How do you understand the beingness of nonhuman creation? The idea that all creation is composed of beings rings true for me. At the same time, the actions of animals can seem very instinctual and mechanistic, rocks aren’t doing much of anything etc. Do they possess reason and will? We just can’t quite perceive it?
@AY - We are dealing with assumptions - not perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we assume, and that is affected by the nature of our consciousness.
Almost everybody who lived in history assumed, naturally and spontaneously, that animals and rocks were - to some degree - alive, aware, purposive etc. And you and I did too, when we were young children.
Probably, at least until recently, there were a small minority of people in the modern world (recent or present hunter gatherers, mainly) who saw things this way - at least for much of the time.
It's not about what we perceive, but how we interpret our perceptions - and that is affected by our development, and also by our time (and place) in history.
But there is not much doubt that we Westerners nearly-all spontaneously lose this kind of consciousness during childhood or adolescence, unless it re-emerges from psychotic illness, brain disease, intoxication or suchlike. We are alienated and inhabit a dead, purposeless, meaningless world and life - even when we are religious.
I realized this from around the late 1990s, but could see no way out. It was the work of Owen Barfield that made this clearer to me, theorized it somewhat, and pointed out a possible better future...
Although since OB believed in multiple reincarnation as instrumental and inevitable (whereas I believe in resurrection, for those who want it), I have needed to develop Barfield's ideas to make sense of post-mortal salvation.
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How do you understand the beingness of nonhuman creation? The idea that all creation is composed of beings rings true for me. At the same time, the actions of animals can seem very instinctual and mechanistic, rocks aren’t doing much of anything etc. Do they possess reason and will? We just can’t quite perceive it?
@AY - We are dealing with assumptions - not perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we assume, and that is affected by the nature of our consciousness.
Almost everybody who lived in history assumed, naturally and spontaneously, that animals and rocks were - to some degree - alive, aware, purposive etc. And you and I did too, when we were young children.
Probably, at least until recently, there were a small minority of people in the modern world (recent or present hunter gatherers, mainly) who saw things this way - at least for much of the time.
It's not about what we perceive, but how we interpret our perceptions - and that is affected by our development, and also by our time (and place) in history.
But there is not much doubt that we Westerners nearly-all spontaneously lose this kind of consciousness during childhood or adolescence, unless it re-emerges from psychotic illness, brain disease, intoxication or suchlike. We are alienated and inhabit a dead, purposeless, meaningless world and life - even when we are religious.
I realized this from around the late 1990s, but could see no way out. It was the work of Owen Barfield that made this clearer to me, theorized it somewhat, and pointed out a possible better future...
Although since OB believed in multiple reincarnation as instrumental and inevitable (whereas I believe in resurrection, for those who want it), I have needed to develop Barfield's ideas to make sense of post-mortal salvation.
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