181 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
181 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
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| File Name : BRUNTON1.ASC | Online Date : 09/14/94 |
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| Contributed by : Jerry Decker | Dir Category : BIOLOGY |
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| From : KeelyNet BBS | DataLine : (214) 324-3501 |
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| KeelyNet * PO BOX 870716 * Mesquite, Texas * USA * 75187 |
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| A FREE Alternative Sciences BBS sponsored by Vanguard Sciences |
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147/162 05 Sep 89 18:00:56
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From: Mike Carrillo
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To: Everyone
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Subj: The Intellect
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Attr:
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The following are a few thoughts on the intellect taken from The Notebooks
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of Paul Brunton, Volume 1...
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Most of us move from one standpoint to another, whether it be a lower or a
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higher one, because our feelings have moved there. The intellect merely records
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and justifies such a movement and does not originate it.
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Intellect, reason, and intelligence are not convertible terms in this
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teaching. The first is the lowest faculty of the trio, the third is the
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highest, the second is the medial one. Intellect is logical thinking based on a
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partial and prejudiced collection of facts. Reason is logical thinking based on
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all available and impartially collected facts. Intelligence is the fruit of a
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union between reason and intuition.
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Logic is always beset by the serious charge that its so-called truths are
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fallacious ones. For instance, it insists on the law of contradiction, the law
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which says that a statement of facts cannot be true and false at the same time.
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But the careful study of illusions produces conclusions which falsify this law.
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We do not mean by this criticism to declare logic to be useless. We mean only
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what we have elsewhere written, that it is a good servant but a bad master.
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Right thinking is not only an intellectual quality; it is almost a moral
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virtue.
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Shallow thought, superficial reasoning, is the means to bondage, but hard
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thinking, deep reasoning, is the means to freedom.
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Reasoned thinking may contribute in two ways to the service of mystical
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intuition and mystical experience. First and commonest is a negative way. It
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can provide safeguards and checks against their errors, exaggerations,
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vageries, and extravagancies. Second and rarest is a positive and creative way.
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It can lead the aspirant to its highest pitch of abstract working and then
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invite its own displacement by a higher power.
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It is fallacious to believe that clear and precise intellectual expression
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is inimical to, and hence unable to accompany, inspired and flashing mystical
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experience. It is true that many mystics have been intellectually hindered and
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limited and that this simplicity made their ascent easier. But it is not true
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that such a one-sided development will be the end of man's story. It is the
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whole of life which has to be experienced, and which the universal laws force
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everyone to experience in the end. The growth of intelligence -- of which
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intellect is a limited but necessary part -- can only be put aside or avoided
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for a time, not for all time.
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We do not overcome our doubts by supressing them, we do not meet our
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misgivings by denying them, and we do not refute falsehood by shirking
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questions which happen to be inconvenient.
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When intelligence is applied so thoroughly as to yield a whole view and
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not merely a partial view of existence, when it is applied so persistently as
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to yield a steady insight into things rather than a sporadic one, when it is
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applied so detachedly as to be without regard to personal preconceptions, and
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when it is applied so calmly that feelings and passions cannot alter its
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direction, then and only then does a man become truly reasonable and capable of
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intellectually ascertaining truth.
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PEACE/Mike
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---
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* Origin: WeirdBase * St. Louis, MO * 1-314-741-2231 * (Opus 1:100/523)
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SEEN-BY: 101/192 102/862 104/422 109/114 128/50 301/9 304/1 3
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SEEN-BY: 308/60 343/22 30163/150
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148/162 05 Sep 89 18:32:22
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From: Mike Carrillo
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To: Everyone
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Subj: The Intellect II
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Attr:
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------------------------------------------------
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The following are a few thoughts taken from The Notebooks of Paul Brunton,
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Volume 1...
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Intellect can perceive what belongs to reality, not reality itself. The
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metaphysician deludes himself into thinking that he has seen the world in all
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its varied aspects, but what he has really seen is the world in all its
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intellectual aspects only. Moreover when he thinkings that he has put together
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the results of one science with another, uniting them all into a harmonious
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whole, he omits to reckon that such are the limitation of human capacity and
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scientific knowledge, that no man could ever combine all the multitudinous
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results. He could never acquire an intimate knowledge of them during a single
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lifetime. Therefore he could never develop a complete philosophy of the
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universe as a whole.
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The intellect fulfils itself practically when it discovers that each idea
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it produces is incomplete and imperfect and therefore passes on to replace it
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by a further one, but it fulfils itself metaphysically when it discovers that
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ever idea which it can possibly produce will always and necessarily be
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incomplete and imperfect.
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Now so far as they are almost entirely metaphysical works, these two
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volumes have no option but to make their appeal chiefly to reason alone. And
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expounding the special and unique system called the metaphysics of truth as
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they do, they have to start where possible from verifiable facts rather than
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mere speculations. But whatever other importance they ascribe to reasoning as
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an instrument of truth-attainment applies only to the particular stage for
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which it is prescribed, which is the stage of metaphysical discipline and
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certainly not beyond it. Although the status bestowed on reason in every
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metaphysical system beginning with science must necessarily be a primary one,
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its status within the larger framework of the integral hidden teaching can only
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be a secondary one. This teaching possesses a larger view and does not end with
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science or limit itself to the rational standpoint alone. How can it do so when
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metaphysics is merely its intermediate phase? We must rightly honour reason to
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its fullest extent, but we need not therefore accept the unreasonable doctrine
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that the limits of reason constitutes the limits of truth.
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Our senses can perceive only what they have been formed to perceive. Our
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reason similarly cannot grasp what it was never formed to grasp. Within their
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legitimate spheres of operation, the deliverances of both sense and reason
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should be acceptable to us, but outside those spheres we must seek for
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something that transcends both.
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But the basic cause why reason is insufficient exists in the fact that
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intellect -- the instrument with which it works -- is itself insufficient.
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Reason is the right arrangement of thinking. Each thought thus arranged depends
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for its existence on another thought and is unable to exist without such a
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relation, that is, it suffers from relativity. Hence a thought cannot be
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considered as an ultimate in itself and therefore reason cannot know the
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absolute. The intellect can take the forms of existence apart bit by bit and
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tell us what they consist of. But such surgical dissection cannot tell us what
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existence itself is. This is something which must be experienced, not merely
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thought. It can explain what has entered into the composition of a painting
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but, as may be realized if we reflect a little, it cannot explain why we feel
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the charm of the painting. The analytic intellect describes reality
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sufficiently to give some satisfaction to our emotions of our intelligence, but
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it does not touch this bafflinf elusive reality at all. What it has dissected
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is not the living throbbing body but the cold dead image of it.
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---
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* Origin: WeirdBase * St. Louis, MO * 1-314-741-2231 * (Opus 1:100/523)
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SEEN-BY: 101/192 102/862 104/422 109/114 128/50 301/9 304/1 3
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SEEN-BY: 308/60 343/22 30163/150
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149/162 05 Sep 89 18:51:44
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From: Mike Carrillo
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To: Everyone
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Subj: The Intellect III
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Attr:
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When reason tells us that God is, it does not actually know God. The
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antennae of intellectual research cannot penetrate into the Overself because
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thinking can only establish relations between ideas and thus must forever
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remain int he realms of dualities, finitudes, and individualities. It canot
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grasp the whole but only parts. Therefore reason which depends on thinking is
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incompetent to comprehend the mysterious Overself. Realization is to be
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experienced and felt; thought can only indicate what it is likely to be and
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what it is not likely to be. Hence Al Ghazzali, the Sufi, has said: "To define
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drunkenness, to know that it is caused by vapours that rise from the stomach
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and cloud the seat of intelligence, is a different thing from being drunk. So I
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found ultimate knowledge consists in experiences rather than definitions." The
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fact that metaphysics tries to exlain all existence in intellectual terms along
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tries to force human nature into conceptual molds, causes it to suppress or
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distort the non-intellectual elements in both. The consequence it that
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metaphysics along cannot achieve an adequate understanding. If it insists upon
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exhalting it own results, then it achieves misunderstanding.
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... There is more, but I'm out of time and I'm sure many of you are
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getting bored, so I'll end this post on The Intellect...
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Peace/Mike
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---
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* Origin: WeirdBase * St. Louis, MO * 1-314-741-2231 * (Opus 1:100/523)
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SEEN-BY: 101/192 102/862 104/422 109/114 128/50 301/9 304/1 3
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SEEN-BY: 308/60 343/22 30163/150
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