and (b) the inference rules with arithmetic operations. That gets us from the world of regular verbal language, such as English, into the formal language of arithmetic.

This is a change of a medium; will it create a new message? Apparently, it did. It allowed Gödel to prove revolutionary theorems.

 

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems

The first of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems claims that FCAITs are necessarily incomplete; i.e., an FCAIT always has statements that can be neither proven nor disproven, which are therefore called ‘undecidables.’ FCAITs necessarily include undecidables.

The second theorem, which is easily proven from the first, says that there is no consistent FCAIT that can prove its own consistency. This is the final fatal blow to Hilbert’s hope—as expressed in the challenge he posed to the global mathematics/logic community—to preserve the image of mathematics as both consistent and complete.

In even simpler language, what we can say with mathematical certainty, based on Gödel Incompleteness Theorems, about the concepts of completeness, consistency, and decidability for any given arbitrary FCAIT is as follows.

Completeness: does every statement that must be true in a theory have a proof in the theory? No.

Consistency: is a theory certainly consistent? Can we be sure that it is free of contradictions? We cannot know the answer to these questions from the theory itself; the property of consistency cannot be proven or refuted within the theory.

Decidability: is there a finite algorithm that can always determine whether a statement follows from the axioms of a theory? No.

 

Gödel’s realm and wildlife

Gödel’s code is a transformation between two human forms of description, both belonging to the human world of language and thoughts; both using abstract symbols. One form is our regular language, such as these sentences, which we ordinarily use to describe the world and think about it. The other entails the concepts of natural numbers and arithmetical operations.

Animals, as we understand them, do not have a world of conceptual language and abstract symbols. They cannot describe or communicate to other members of their own species, or to other animals, in this fashion.

Originally, I had titled this section “How natural living creatures communicate.” On a second thought, I chose a different title, as you can see above. In my book, Life & Theories: Encounters of the Third Kind, I went even further, referring to animal interactions as messages of nature itself.

The reason I tried to avoid using the word ‘communicate’ is because communication ordinarily implies some form of human-like language—i.e., an ordered combination of abstract symbols like spoken syllables, written letters, mathematical formulas, formal logical statements, etc. Too many people think that we can interpret the way animals conduct themselves as analogous to human language, but animals in nature do not possess such capability. What they do, instead, is to use the objects of nature itself, such as bodily gestures, touches, sounds, tastes, odors, even bodily secretions, which can all be naturally discerned by the senses of living creatures.

For example, we are all familiar with the yawn reflex, which exposes the teeth of the tired animal, thus discouraging any predator that could otherwise take advantage of its fatigue. We see how the fur of a cat bristles and its back becomes curved when a dog attacks it, so the cat looks bigger than it is. Another interesting example is a procession of ants walking along a trail, coordinated by the secretion of various substances (like pheromones). Ants also exercise involuntary physical contact, which excite certain reflexive responses such as opening their mouth to let other ants sense what it carries. They sense the subtle but penetrative sounds of legs strumming the creases on the side of an ant’s stomach. And there are also tastes and smells that ants pass to one another. All these are concrete components of direct sensory reality; all are concrete—none is abstract.

 

Conclusion

In summary, the means that animals employ to effectively be one with nature, and yet spread their intentions and signal their status, are made of the very entities that nature is made of and do not entail indirection via pre-agreed abstractions. Is the resourcefulness and ability of animals to survive and reproduce in nature, as well as live in sustainable balance with it, a result of their being an integral part of nature?

It is clear that Gödel’s profound stratagem of using solely the very elements of the ‘reality’ of mathematics—natural numbers and arithmetic operations—to relate it to metamathematics itself served as a fundamental key to unlocking the unexpected results of his theorems. A parallel between Gödel’s stratagem and the behavior of animals in nature then seems to emerge: the use of elements of a given reality to relate it to its metareality. This may avoid the barriers caused by a language whose concepts are foreign and irrelevant to the reality it tries to describe. Can it be a clue to deeper insights?

Newton said, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” Can the above be the beginning of a bridge that will enable better theories?

 

This essay reiterates some of the ideas in the author’s book, Life & Theories: Encounters of the Third Kind, 2023.

Reconciling the dancing polarities

Reading | Philosophy

Fred Matser | 2023-12-17

Self-cultivation, individuation, and the mind-body problem

Reading | Philosophy

Mark F. Rossbach, MA | 2023-12-03

Could practices such as meditation and martial arts offer us a glimpse into a more fundamental layer of reality?

According to our modern, Western, materialist worldview, this cannot be the case. But if we look in other directions and other modes of thinking, we can find different answers. Eastern philosophies, for example, developed in radically different ways. One of the main differences lies in the understanding of mind and body as being ultimately one, the opposite perspective of our modern materialist worldview.

By regarding mind and body as ultimately one, Eastern philosophies understood that reality was not something outside, separate from ourselves, but something closer and more fundamental. This led to the understanding that reality could never be comprehended solely by thinking, but had instead to be lived through direct experience. In this worldview, thought was not divorced from lived experience, and philosophy developed with strong practical components to it.

The Japanese notion of Shugyo is a perfect expression of the way practice is understood as a means of achieving a lived experience of more fundamental layers of reality. At first, the concept was used to refer only to religious Buddhist ascetic practices, but with time it spread more widely thru Japanese culture, as religious thought itself permeated different layers of society.

Yuasa Yasuo was a Japanese philosopher who translated Shugyo as ‘Self-cultivation.’ He analyzed the concept through different perspectives and associated it with paranormal phenomena and Eastern metaphysics. In Carl Gustav Jung’s Analytical Psychology, Yasuo found a way to bridge this concept with the West, for Jung had developed a theory of psychological functioning that not only allowed a psychological interpretation of Eastern practices, but also understood that psychotherapy should offer a way for Western individuals to develop a symbolic understanding of life, recovering something that in essence is proposed by all religious thinking: a lived, individual experience of totality. This meaningful understanding of life is closely relatable to Eastern philosophies, as is pointed out by Yasuo, especially if we take the idea of Self-cultivation as a starting point.

But what does it mean to cultivate the Self?

According to Yasuo, Self-cultivation is a way of training the mind through the body, in meditative practices such as martial arts and crafts. The idea implied is that, alongside technical development, the practitioner should seek spiritual development throughout his practice. This spiritual development signifies a deep transformation of one’s personality, as well as the lived experience of deeper aspects of reality.

In contrast, in the West bodily practice has been regarded as having merely recreational or health value. Either way, bodily practice has not been considered a means to achieve profound spiritual transformation.

The reason for this contrast may be found in the mind-body problem, since our main Western religious traditions contributed to a dualist and dichotomous paradigm initiated in the Enlightenment period through Cartesian thinking. Such dichotomous understanding of reality considers mind and body two different substances. From this our current materialistic worldview was born, wherein objective reality (body) has higher value and importance than subjective, experiential reality (mind), as the former is thought to come first. The famous hard problem of consciousness is a direct consequence of such dualist thinking.

Eastern traditional philosophies have not been heavily influenced by Cartesian dualism. And neither have they divorced mind and body through a similar socio-political movement as the Enlightenment—at least not until the last century. In contrast, Eastern philosophies developed a nondual worldview, investigating the inner, experiential part of life by taking mind-body oneness as the starting point.

In notions such as Shugyo, mind-body oneness is an experiential state achieved through continuous practice. It leads to the experience of Satori, which is the individual enlightenment lived by Buddhas. Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize that Satori is not a specific experience, but rather a broad term to refer to different experiential states achieved through the cultivation the Self. We could also say that Satori refers to different lived experiences of altered states of consciousness.

To claim that the experience of mind-body oneness is achievable through practice means that, although mind and body may be perceived as two different substances, both are in fact the same; there is but one substance perceived by us in two different ways. And the experience of this one substance can only be achieved through practice. As such, according to Shugyo, the seeming dualism of reality is not fundamental.

Yasuo maintains that mind-body practices show the difference between Western and Eastern metaphysics, the former being occupied with what lies behind the experience of nature (physis), whilst the latter is engaged with what lies behind our inner nature—that is, what lies behind the human ‘soul’ (psyche), as Yasuo puts it, which in turn is investigated on the basis of mind-body inseparability as the starting point.

Yasuo found in Analytical Psychology (developed by Carl Gustav Jung) a bridge to compare the aims and the psychological mechanisms entailed both in meditation practices and psychotherapy (as understood in Analytical Psychology). According to Yasuo, psychotherapy aims at restoring an individual afflicted with an abnormal state back to his normal state of behavior, by restoring the link between consciousness and the unconscious.

On the other hand, meditation aims at ‘transcendental’ states of consciousness, many times regarded as altered states, in which an integration of consciousness with the contents of the unconscious takes place, thus enabling one to learn how to control one’s emotional states.

According to Yasuo, while psychotherapy aims at helping someone deal with abnormal states of consciousness that cause suffering and meditation (Shugyo) at achieving higher states of consciousness, the underlying psychological mechanisms are the same. In this light, Shugyo can be understood as the way of seeking the experience of mind-body oneness through practice.

This transformation of the personality, according to Buddhist traditions, is accompanied or fomented by experiences of losing sight of oneself, of leaving the body, as well as hallucinatory experiences similar to psychedelics, near-death experiences, etc. What happens here is that the ego, which is closely related to the body, loses its place as the center of the personality, and the whole world starts to be comprehended as also being part of one’s psyche; inner and outer experiences start to merge in these ‘hallucinatory’ states, forcing the ego to surrender.

Jung also understood that the goal of life is to transform one’s personality, shifting the center of the personality from the ego to what he called the Self (Selbst). The concept of the Self simultaneously refers to the unique and most individual parts of oneself, as well as the whole of the collective unconscious. The latter, according to Jung’s cosmology, encompasses everything in nature. In Analytical Psychology, this process of integration between consciousness and the unconscious is called individuation.

According to Jung, individuation is a process that occurs naturally and is the telos (goal, purpose) of individual life. The problem is that, when our personality’s center is the ego, our lives become focused solely on strengthening consciousness, unilaterally, thus causing a split between it and the unconscious. The goal of Analytical Psychology is to help the individual to understand how to deal with the confrontation between consciousness and the unconscious, supporting the process of individuation, which results in a deep transformation of one’s personality.

But how is the idea of Shugyo related to Jung’s individuation process?

Shugyo means understanding practice as a way of achieving enlightenment through the lived experience of altered states of consciousness—through a continuous cultivation of the Self. It entails a deep understanding of the fundamental layer of reality, resulting—just as in individuation—in a profound transformation of one’s personality.

But although this transformation is something present both in Jung’s individuation process and Yasuo’s depiction of Shugyo, for Yasuo a key difference between Eastern Self-cultivation practices and psychotherapy is the idea of normal and abnormal states of being. Yasuo states that psychotherapy tries to restore the individual’s normal state of being, which corresponds to what is culturally expected—i.e., ‘normal behavior.’ On the other hand, Self-cultivation practices actively seek a transcendent mode of being, which usually corresponds to deep religious experiences such as observed in Buddhism, yoga, and even traditional martial arts.

The differences between Shugyo and Jung’s individuation might not only entail the specifics of the states they aim to achieve, but also the moment when their goals can be fulfilled. For according to Jung, the process of individuation can only be fully achieved in death, the completion of life.

Nonetheless, both Yasuo and Jung agree that there is a fundamental layer of reality that encompasses both mind and body. Both agree that the goal of psychological development is the integration of opposites—mind and body, psyche and matter—such integration being the lived experience of totality. According to both Yasuo’s understanding of Shugyo and Jung’s cosmology, the ego should not be the center of the personality, but instead play a merely mediating role. After all, the ego may be central to human meta-cognitive life, but not the center of life itself.

Shugyo offers a way to understand life as something containing meaning, and so does Jung’s Analytical Psychology. According to both Shugyo and Jungian practice, the fundamental layer of reality is experiential, and we are here to express or live it in its totality. Practice becomes not only a way of seeking leisure and health, but a means to transform our personality and express meaning through spiritual growth.

This worldview is radically different than the one provided by our post-Enlightenment paradigms, which deprive life of meaning. According to it, reality is fundamentally experiential and there is meaning to be found, expressed, and experienced during life.

Any practice can be Shugyo, as long as the goal of the practice is to develop oneself, thus achieving the experience of mind-body oneness. The fundamental layer of reality, and thus of ourselves, can only be understood in and through practice. Jungian psychology entails similar ideas, and a similar openness to different practices. In both perspectives, theoretical confabulations have limits, the totality of reality—with its paradoxes—being accessible only through direct experience.

 

Bibliography

1. Yuasa, Yasuo (1987). The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory.
2. Yuasa, Yasuo (1993). The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy. Suny Press.
3. Jung, C. G. (1960). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8/2: On the Nature of the Psyche. Princeton University Press.
4. Jung, C. G. (1969). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 11/5: Psychology and Religion: West and East. Princeton University Press.
5. Jung, C. G. (1968). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy. Princeton University Press.
6. Jung, C. G. (1970). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 14/2: Mysterium Coniuntionis. Princeton University Press.

Light or Darkness? Suhrawardī’s philosophy of illumination

Reading | Philosophy

Natalia Vorontsova, MA | 2023-11-26

Perhaps no other metaphor in the history of philosophy and religion—not to mention our language and culture—is as widespread as that of light and darkness. People who like to say to each other: “Don’t turn to the dark side! May the Force be with you!” must have a special appreciation for this metaphor [1,2].

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.’ (Mahatma Gandhi)

In the midst of darkness, light persists.’ (Martin Luther King)

The metaphor is often associated with two polar opposites: good and evil, right and wrong. But if we turn to the Master of Illumination, Suhrawardī—a Persian philosopher and theologian who founded a new tradition in Islamic thought, that of Ishrāq (‘Illuminationism’)—then only Light is a fundamental reality.

According to Suhrawardī, all reality is Light, which no concept or proposition can adequately describe or convey. Only the experiencing of the reality of Light itself can reveal it. Whoever encounters it knows it immediately and directly, by presence and not by concepts, for it is axiomatic and self-evident.

Anything in existence that requires no definition or explanation is evident. Since there is nothing more evident than light, there is nothing less in need of definition [4].

What then is darkness? In the philosophical doctrine of Suhrawardī, it is the absence of Light: everything that is neither illuminated nor Light itself. Hence it is Light that is a basic reality, and everything must be defined in terms of it, expressed in varying degrees of intensity, ranging from pure immaterial light to darkness and shadow. In essence, the doctrine is a hierarchical and emanatory scheme based on two principles: light (independent ) and darkness (dependent). And every emanative act is an overflow from the Light above it as an act of luminescence whose reflective nature gives rise to another. Furthermore, no causal relation exists between emanative acts; there is no material or temporal precession. Here is a high-level outline of key emanations in Suhrawardī’s cosmology:

1. Incorporeal (pure) Light: axiomatic, independent in and of itself.
   • Light of Lights: the Necessary Being, the Source of Light, God.
   • Immaterial Lights: Forms, Souls, Angels, Archangels and Platonic Archetypes.
2. Accidental Light: Light inhering in another, such as the light of stars.
3. Suspended Images: A special emanation that mediates between incorporeal and corporeal emanations, also known as Mundus Imaginalis. Autonomous images of the medium through which the incorporeal world of lights communicates and interacts with the corporeal world of shadow and darkness.
4. Corporeal (pure) Darkness & Shadow: things whose nature is darkness in itself, an absence of Light, such as physical bodies (barriers, ‘dusky substances’).
5. Accidental Darkness: depends on something other than itself, such as the shapes of physical objects. In also includes aspects of incorporeal lights that give rise to a corporeal

Similar to Avicenna’s concept of the incorporeal intelligences, the incorporeal lights are aware of their essence and their dependence on the emanating principle, namely the light above them in ontological rank. This establishes the relationship of dominion and love between all members of the hierarchy. Those of higher ontological rank exercise dominion over the lower members, while the lower members desire and love the lights above them. Thus, all existence unfolds in accordance with the underlying principles of love and dominion. In addition to this vertical hierarchy, the immaterial lights, through complex interactions, form a ‘horizontal’ layer to govern the multitude of emanations below them. These are the ‘masters of species,’ of minerals, plants and animals, but also of water, fire, earth and air [6].

For Suhrawardī, philosophy and mystical experience were inseparable. Thus, for him, the “pillars of wisdom” were Plato, Empedocles and Pythagoras, along with Zoroaster and the Prophet Mohammed [3,4,11]. His Philosophy of Illumination is thus deeply rooted in the metaphysical hierarchies of Neoplatonism, set in the context of Zoroastrianism and Shi’a Islam [5].

It is also important to bear in mind that Suhrawardī received his philosophical and theological insights as visions and revelations. In order to articulate them in a given language, pre-existing mental constructs are often used, even if they originally meant something different from what is being articulated. In Zoroastrianism, for example, the struggle of light against darkness is central and directly related to the forces of good and evil. In Islam, too, Allah is Light (nūr) and appears as light in the heavens and on earth [7].

Suhrawardī’s philosophical doctrine is certainly non-dual at its core, for here darkness has no independent existence and is merely the absence of light. But can his emanation cosmology be interpreted in the context of good versus evil? On the face of it, Suhrawardī is simply using an already conceptually available allegory of light and darkness to outline the creation by emanation from the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient incorporeal reality that contains all that there is, to that of our corporeal universe, which is finite, ephemeral, limited and constantly changing. Incidentally, one can appreciate Suhrawardī’s intermediate emanations between the level of Light of Lights and that of Pure Darkness. For the gap between these two levels of reality is so great that without all the intermediate layers, such a scheme could be compared to lighting a light bulb directly from the sun.

But can light and darkness, with all the shades in between, be understood simply as colors with which Suhrawardī paints a picture of his illuminationist philosophy? It would seem that by conceptualizing emanation as a gradation of illumination and shadow casting, he is outlining proximity and relationship to the Divine, rather than a scale of good and evil. Nevertheless, the degrees of intensity of light seem to allude to the degrees of perfection: the closer to the Light of Lights or the Divine, the more perfect are the emanations [8]. In the Hermetic tradition in general, we find references, for example, to man’s re-conquest of his Perfect Nature—his soul, the ‘Illuminated Man’ or the ‘Man of Light’ in Zoroastrianism. And Suhrawardī is no exception, for in his view those on the mystical path who succeed in regaining their Perfect Nature become the disciples of Hermes [9].

Suhrawardī’s own visions and intuitive insights undoubtedly influenced his illuminationist doctrine. In his most important work, the “Wisdom of Illumination” (Ḥikmat al-ishrāq), Suhrawardī presents a unique conception of philosophy that combines the intuitive mystical path with rigorous philosophical discourse:

The best student is the student of both intuitive philosophy and discursive philosophy. Next is the student of intuitive philosophy. And then the student of discursive philosophy [4].

Nonetheless, he seems to value intuitive, direct knowledge over mere reasoning and rational speculation, since only direct experience guarantees the acquisition of true knowledge [8].

Theorising and rational arguments are like empty shells and are fruitless without grounding in the intuitive and direct apprehension of reality. [6]

In other words, discursive philosophy should be based on intuitive, direct insights communicated in images and symbols.

…symbols by their very nature are openings onto a mystery that can never be wholly explained and can never be exhausted [10].

For Suhrawardī, a symbol is a way of communicating what cannot be expressed in words. It is a way of bypassing the rational intellect so to arrive at an intuitive insight. Meditation on images and symbols can lead the soul to connect with a higher ontological reality. The soul ‘inhabits’ both the immaterial world of lights and the sensory world of physical forms simultaneously. Thus, the soul incarnates to acquire wisdom, but also remains in the world of the immaterial lights as the perfect nature of the initiate, as a guardian angel. The soul is therefore the microcosmic counterpart of the Mundus Imaginalis or the world of Suspended Images, which mediates between the sensory and intelligible worlds. The Imaginal World is neither corporeal—with a spatiotemporal existence in the sensory world—nor purely incorporeal, but rather comparable to images suspended in a mirror.

The mirror is the locus in which the form in the mirror is made evident. The forms are suspended and are in neither a place nor a locus. The imaginative faculty is the locus in which the forms of the imagination are made evident and are suspended [6].

It is on the plane of the Mundus Imaginalis that visionary events take place, which are more real than those in the sensory world. For they are more ‘illuminated’ or energized by their proximity to the world of the Immaterial Lights. The Mundus Imaginalis is the world that the spiritual pilgrim encounters in his mystical experiences, the “land of visions” and the “land of resurrection”, where it is possible to be reunited with the soul, with Perfect Nature. And man has access to it by means of a special faculty of the soul, namely the active imagination [6,11].

Suhrawardī has gone down in history as the founder of an illuminationist philosophical tradition—an influential philosophy that has been studied extensively both in the Islamic East and later in the West. But it is remarkable how far and wide in human history we can find references to what he outlined in his emanatory cosmology: the Imaginal World (Mundus Imaginalis), Perfect Nature and Active Imagination. Here are just a few examples [8,10,11,12]:

• In the Zoroastrian tradition, Mundus Imaginalis is referred to as the “Land of the Emerald Cities” or the Eighth Region of the World.
• According to a Sufi tradition originating in Yemen, Khezr-Elijah—the name of Perfect Nature, the Angel of Knowledge, man’s most luminous nature—dwells where the celestial and terrestrial oceans touch.
• Paracelsus spoke of the faculty of imaginatio vera, true imagination, which he urged should not be confused with fantasy.
• Martin Ruland, in his Lexicon alchemiae (1612), stated that “Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body.”
• Jacob Boehme spoke of the Imaginal World in the guises of the “Holy Element” or the “Soul of the World,” where Sophia (wisdom) dwells.
• Carl Gustav Jung observed that the Magnum Opus of alchemy was as much a psychological operation, concerned with self-transformation, as the transmutation of metals. For him, true imagination was a fundamental key to understanding the Great Work. The in-between reality of the Imaginal World he called psychic.

And didn’t even Newton write in his alchemical texts that the real truths are embodied in myths, fables and prophecies [11]?

 

References

[1] https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2020/06/17/from-darkness-into-the-light-metaphors-of-darkness-and-light/
[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Star-Wars-film-series
[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suhrawardi/
[4] Suhrawardi & The Philosophy of Illumination,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbD8vfzsEHA&t=861s
[5] Cheetham, T., All the World An Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings, North Atlantic Books, 2012.
[6] Suhrawardi’s Science of Mystic Lights, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01qrFgEYhqI&t=190s
[7] Surah An-Nur Ayat 35 (24:35 Quran).
[8] https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/Spr2013/entries/suhrawardi/
[9] Rebisse, Chr., Rosicrucian History and Mysteries, Athenaeum Press Ltd, 2007, pp. 110-111, 115.
[10] Cheetham, T., All the World An Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings, North Atlantic Books, 2012, p.68.
[11] Rebisse, Chr., Rosicrucian History and Mysteries, Athenaeum Press Ltd, 2007.
[12] Harpur, P., The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: a history of the imagination, The Squeeze Press 2009, p.123.

Freedom and Will as fundamental: Utpaladeva and Schopenhauer compared

Reading | Comparative Philosophy

Willy Pfändtner, PhD | 2023-11-05

In this essay, the philosophies of two thinkers from very different traditions are compared. One is the Indian philosopher Utpaladeva (c. 925-975) and the other the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). I am well aware of the problems involved in such an attempt and one may question its utility. However, the fact that the two find freedom and will, respectively, as the essence of consciousness, which they view as fundamental reality, I find intriguing. The essay first situates the thinkers in their respective traditions and presents their respective challenges and arguments. Then their views on aesthetics and liberation are compared. The essay is based on a paper presented at the EASR Conference 2022 at University College Cork. The theme of the conference was “Religions and States of Freedom.”

Utpaladeva lived in Kashmir India in the 10^th century. He is a thinker in the nondualist tradition that often goes by the name of Kashmir Shaivism. The Pratyabhijña philosophical system, to which Utpaladeva is a main contributor, is however quite free standing in that it avoids scripturally based assertions. It can be considered the philosophical bases for all Hindu tantrism, and its sophistication seriously challenges the opinion of those who claim that tantrism’s contribution to philosophy is negligible. Utpaladeva considers, and aims to demonstrate, that freedom is the essence of any individual’s consciousness.

The founder of Pratyabijña is known to be Somananda (c. 875-925), and the most well-known representative of the school is Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025), who also commented on the works of Utpaladeva. Due to extensive recent research done by the indologists Raffaele Torella and Isabelle Ratié, it has become clear that Utpaladeva’s contribution to the system has been decisive. Pratyabijña is generally translated as ‘recognition.’ It is an idealist philosophy aiming at realizing our identity with universal consciousness through experience and reason.

I claim that this is not only of historical interest; Idealism, as a relevant metaphysical philosophical standpoint, has recently resurged and challenged physicalism due to developments in, for example, quantum physics and neuroscience. It has also become a possible solution to the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ in the philosophy of mind. As an answer to the problem of how inanimate matter could give rise to consciousness, an utterly different ontological category, many have concluded that consciousness must in some way be fundamental.

One philosopher, who due to these developments has received new attention, is Arthur Schopenhauer. Previously, it is mainly his views on psychology, aesthetics and ethics that have influenced artists as well as thinkers, but now it is his metaphysics that is on the table.

Like Utpaladeva, Schopenhauer is an idealist, which means that he considers consciousness fundamental. The phenomenal world that we can perceive is a representation of universal consciousness. The essence of consciousness is, for Schopenhauer, “Will.”  Utpaladeva considers it to be “Freedom.” The terms “freedom” and “will” are not synonymous, but related, as in the expression “free will.” Both philosophers argue that one can come to their conclusions simply by experience, intuition, and reason.

The cultural and historical situations in which philosophical questions are asked are, of course, of crucial importance, and the meaning of terms and categories may be difficult to translate from one language to another. It is impossible for me to get into the mind of either Utpaladeva or Schopenhaurer. However, I think that a passable comparison of reasoning within fields such as ontology and aesthetics across cultures may be made. And in this context, I find it intriguing to attempt to compare to thinkers, who both are idealists and have different, but at the same time rather similar, ways of characterizing the driving force behind the world. The Sanskrit word that Utpaladeva uses is svatantrya, which can be translated as “absolute freedom.” Schopenhauer uses the German word “Wille” in the sense of “an unbounded will or urge.” Now, I will situate each thinker in the specific context in which his thinking developed.

 

Schopenhauer’s metaphysics

Schopenhauer was firmly rooted in the Western philosophical tradition, mainly influenced by Kant and Plato. But he also acknowledged inspiration from a text called Oupnek’hat, which was a Latin translation of a Persian translation of some of the Upanishads. He was not at all concerned whether the double translation might have altered the meaning. He simply found, and was inspired by, conformities with his own philosophy in the translated text. Like Utpaladeva, he was an independent philosopher, not an exegete.

In his work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation) Schopenhauer builds on Kant’s notion that the phenomenal world is not the world as it is in itself. For Kant, the phenomenal world is viewed through our human spatio-temporal lens. Space and time are not mind-independent realities, and in this Schopenhauer agrees. Kant also claims that our knowledge of the phenomenal world is determined by our twelve human categories of understanding, of which Schopenhauer retains only one, causality.

For Kant, the world as it is in itself, “das Ding an sich,” cannot be known. In this, however, Schopenhauer disagrees. He also disagrees on Kant’s view that it is the thing-in-itself that causes the phenomenal world. Schopenhauer claims that causality can be applied only within the scope of the phenomenal world. And it is according to him also wrong to conceive of the world in itself as an object. But the world as it is in itself can, according to Schopenhauer, be intuitively known as it is experienced. He reasons that for an object to be known there must be a subject. He also states that we must know nature from ourselves, not ourselves from nature. And if we turn to ourselves we can view ourselves as both subject and object; the object being our body and the subject being our inner mind, our conscious self, which cannot be objectified. The latter he characterizes as “will.” Analogically, nature, the outer world, must have an inner world, which is the world in itself, the universal consciousness, which is Will. The phenomenal world that we perceive is the representation of the Will. All living beings are nothing but individuations of Will in different stages of self-awareness. Schopenhauer was delighted when he found this idea in the Upanishads, with the concepts of Brahman and Atman.

Schopenhauer was also influenced by Plato and he makes use of Plato’s ideas to account for the different degrees of the manifestation of Will. They are like universal, timeless prototypes for the various types of objects in the phenomenal world. They are the immediate objectification of Will and are of great significance when it comes to Schopenhauer’s aesthetics. But before I get into that, I will turn to Utpaladeva.

 

Utpaladeva’s metaphysics

Utpaladeva states that his work Ishvarapratyabhijña ( [Treatise on] the Recognition of the Lord) explains truths that are already there in the Shaiva nondualist scriptures. However, in order to engage in the philosophical dialogue with other Indian philosophers at the time, he avoided scripturally based assertions. His opponents accepted the orthodox Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, but the Shaiva scriptures were considered heterodox and were, therefore, rejected. Utpaladeva’s work entailed a revolution within the Shaiva tradition, and Utpaladeva himself called it a “new path” toward liberation.

Like Schopenhauer’s, Utpaladeva’s method starts with looking into ourselves and our immediate inner experiences. By means of a phenomenological and dialectical method, we can realize our identity with God (Shiva) as an all-encompassing consciousness that creates the world merely by imagining it. The essence of our consciousness is none other than the absolute freedom characterizing God’s creativity.

The pan-Indian philosophical debate that Utpaladeva engaged in was partly the long-running controversy between Hindus and Buddhist over the existence of a self (atman) understood as an enduring substance, a notion upheld by the orthodox Brahmanical school of Mimamsa. The permanence of the self was necessary for guaranteeing the possibility of enjoying the result of sacrifice. However, other Hindu schools, such as Samkhya and Vedanta, were rather concerned with liberation from suffering caused by identifying with the body, which is destined to perish. To learn to distinguish between the enduring self and the body was then the path to liberation. For the Buddhists, this was not an option. They held the thesis of universal momentariness, that there is a mistake to believe in an enduring self. This is rather the root of suffering, and realizing that there is no self (nairatmya) is the way to liberation.

Utpaladeva’s main opponents appear to have been the Buddhists. But he also adopts the Buddhist argument against the various Hindu philosophical schools that conceive of the self as some kind of unchanging substance. If the self does not change, it cannot be a knower, because a knower must in some way be affected by the act of knowing. An unchanging self cannot, therefore, be conscious; it must, instead, belong to the same category as insentient things.

Utpaladeva argues that we know from experience that consciousness is free to take on various forms at will. The self (atman) must, therefore, be characterized by the freedom of imagination. It can manifest itself in innumerable forms, as objects, as what it is not, while remaining itself. And this freedom transcends the pure momentariness upheld by the Buddhists.

Against the Buddhists, Utpaladeva argues that even the constant experience of momentariness involves an awareness of the unity of consciousness. He argues that the Buddhists cannot account for memory in a consistent way. Memory can only be understood if the self-awareness of the present is the same as the self-awareness that belonged to the past experience. The self must, therefore, be this lasting experience.

 

Schopenhauer’s aesthetics and liberation

So, for Schopenhauer, the world is essentially Will-to-life that manifests itself in the forces of nature, and all living entities are individuations oF Will, characterized by a never-satisfied or satiated desire or urge, in different degrees of self-awareness. Since this means a constant struggle ending in dissatisfaction, Schopenhauer contends that all life is suffering. However, there are possible instances of respite in aesthetic experiences. And Schopenhauer also suggests a possible way to permanent relief. I will thus summarize his views on aesthetics and liberation.

In his aesthetics, Schopenhauer states that objects of art are Platonic Ideas, the timeless, immediate objectifications of Will. The Ideas are what he calls “intelligible characters,” which means different kinds of striving objectified as inorganic matter, the different species of plants and animals, and human beings. In our ordinary experience, we focus on their particulars and practical relationships to us. But Schopenhauer understands aesthetic experience as a recognition of the universal Idea within the particular, which means distancing oneself from the ordinary desire-filled and suffering-producing individual self. During an esthetic experience, for moment we experience the timeless Idea and become what he calls “a pure subject of knowing.”  The artist is like a genius who can see the universal Idea in the particular and express it in art.

Apart from art, Schopenhauer thinks that contemplating the beauty of nature—for example, a flower or a mountain—can give rise to an aesthetic experience, where one momentarily loses awareness of oneself as an individual. Schopenhauer consider this a knowledge superior to scientific knowledge of the objects of nature and their causal relations. It is a state of “will-less-ness” so to speak.

Music is the highest form of art according to Schopenhauer. It does not reveal Platonic Ideas, but Will itself. It embodies and expresses the whole realm of human feelings—sorrow, horror, joy—as they are in themselves. It is like a copy of the Will. It allows us to apprehend what Will is, and what philosophy is trying to express in concepts. And it can bring about an experience of tranquility and a short-lived measure of salvation.

When it comes to a more permanent freedom from suffering, Schopenhauer advocates that one turn against Will, which demands an insight into the fact that there is nothing but Will. This may sound paradoxical. How can one turn against Will if Will is all there is? What Schopenhauer means is that one must suppress the desires and urges of one’s own self as an individuation of Will. One cannot deny Will as the ground of being. So renunciation in the line of many religious traditions—i.e., the insight that nothing is gained by the strife and struggle of life—is for Schopenhauer the only way to end the suffering. And in this way one can achieve a state of tranquility. This also represents his ethical ideal, since it implies compassion for all beings, resulting from the insight that all are fundamentally one.

 

Utpaladeva’s aesthetics and liberation

When it comes to aesthetics, Utpaladeva’s grand disciple Abhinavagupta is probably the most famous of all Indian philosophers on the subject. His aesthetic theory has had tremendous influence on Indian aesthetics in general. Broadly speaking, there are similarities between Abhinavagupta’s and Schopenhauer’s art theories. Despite there being no Platonic Ideas in Abhinavagupta’s account, he agrees with Schopenhauer on one important topic: art can give temporary relief from the struggles and sufferings of ordinary life. And even though he does not refer to Platonic Ideas, his theory centers on transpersonal experiential states called rasas.

The original meaning of rasa is ‘taste,’ and in this context it could be understood as an intense aesthetic sentiment or mood that transcends the personal. Ordinary emotions may be pleasurable or painful, but rasa is not personal. It is the shared emotion experienced by, for example, the audience of a play, where even the tragic is pleasurable. There are several rasas, including passion, sorrow, humor, fear, etc.; they transcend the emotions of ordinary life and, as in Schopenhauer’s aesthetic experience, provide temporary relief from suffering. Like Schopenhauer, Abhinavagupta considers the possibility of a more permanent relief, a superior rasa that he calls shanta-rasa, the tranquil, blissful realization of one’s true self.

Etymologically, aesthetics has a very wide meaning. It can be seen as the discourse on sense perception in its broadest possible sense. However, it has also become a branch of philosophy that deals with theorizing about the nature of works of art. Abhinavagupta’s art theory is of this later kind, although his paramaguru Utpaladeva did not, as far as we know, develop any such theory. Abhinavagupta’s theory can thus be considered quite freestanding from the Shaiva tradition that he belonged to, and its tantric scriptures. Nonetheless, aesthetics, understood in a broader sense, remains of great importance in Kashmir Shaivism as expressed in, for example, Utpaladeva’s Shivastotravali, where he expresses a strong sense of aesthetic devotion.

In Kashmir Shaivism, the world is a manifestation of the free imagination of Shiva. It is like a play, and every being is an aspect of that freedom and imagination. The recognition of one’s identity with Shiva is realized by ecstatic aesthetic devotion, conceptualized as bhakti-rasa. The beauty of the world is embraced and identified with Shiva. Utpaladeva writes in Shivastotravali (13.15):

You cause everything to shine;
Delighting in your form
You fill the universe with delight;
Rocking with your own bliss (rasa)
You make the whole world a dance with joy

And there is for Utpaladeva no question of renouncing the world. He writes (Shivastotravali 8.3, 8.5):

May there be in me, as there is in common people,
a forceful craving for the objects [of the world],
O Lord, but may I view them as your own body,
In so far as my conceptual divisions have disappeared.

Let my sense faculties, thrilled with delight,
Be attached to their respective objects.
But may there not be, oh Lord, even for an instant,
Any cruel loss of the joy (rasa) of non-differentiation with you.

 

Conclusions

For Schopenhauer, the universal consciousness is a tremendous, forceful Will represented as the phenomenal world. We, as individuations of Will, can find respite from never-ending urges and unsatisfied desires only by instances of aesthetic contemplation or, more permanently, by turning Will against itself through suppressing the desires of our own individual self.

For Utpaladeva, the phenomenal world is created by a universal consciousness through a process similar to the individual subject’s imagination. The quest is to recognize our identity with the universal consciousness as instances of its freedom and imagination. Imagination becomes an experience leading to liberation.

Even if Schopenhauer is considered an atheist, I claim that we here see two ways of seeking liberation represented in many different religious traditions, two existential dispositions that can be characterized as renunciation and dedication, respectively.

In summary,

Utpaladeva:

• Fundamental reality: Universal consciousness (Shiva)
• Intrinsic nature: Freedom, imagination
• Aesthetic ideal: Ecstatic devotion
• Liberation through: Gratification in identification with Shiva
• Existential disposition: Dedication

Schopenhauer:

• Fundamental reality: Universal consciousness
• Intrinsic nature: Will, desire
• Aesthetic ideal: Tranquil contemplation
• Liberation through: Ascetic withdrawal
• Existential disposition: Renunciation

 

Bibliographical References

Cuneo, Daniele. “Denoting and Defusing Desire: From Utpaladeva’s Ecstatic Aesthetics to Abhinavagupta’s Ecumenical Art Theory” in R. Torella & B. Bäumer (eds.), Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition. Delhi: DKPrintworld. 2015

Haberman, David. Acting as a Way of Salvation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1988: Ch. 2.

Higgins, Kathleen. “Schopenhauer, Arthur” in R. Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1995.

Kastrup, Bernardo. Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics. Alresford: iff Books. 2020.

Ratié, Isabelle. “Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta on the Freedom of Consciousness” in J. Ganeri (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2017.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I (transl. E.F.J. Payne). New York: Dover Publications. 2021.

Torella, Raffaele. “The Importance of Utpaladeva” in R. Torella & B. Bäumer (eds.), Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition. Delhi: DKPrintworld. 2015.

Torella, Raffaele (transl.) The Isvarapratyabhijñakarika of Utpaladeva with the Author’s Vrtti: Critical edition and annotated translation. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 2021.

Vasalou, Sophia. Schopenhauer and the Aesthetic Standpoint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013.

Wicks, Robert. Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation: A Reader’s Guide. London: Continuum. 2011.

Finding new paths

Reading | Philosophy

Fred Matser | 2023-10-22

It has become trite to say that ordinary human life has changed much since the time of our prehistoric ancestors. Nonetheless, I feel that most people today don’t actually realize the sheer extent and repercussions of these changes, which have crept into our lives over the centuries. Back in our prehistory, our ancestors’ inner lives were directly integrated with their outer, natural environment. There were no roads, sidewalks, street signs, or even demarcated trails, let alone GPS navigation. Every morning, as our ancestors awoke to go about their activities, a new adventure, a new exploration—quite literally—would begin through uncharted territory. They would have to sense and find their ways in their environment in a manner that has become unimaginable today.

Our ancestors had freedom in a sense lost to us. Now we follow roads, obey street signs and traffic rules, type in addresses in our phones. Every step we take, or kilometer we drive, is one already taken or driven countless other times by countless other humans. To say that we constrain ourselves to beaten paths doesn’t begin to capture the restrictiveness of our situation, or its claustrophobic ethos. Our ways have become fully standardized, as opposed to spontaneous; driven by security and convenience, as opposed to curiosity and wonderment. Life has turned into a business, instead of an adventurous exploration.

Through the course of human history, going about the world has acquired a totally new meaning: now it has nothing anymore to do with interacting—in the true sense of the word—with our natural environment; we hardly sense it, negotiate with it, learn from it, or abide by it. We hardly even notice it. Going about the world today is merely a means to an end: it’s about the destination, not the journey. If we could just teleport from one place to the other, so much the better. But since teleporters are still just science fiction, we’ve done the next best ‘civilized’ thing: we insulate ourselves from our natural environment. We use highways and roofed cars, as opposed to putting our feet on the ground, in the dirt or water, feeling the wind and the warmth of the sun on our skin, smelling the scent of wet earth after the rain.

Our early ancestors, unguided by streets or addresses, had to sense their way through virgin terrain, often never stepped on by another human. The world lay before them as countless possible paths, countless possible interactions, countless ways of seeing and being in the world. To know where they were and where to go next, our early ancestors looked at the position of the sun and other stars, sensed the direction of the wind, became acquainted with natural landmarks and vegetation, observed the behavior of other animals. They were attuned to their environment through senses that have become atrophied in us, for sheer lack of use. For them, it wasn’t all about the destination; it was about a relationship with the world where they were born, and which sustained their lives. Journeys for them were—instinctively—about new discoveries, new ways to relate, new experiences.

But now we no longer experience the richness of our ancestors’ relationship with the world. In the name of safety, efficiency and convenience, we built—and continue to build—cages around ourselves; not only in the form of cars, houses and clothes, but also in the form of those ubiquitous standardized paths. Moreover—and perhaps most critically—this self-imposed confinement is both literal and figurative.

Indeed, as we physically confine ourselves to streets, highways and marked trails, we also mentally and emotionally confine ourselves to standardized ways of thinking and feeling. Human society offers us—in the form of culture—a menu of possibilities: liberalism, conservatism, materialism, spiritualism, communism, socialism, libertarianism and many other ‘isms.’ Each option entails a recipe—endorsed by the authority of labels and groups—for how to think and feel ‘properly.’ These are mental roads, so to speak, defined by words and to which we adhere as carefully as we adhere to the boundaries of a highway. They are tried, tested and therefore vouchsafed. God forbid we deviate from these standardized ways, for then we could lose the protection—and acceptance—of the group.

Without the reassurance we get from the echo chamber of group thinking, we might even question the validity of our own spontaneous feelings and intuitions. So we willingly forfeit our individuality—the unique and original way we have to spontaneously relate to the world, created by nature through billions of years of effort—for the sake of belonging, comfort and safety. As a result, the human adventure becomes more and more impoverished. Its bright original colors turn into bland pastels and, eventually, a mere greyscale. In some places and historical junctures, they have even turned into black and white. This is the tragedy of our situation.

Sometimes we can intuit the original richness and spaciousness of our ancestors’ relationship with the world: have you ever noticed that, while hiking in nature, if you return from the hike along the same trail you used on the way over, you experience the trail in a completely different way? It’s as though it were a different path. And this happens simply because you turned around to look back, instead of forward. Imagine in how many different ways we could experience a little piece of nature if we left the trail altogether, to explore it along different angles? Imagine in how many different ways we could experience life if we departed from the ‘isms’ altogether, and looked upon life according to our own spontaneous, idiosyncratic vantage points? Alas, these days it is hardly possible to be ‘off road’ at whatever level or manner.

This is not to say that all paths are enriching. There are functional and dysfunctional paths, both literally and figuratively. Just as some trails lead us to the edge of an abyss, some ways of thinking are detrimental to life and world alike. But the point is that we lost our freedom to explore, to make uncontrolled choices. We’ve experienced some of this freedom when we were children. And largely thanks to the richness of that relatively unconstrained interaction with the world, which fed our souls in ways we cannot verbalize, our consciousness developed. But as adults, the opportunities for further development of consciousness become restricted by physical and mental roads and maps. We are not expected to find and experience original ways to think, feel and live. Instead, we are expected to conform to the standards available, including the reigning value-system of our culture.

By conforming we doubtlessly increase our safety and comfort. But we also become numb to our outer and inner natures and their unfathomable degrees of freedom. Instead of exploring the world we were born into, our lives turn into repetitive routines and formulas that fail to enrich us. Again and again we go around the same circle, to the point we become only half alive. We do live longer, but a kind of life more akin to surviving than thriving. Senses we originally had as children—a kind of subliminal intuition on the border of perception—become atrophied. And without these senses, our ability to notice and pursue original, functional paths in life becomes diminished. We then find ourselves in a vicious cycle: by constraining ourselves to the standard paths, we lose the very intuitive senses that would allow us to pursue other, original, spontaneous paths. This, regrettably, is the reality we find ourselves in today.

So what can we do? How can we change? Simple things, surprisingly enough, may make all the difference. For instance, a simple daily meditation can help slow our minds, so we are present to the possibilities of the moment in our natural, peaceful state of being. Doing this daily can help wean us off our overwhelming addiction to the businesses and transactions of the anthropocentric world. Moreover, spending more time in nature contributes to wellness and wholeness as well. It re-grounds us in the matrix of our ancestral being, helping us recover lost perspectives.