Cosmic Christ

Richard Rohr writes: Trinitarian theology offers us perhaps the best foundation for true interfaith dialogue and friendship we’ve ever had, because now Christians don’t have Jesus as our primary or only trump card. This makes mutual respect and intelligent dialogue with other religions easier and much more natural. Up to now, we’ve generally used Jesus in a competitive way instead of a cosmic way, and thus others hear our Gospel at a tribal, “Come join us—or else” level. This is a far cry from the Universal Christ of Colossians “who reconciles all things to himself . . . in heaven and on earth” (Colossians 1:20). In short, we made Jesus Christ into an exclusive savior instead of the totally inclusive savior he was meant to be. As my friend Brian McLaren likes to put it, “Jesus is the Way—he’s not standing in the way!”

Method of Philosophy

The method of philosophy is rational reflection. Philosophy starts with the experience of facts, events, or phenomena of matter, life and mind. In other words, philosophy employs not only data of sense but also data of consciousness. We can call this a generalised empirical method. (If natural and physical sciences use an empirical method consisting only of data of sense, philosophy uses a generalised empirical method that includes not just data of sense but also data of consciousness.) Philosophical method is not divorced from the world of our common experience, and so its method is empirical. Experience leads to a formulation of hypothesis, and a critical reflection and verification on it to give a satisfactory philosophical judgment. Here, verification does not mean an experiential verification by experiment or observation (as in the natural sciences). Philosophical verification should be consistent with the facts of experience; it must be able to harmonize the judgments of facts with judgments of values.

But what is a method? A method is a normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results. It is not a recipe like for a cake or for making biriyani – yielding the same results again and again. Method is not a set of rules to be blindly followed. It is a framework for collaborative creativity.

Substance and Causality

Space, time, causality and substance are fundamental categories of knowledge. That is why a thing is defined as a substance existing somewhere in space and at a certain point of time having the power to produce changes in other things. Let us in this section try to understand what we mean by the notions of substance and causality.

Substance or Thing
(1) A substance or thing is that which is permanent in the midst of changes--that which remains essentially the same throughout all the successive changes of state which it undergoes in course of time, and sustains and holds these changes together, gives them a certain continuity, connection, and unity.

(2) A substance, regarded as a permanent entity amidst all changes, implies also the notion that it is a centre of effort, energy, and activity. For its permanence implies a continuous effort of self-assertion and self-preservation, which consists in resisting and overcoming the external forces acting upon it. By substances we mean the permanent principle of identity in the midst of change and difference. Qualities and activities exist in it.

(3) A substance has an essence and manifestations. Qualities are the manifestations of a substance. Without qualities it is a meaningless essence, just as qualities are meaningless without a substance.

(4) Things or substances have powers and capacities. They have powers of acting on other things. For instance, water can moisten the soil, fire can burn combustible things. Capacities are the passive, latent powers.

Descartes defines substance as what exits in itself and conceived by itself. For him, God is the absolute substance; mind and matter created by God are relative substances.

Causality
Cause and change are related notions. Why does a change happen? It is produced by its cause. Here we shall discuss only the notion of  causality. It shows that a cause produces an effect, and that a particular cause produces a particular effect. Cause, according to popular conception, can be thought of as a power or force which produces the effect. We are familiar with the dilemma, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Here is an effort to understand the cause-effect relationship. From the very beginning, the investigation of the natural world consisted in the search for the relevant causes of a variety of natural phenomena.

Aristotle recognises four types of things that can be given in answer to a why-question:
(1) The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
(2) The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
(3) The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
(4) The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.

Causality, therefore, is the agency or efficacy that connects one process (the cause) with another process or state (the effect), where the first is understood to be partly responsible for the second, and the second is dependent on the first.

Space and Time

These notions are both puzzling and very interesting. To begin, let us define space as the ordered totality of concrete extensions and time as the ordered totality of concrete durations. (Space, time, causality and substance are fundamental categories of knowledge. That is why a thing is defined as a substance existing somewhere in space and at a certain point of time having the power to produce changes in other things.)

Space
It is characterised by relations like above, below, inside, outside, near, far, distance, here, there, right, left, in front, behind, etc. Space which is perceived is perceptual space; portions of space are perceived by means of vision, active touch, or movement. For example, our experience of the horizon of the sky as touching the ocean or the sea, or the convergence of a road or a highway are all perceptions of space. From the many perceptual spaces we may gradually frame a concept of space. It is perceived as shape, size, distance, etc. It is the ground of co-existence of things.

Therefore, we can say that the notion of space has the following characteristics:
(1) Space is one: particular spaces are all parts of one space.
(2) It is infinite.
(3) It is infinitely divisible.
(4) It is continuous.
(5) It has three dimensions: length, breadth, and depth or distance.
(6) Things exist in space.

Descartes identifies space with extension. It is not a real substance, but an attribute of matter. According to him, extension is the essence of matter.

Time
Now, let us discuss the notion of time. It is characterised by relations like now, then, soon, recently, long ago, today, after, etc. One can also think of time in connection with such questions as what is the time, what is the date, how soon, how long ago. On that basis one arrives at the Aristotelian definition that time is the number or measure determined by the successive equal stages of a local movement. It is a number when one answers three o'clock or January 26, 1969. It is a measure when one answers three years or 1969 years. One can push this line of thought further by asking whether there is just one time for the universe, or, on the other hand, there are many distinct times as there are distinct local movements. According to Einstein, there are as many standard times as there are inertial reference frames that are in relative motion.

Besides the above, there are other questions concerned with "now." Aristotle asked whether there is a succession of "nows" or just a single "now." It may be described as the meeting point of the immediate past and the immediate future; it emerges from the immediate past and grows/flows into the immediate future. It is not a mathematical instant but a duration filled with an event. There results what is called the psychological present, which is not an instant, a mathematical point, but a time-span, so that our experience of time is sometimes a "leisurely" now and sometimes a rapid succession of overlapping time-spans. The past is known by memory and the future is known by expectation. Only from such a perceptual time can we move to notion of time which is an ordered totality of concrete extensions.

The notion of time thus can be said to have the following characteristics:
(1) Time is one: particular times are all parts of one time.
(2) It is infinite.
(3) Time is also infinitely divisible.
(4) It is continuous.
(5) It has only one dimension. It is irreversible. The flow of time cannot be reversed.
(6) Time is filled with events. We cannot think of time apart from succession of events, outer or inner.

According to Henri Bergson, time is duration, or change, the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future. It is the vehicle of perceptual novelty. It is very heart of reality.

We become what we behold!

We always become what we behold. We become what we eat; we become what we read; we become what we take in; we become what we see. I am now a part of what I am trying to see. It’s exactly the principle: We know by what we are. Our perceptions are nothing but the projections of my depth – both conscious and “unconscious” (=twilight consciousness). I see what I project on to reality. Potentially, everything in the universe becomes a mirror.

The Village by the Sea by Anita Desai

The Village by the Sea is set in a small village called Thul, a village which is near to Alibagh. It is a story about the life of a family of six which consists of the parents and their four children; Lila, Hari, Kamal and Bela. Lila, the eldest child among four siblings, is thirteen years old, yet she already has the maturity of an adult. Lila’s family represents the typical lives of families in the small fishing village of Thul. While other children are fortunate enough to have parents or at least the fathers to go fishing and provide food for them, Lila’s siblings have to survive on their own since their mother is sick while their father has always been drunk. For that reason, Lila plays the role as the mother by doing the house work. Her brother Hari, just twelve, is the only person with whom she can share her troubles. He works in the field behind their hut.Their mother is ill and needs constant care and nursing. She is anaemic due to malnourishment and she grows weaker and weaker with each passing day. Their father, who has been out of work for months, is in a permanent drunken stupor. With two younger sisters to take care of as well as their mother, life for Lila and Hari is not easy. Their father is not very useful as he is often away at the local toddy shop, getting drunk. There is a constant need for money as the family is almost always in debt.

One day, Hari is being told by his good friend, Ramu that their fishing village is going to transform into an industrial place with many factories to be built. Since that, he keeps thinking about the idea that the factories would give the villagers new jobs. However, Hari is not sure about the idea since it seems to take long time for the transformation to happen that he should think of another way to earn a living. Then one day, Hari decides he has had just about enough and decides to leave for Bombay – the Bombay where dreams come true and ambition yields. Hari leaves for Mumbai secretly, leaving Lila the full responsibility to take care of the family. She is left alone to manage her sisters Bela and Kamal, as well as her mother, and somehow keep the family strings together. Help comes from an unexpected source, the rich de Silva's.

 There, Hari builds a strong friendship with Mr. Panwallah, the lovable watch repairer whose shop is just beside Jagu’s. Through his experience with Mr. Panwallah and Jagu and the chain of events that take place in Bombay, Hari realises that he should return to his village with savings and help his family overcome their hardships.

Meanwhile, in Bombay, Hari works at Sri Krishna Eating House owned by Jagu, a kind person, and he is also a watchman of the de Silva’s house in Bombay. Hari being new in the great city of Bombay, and all alone, Jagu takes pity on him and welcomes him to work in his restaurant. De Silva has a vacation house in Thul and he knows Hari since Hari used to help him to settle down in Thul. While working at the restaurant, Hari builds a good relationship with a watch mender, Mr. Panwallah who then teaches him watch mending. Hari acquires the skill that he manages to repair a watch of Mr. Panwallah’s customer and make money for that. Mr. Panwallah inspires Hari to learn the skill so that one day it could be useful for him to earn a better living.

Meanwhile, Lila and her sisters Bela and Kamal are doing well since the de Silva’s family come for summer vacation in Thul. They work for the family like Hari used to during his presence. Mr. de Silva is the one who sends their mother to the hospital in Alibagh when Lila asks for his help. Their father turns over a new leaf, and accompanies their mother throughout her seven month treatment without drinking and without having any debts. After that, a bird researcher Sayyid Ali replaces Mr. de Silva’s place to stay at the house but Lila and her sisters still continue their job at the house. 

It has been seven months since Hari left his village and it is right before Diwali that Hari goes back to Thul, surprising his sisters with the money he has earned. He eagerly tells them everything that has happened in Bombay and his dream of building better life for them in Thul. He plans to adapt with the transformation which is soon to take place by working on poultry farm first. His watch mending skill would make him money when the factories are built since people from town who wear watches will come and stay in Thul to work. Hari also has been told by Lila about their father’s change and their mother’s health condition. That year, their family celebrate Diwali much better than the previous years. Their mother has been discharged from the hospital and their father is not drinking anymore.

Anita Desai has explicitly described in her very own style of writing how Hari in the dilapidated conditions of the Sri Krishna Eating House finds warmth and affection through Mr Panwallah-owner and watchmender of the Ding-Dong watch shop. Mr Panwallah instills confidence in Hari and comforts him when he is terribly home sick. He even gives Hari a vivid and inspiring future and teaches him watchmending .This shows that even in one of the most busiest, rickety and ramshackled cities such as Bombay (now Mumbai) there is still hope, love and affection.

"The Relique" by John Donne

The Relique is a poem in which Donne makes fun of the superstitions attached to the 'purely' platonic ideas of love; he also manages to satirize the society's blind prohibition against the attachment between the sexes. (Satire = A poem or prose composition in which prevailing vices or follies are held up to ridicule or scorn; or a vein of such mockery found incidentally in many kinds of literary work, especially comic drama and fiction.) The persona addresses his beloved, with whom he has not yet been allowed to be intimate. They have only kissed out of the courtesy at meeting and parting, but not yet otherwise.

He has taken a strand of hair from the lady out of love; and he has bound it around his wrist. Now he imagines that after some centuries, when superstitious people dig up the grave in order to bury another dead body, they will find this strand of hair around his wrist (still not decayed!) and begin to make myths about it. The digger will interpret that the man (the speaker, when dead and dug up) had bound the strand of hair of his beloved so as to make it magically possible for him to meet his beloved (whose hair is magical). He will take that bone and hair to the king and the bishop and request them to declare the two as saints of love.

It is funny that the two have done nothing of the sort in reality. The speaker implicitly requests the lady not to worry because at least that kind of canonization might happen in the future. Those foolish people will regard the hair and bones as things for doing miracle by the lovers; to the man, however, the miracle is a different one. He does regard that his beloved is a real miracle. He is writing the present poem to tell the truth to those who will read and know the reality of those future times when people will make nonsense myths out of such incidents. In a sense, the poem is a satire on the superstitious ideas of love and magic, rather than believing in the actual contact and attachment between man and woman.

The 'relic' of the title refers to the hair and bone that people will declare relic out of superstitious belief. (A relic means 'a thing belonging to a person who is believed to possess saintly or magical power preserved for its religious or magical value'.) The poem is a pure product of fancy. The persona here comes close to being critical of the lady who seems to have allowed nothing more than formal kisses and a strand of hair a keepsake. We know that, physical contact, in Donne's philosophy of love, is essential even for spiritual love and physical contacts are not absent even from this admirable lyric. There is, to the man, first the bracelet of the beloved's hair tied round the lover's wrist, and thus uniting him physically as well as spiritually to her. Secondly, there are kisses which he could exchange. Further, the poet expressly states that a love which is purely spiritual is a miracle of nature, and not an ordinary human achievement. The lyric is based on a tension between spiritual and physical love and the tension is not resolved.

The poem is perhaps one of the most subtle and implicit works in Donne's corpus.

Love and Failure

"If your only goal is to love, then there is no such thing as failure." (Richard Rohr)
Love doesn't expect the other to change; it changes you. Love changes everything.

Heidegger's Existentialism

Existentialism has the basic tenet that existence precedes essence. Soren Kierkegaard is the father of existentialism.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is one of the Big Four of the existentialists; the other three being Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, and Karl Jaspers. Martin Heidegger was born in a devout Catholic family at Messkirch, Baden, Germany. He was so attached to his home soil, that he even refused lucrative offers at Bonn and Munich. At the age of seventeen, he read Franz Bentano's dissertation. This was one of his first awkward attempts to penetrate into philosophy. Bentano deals with the question "Ti to on" (What is being?) in this work.

In 1913 he completed his Ph.D. He then enlisted himself in the war though only for two months. Heidegger was a Greek scholary, an expert in medieval philosophy (especially Duns Scotus). He was also interested in mathematics.  In 1917 he was back in the army, then he married Elfride Petri. Between 1920 and 1923 he was assistant to Husserl in Freiburg. In 1927 he hastily published Being and Time, only to revise it in 1953. Heidegger succeeded Husserl in 1928, and became the Rector of the university in 1933.

One of the darkest and the most painful moments for many biographers is to deal with Heidegger's support of Adolf Hitler. Though his support of Hitler lasted only ten months, some can never forgive him that. Heidegger wouldn't dismiss the opposing professors in the university, he eventually resigned his post. In 1944 he was even sent to dig trenches by the same Nazi regime. After 1945 Heidegger retired.

Some of his notable friends were W.K. Heisenberg, Hannah Arendt, Rudolf Bultmann, and Viktor Frankl.

A major hurdle in understanding Heidegger would be his language - poetic, flowery, twisted, and even convoluted. Heidegger is difficult, often obscure. Even a fellow German would find him difficult. E.g., Die Welt weltet (= The world worlds); Things think; Blessing muses. Hannah Arendt calls him a "secret king of thought." Heidegger had an old eagle's mind.

Here we shall deal with the following four topics:
(a) Being
(b) Dasein: Understanding and Truth
(c) Being-in-the-World
(d) Authenticity

Being
Heidegger was concerned about the ontological question about the originary meaning of being and its main articulations. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche was the last great metaphysician of the West. He was pre-Socratic in his thought. In fact, Heidegger, along with Nietzsche, considers the pre-Socratic age as the golden age. The pre-Socratics, especially Parmenides, engaged in the study of Being, not beings. After that in the West, there has been a forgetfulness of Being. Heidegger says we have forgotten what it is to attend to Being, for we have lost our amazement at Being, our wonder. Being is a wonder, something wonderful, and yet we do not feel that wonder any more. Modern man does not understand the question of Being.

Therefore, true metaphysics should focus on existence, not existents or concretely existing things. Unfortunately in history we see metaphysics has been involved in distractions by abandoning the original quest to focus on Being, existence. (Let us not forget his attempt at understanding Franz Bentano's dissertation which dealt with the question "What is being?") So to correct this wrong approach, according to Heidegger, the conventional usage of words need to be broken.

Heidegger grew up not far from the centre of Black Forest and retained a deep love for earth and soil (Grund) of his native place.

We can never come upon pure existence as such.

Dasein: Understanding and Truth
Since Be-ing  (the to-be) does not manifest itself directly, we must settle for questioning it through a manifestation of it. This is best provided by the human person, der Mann. S/he is the best link between beings and Be-ing; s/he is the Dasein (there-to-be).

"Dasein" is a term coined by Heidegger. In German "da" means "there" and "sein" means "to be" or "Sein" means "being." So literally we can Dasein is "there-to-be." Dasein therefore signifies presence, thereness, thrownness.

The human person is the only being that questions Be-ing. S/he is Existenz; s/he ex-sists; s/he is the only being that has a greater role with regard to consciousness in this world.

The analytic of Dasein, therefore, is a central feature of Heidegger’s thought. Dasein becomes important because of its peculiar ontological structure. It is characteristically different from other entities, as it has an understanding of Being and can raise the question of Being. In other words, in its being, this being itself is an issue for it. Heidegger says that Dasein understands itself in its being. Another feature that distinguishes Dasein from other entities is the fact that it is a being-in-the-world. Dasein finds itself in the world, but in a very different way than other entities are in it. Dasein’s comporting to the world is different. It understands the world as a range of possibilities and it always has understood itself in terms of its possibilities.

This factor makes Dasein’s engagements with the world and its entities very different. It cannot escape from the world, as its facticity and throwness are inevitable and inescapable. But again, as mentioned above, its relationship with the world is also different. Unlike other entities it needs a world populated with entities for it to engage with.

Now, what is "understanding" for Heidegger? According to Heidegger, human understanding takes its direction from the fore-understanding deriving from its particular existential situation, and this fore-understanding stakes out the thematic framework and parameters of every interpretation. Rarely has anyone given much thought to the question of what this fore-structure is really “fore” to, and so (to put it awkwardly) the “wherefore” or “thereafter” of the fore-structure has remained for the most part in the dark. Forestructure is “fore” to assertion, if not language itself. Fore-structure means, then, that human Dasein is characterised by an interpretive tendency special to it that comes be-fore every statement. It has a fundamental character of care but very often concealed by the fact that propositional judgments tend to take centre stage.

For Heidegger, understanding should be divested itself of its purely "epistemic" character. Earlier, understanding had been understood as a theoretical intelligere that concerned itself with construing meaningful entities in an intelligible manner. But for Heidegger such epistemological understanding is secondary and derivative from a still more universal hermeneutical understanding. This understanding is "being at home with something" (sich auf etwas verstehen), which refers to a kind of understanding that is more like readiness or facility than knowledge. It is a "knowing one's way around." "To understand something" in this sense means to be equal to or master of it. This understanding is a mastery or an art. For instance, we understand how to get along with people, to care for things, to kill time, and so forth, without having any special knowledge at our disposal. This "practical" understanding Heidegger calls "existential" because it is a way of existing, a fundamental mode of being, by the power of which we deal with and try to find our way around in our world. This everyday understanding almost always remains implicit.

Being-in-the-World
A human individual is not solitary or alone, s/he is a being-in-the-world, i.e., s/he finds herself within a group of other men and women. Dasein is also "Mitsein" (being-with). Being in a group is always a mixed blessing - sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse. That is, one could become one among the crowd, and abandon the quest. In other words, there is a possibility that instead of being der Mann, s/he could settle down to be an anonymous, impersonal "one," das Man. In other words, while Everydayness is the lived context of Dasein's being-in-the-world, ironically it also refers to the natural tendency of Dasein to conceal things, to regard them superficially often accepting what everyone say about them. This propensity of Dasein to dissipate itself in the crowd is expressed through Heidegger's notion of das Man (the 'They'). Das Man renders everything common, comparable, interchangeable. A levelling effect takes place; all that is unique and creative is stifled. A certain drive towards homogeneity takes place, which in turn encourages mediocrity and complacency. Because of Dasein's already constituted immersion in this they-self, Dasein automatically and unreflectively surrenders its own potentiality for being a true Self in order to dwell in tranquillized familiarity. In short, the they-self relieves Dasein of the burden of its own Being.

The human person therefore has two choices: either to take responsibility as der Mann (der Mann implies authentic Existenz) or surrender to anonymity and be lost in the crowed as das Man (das Man implies inauthentic Existenz). The former signifies personal conviction, the latter false security and assurance.

Sorge (concern, care) for the other is basic to man's being. According to Heidegger the very structure of Dasein's being is one of care. "Dasein's Being is care." Moreover, man is a care-taker, shepherd, and is thus open to Being. He has a vague notion of Being already. However hazy, he can develop and deepen this notion.

Throwness (Dasein's facticity) also implies finitude and abandonment. Being is therefore finite and temporal according to Heidegger. (Remember the title of his magnum opus: Being and Time.) This also signifies that man is destined for death, which creates an existential experience of Angst (dread). On the face of this experience, the human person has again two responses: to be authentic or to be inauthentic. Acceptance and recognition of his finitude is needed from the part of man. That is an authentic response.

Authenticity
It is Heidegger who is most instrumental in making the question of human authenticity prominent within and without philosophical circles. For Heidegger the importance of authenticity (conversio vitae) resides in the need to provide a foundation for fundamental ontology - the question of Being. We have already mentioned the dialectic of authenticity and inauthenticity in our discussion above. Authentic historicity is by overcoming such a dialectical relationship and thus bring to light the truth of human existence.

(Sources: Cyril Desbruslais, Western Philosophy Notes; Brian J. Braman, Meaning and Authenticity.)