Would you agree that the historical background of the development of the mind-body split from the initial unified animist world in which the pre-historics (and several lineages here and there that have survived over the globe) lived parallels, perhaps even chronologically, the development of monotheistic beliefs in a Personified God in Heaven as distinctly separate from earthly life (with only later attempts to re-introduce "Him/Her/They" as pervading this "lower world"), though perhaps also in the polytheistic world in which those original life spirits of nature - trees, wind, rain, etc. - became personified in the various "gods"?
“Prehension unifies causality, perception and memory into a single notion of feeling…..our bodies feel causal efficiency directly.” This echoes Michael Polanyi’s understanding of our bodies as the earliest immediate tool our awareness uses to interact with the world. With experience, this becomes what he calls tacit or silent awareness or knowing(how to balance on a bike or have a deep conversation while driving on a freeway.)
As we develop expertise with the use of extended tools, this extends our tacit awareness (feeling the end of a surgeon’s scissors inside a wound). Neurologists call this proprioception but that does not explain how it works.
Imagination (image-making) can also be an extended tool (Henri Corbin). Einstein imagined what it would be like to ride on a wave of light. That coordinated with his other tacit knowledge and he knew he was right about special relativity.
On a separate but related point, I think it important to distinguish between feeling and emotion. Emotion is an embodied response to a feeling. It was manifested in Einstein’s ah-ha.
I am a bit surprised, Matt, that you seemed a bit surprised that de Chardin considered humankind as a "fourth kingdom." I have not read his work, but I am assuming that he bases this on the ancient Four Fundamental Elements system - Fire, Air, Water, Earth (from highest to lowest, though some traditions list Air before Fire) - that were accepted knowledge until the modern scientific revolution and remain so in some religious/mystical traditions (e.g., the kabbalah) as well as in astrology (and in R. Steiner's writings as well), but most importantly for this point, paralleling them are the Four Kingdoms of Mineral, Plant, Animal and Human. This does not in any way mean that humans are not "animals" in many ways, but are a specific, higher expression of the lower, more inclusive Animal Kingdom just as all plants are "minerals" (= all inert material) that have been subsumed into biological life forms.
Fabulous post! I love that you think "divine consciousness evolves." And a lot of other great stuff.
Hi Matt,
Would you agree that the historical background of the development of the mind-body split from the initial unified animist world in which the pre-historics (and several lineages here and there that have survived over the globe) lived parallels, perhaps even chronologically, the development of monotheistic beliefs in a Personified God in Heaven as distinctly separate from earthly life (with only later attempts to re-introduce "Him/Her/They" as pervading this "lower world"), though perhaps also in the polytheistic world in which those original life spirits of nature - trees, wind, rain, etc. - became personified in the various "gods"?
“Prehension unifies causality, perception and memory into a single notion of feeling…..our bodies feel causal efficiency directly.” This echoes Michael Polanyi’s understanding of our bodies as the earliest immediate tool our awareness uses to interact with the world. With experience, this becomes what he calls tacit or silent awareness or knowing(how to balance on a bike or have a deep conversation while driving on a freeway.)
As we develop expertise with the use of extended tools, this extends our tacit awareness (feeling the end of a surgeon’s scissors inside a wound). Neurologists call this proprioception but that does not explain how it works.
Imagination (image-making) can also be an extended tool (Henri Corbin). Einstein imagined what it would be like to ride on a wave of light. That coordinated with his other tacit knowledge and he knew he was right about special relativity.
On a separate but related point, I think it important to distinguish between feeling and emotion. Emotion is an embodied response to a feeling. It was manifested in Einstein’s ah-ha.
I am a bit surprised, Matt, that you seemed a bit surprised that de Chardin considered humankind as a "fourth kingdom." I have not read his work, but I am assuming that he bases this on the ancient Four Fundamental Elements system - Fire, Air, Water, Earth (from highest to lowest, though some traditions list Air before Fire) - that were accepted knowledge until the modern scientific revolution and remain so in some religious/mystical traditions (e.g., the kabbalah) as well as in astrology (and in R. Steiner's writings as well), but most importantly for this point, paralleling them are the Four Kingdoms of Mineral, Plant, Animal and Human. This does not in any way mean that humans are not "animals" in many ways, but are a specific, higher expression of the lower, more inclusive Animal Kingdom just as all plants are "minerals" (= all inert material) that have been subsumed into biological life forms.