The Purpose Of This

A Paradigm Is Like A Complex Die Thru Which Experiences Are Extruded, A Cognitive Frame Limits What Is Real — Anything Else Falls Aside

I started The Way Of Unsaying with a suggestion that we are each inculcated with a body of ideas that structure our every thought and experience — and that it doesn’t matter if you come to reject these ideas because your mind and your language are already infected by them. Such a body of ideas can be called a paradigmatic understanding, or just a paradigm.

“Paradigm” is normally defined as a philosophical and theoretical framework in which theories, laws, and generalizations are formulated. First of all, I want to point out that this definition is much too flaccid, because it excludes the most imposing aspect of our enculturation and inculcation: a paradigm — at least in the sense of the understanding that it inculcates within each of us — is a very visceral and intimate structuring of our ideas. This is the sense in which I am using this word — it’s not like a piece of clothing you can take off, and put something else more appealing, or in vogue, on in its place. Instead, it is like a very complex die through which most of our experiences is extruded, and those that aren’t fall to the wayside.

I want you to focus in particular upon a paradigm being a ‘theoretical framework in which theories are formulated’, as this is the telltale that proves the point I wish to bring into the open. A new theory can only be formulated in a way that is coherent with the current theoretical structure of your inculcated paradigm — and this includes formulating any new paradigm.

There are many efforts underway today to discover a new paradigm for science, which now operates under a paradigm of mechanistic materialism. This is fleshed-out in the “Galileo Commission Report,” of the Scientific and Medical Network, which was founded in 1973 in the UK. Their report summarizes the current paradigm, which I refer to as Mechanistic Materialism, as:

The prevalent underlying assumptions, or world model, of the majority of modern scientists (who) are narrowly naturalist in metaphysics, materialist in ontology and reductionist-empiricist in methodology.⁠¹

The report goes on to develop the general outline of what such what a new paradigm, or ‘world model’, will have to comprise in order to expand the range of scientific inquiry. The difficulty, evident from the on-going efforts of the SMN, and other efforts like it globally, is that after a half century, they have still not worked out such a new paradigm, but only have suggestions of what its form might take. This is not their failure, it is, in fact, evidence of their commitment to their ongoing focus on making such a novel paradigm concrete. The difficulty is, you cannot escape an inculcated paradigmatic understanding by just thinking about it. And the SMN should be lauded for its focus on contemplative arts and meditation as a vehicle to help flesh-out such a novel paradigm.

What I have just described is a simplification of the problem, however. My “mechanistic materialism” is in fact two things: a cognitive frame that limits what can be thought upon, or put in another way: a predetermination of what is real and what is only imagined or illusory; and a paradigm proper. Our current cognitive frame is materialism and the paradigm is mechanical, or what is today generally referred to as physical causality in which all activity is the result of — and only of — natural laws and forces interacting with matter. Note the paradigm is not an ‘-ism’ as it is not a system, either philosophical or scientific, but is rather simply the underlying assumption(s) about how things work. You can break free of a paradigm, by having it overthrown, or by showing the logical faults and disjunctions of its assumptions as I tried to do in Book One — The Way of Unsaying; but a cognitive frame is very much cemented in place in our minds. To break free of the latter requires a complete break from it from birth, and the inculcation of a different cognitive frame, or to undertake a dedicated meditation practice over many years to attain the direct insights that will viscerally break us out of the existing frame — jumping frames, so to speak.

As I explained at the start of The Way of Unsaying, my intent there was to undermine and create doubt about the things we have been told and taken to heart. This is our paradigmatic understanding. So the purpose of that book, was to leave you bewildered about your inculcated understanding of certain kinds of phenomena, especially sound, but also thoughts, so that you are better able to accept a new understanding that overcomes the logical faults and disjunctions of the one that you are already working under.

Traditionally, this is not done through discourses showing how the new paradigm works, but through a dedicated meditation practice over potentially decades, the purpose of which is to break free of the cognitive frame that supports the paradigm, thus undermining the paradigm too. But, the goal of ‘spiritual’ traditions — that distinction being the stain of our existing paradigm’s structuring of our thoughts — is not to come to understand a new paradigm, nor to exchange one cognitive frame for another; but to extinguish all cognitive framing and paradigmatic structuring of our experiences and thoughts.

That is the longterm goal; however, in the modern world, imbued, as it is, with the mechanistic materialism that we all inherited from the 17th century, most of us don’t have time to spend decades meditating, as we are solivagant — effectively separated from our families and any sense of community so that we are literally wandering alone through the wilderness of modern life — and, for the most part now, we are precariats whose economic labors never end, and whose status in society is never sure. Therefore, the modern approach of these traditions is to instill a new understanding that is conceptually-based and contemplative in nature, in parallel with a much more constrained meditative practice, if any.

This book, The Way of Contemplation is conceived as a possible shortcut to the adoption of a novel paradigm and its cognitive frame that this book presents — in conjunction with book one, The Way of Unsaying — and so, it focuses on showing the ways in which the novel paradigm overcomes the current paucity of profound understanding, and the many logical inconsistencies and disjunctions, of the deeply entrenched mechanistic materialism — while at the same time, providing a sound basis for the existing body of most of the scientifically-derived knowledge that is obviously effective in our lives, while reconnecting that to the currently excluded ‘spiritual’ profundity of Reality.

Our survival today requires a complete break from mechanistic materialism— so a new frame and paradigm, not just a paradigm-shift, is needed.

Footnote:

¹ “Beyond a Materialist Worldview — Towards an Expanded Science,” Harald Walach, on behalf of the Scientific and Medical Network, 2019, pg 6