- Title
- Virtual ontology/real experiences
- Creator
- Semetsky, Inna
- Relation
- Metanexus Conference 2009: Cosmos, Nature, Culture: A Transdisciplinary Conference. Metanexus Conference 2009: Paper Presenters (Phoenix, AZ 18-21 July 2009)
- Relation
- http://www.metanexus.net/conference2009/abstract/Default.aspx?id=10844
- Publisher
- Metanexus Institute
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2009
- Description
- In the philosophical literature the ability to know oneself and God as One is usually delegated to the mystical realm as based on the apparent impossibility of connecting the human with the divine in practical experience. Such a connection is often posited as being “beyond the limit of all human understanding”. This paper’s argument is that while this connection may seem to exceed human understanding, it does not have to remain as such. To construct the argument of how to overcome the great divide separating the human from the divine, the paper will examine three sources crossing over philosophy and natural science and grounded on a common foundation represented by the logic of the included middle. The first is B. Nicolescu’s program of transdisciplinarity. The second is the cutting edge of contemporary science called coordination dynamics that posits the natural world in terms of “The Complementary Nature”. The third is a corpus of work by Gilles Deleuze whose ontology of the virtual and method of transcendental empiricism constitute the focus of this paper. Deleuze’s ontology expands the limits of our understanding and perception and posits Being in terms of two enfolded levels of reality: virtual and actual. The actualization of the virtual potentialities in real experience is what enables us to make connections between different levels of reality and create an epistemic access to a transpersonal dimension. Such connection or bridge is established by virtue of transversal communication that functions on the basis of the logic of the included middle. Deleuze’s method of transcendental empiricism enriches human experience with a religious or spiritual dimension, especially if we understand the meaning of re-ligio literally as a self-referential process linking backward to the origins. Passing through a transpersonal dimension enables us to develop a transrelational attitude leading to holistic intelligence encompassing such experience. Hence, it is in the reality of our human experiences that transversal connection as a necessary condition for the mystical principle of coincidentia oppositorum can be established. A (supposedly) mystical experience would be, in Deleuze’s terms, an event of the actualization of the potentialities or awakening of human perception by raising it to a new power oriented towards a virtual (yet real) object. The paper will conclude by demonstrating a practical example of “the included middle” that establishes transversal communication andenriches our experience with deeper, spiritual, dimension thus expanding the limits of human understanding. We become able to know Self and Other (other minds; God, Nature, etc.) as One.
- Subject
- transdisciplinarity; coordination dynamics; Deleuze; transversal communication
- Identifier
- uon:9153
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/920435
- Full Text
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