One
of the major innovations of Onto-Cartography is the
introduction of incorporeal machines. While incorporeal machines were
already implicit in my treatment of Luhmann in The Democracy of Objects,
I wanted to make this more explicit in Onto-Cartography so as
to account for how a machine-oriented ontology might think about signs,
discourses, narratives, etc. I draw the concept of incorporeal machines
from Deleuze and Guattari’s account of expression and content in “The Geology
of Morals” and ”Postulates of Linguistic” chapters of A Thousand
Plateaus (they also discuss it in Kafka, and Deleuze uses
it to organize his reading of Foucault in Foucault). Drawn
from Hjelmslev’s glossematics, but significantly reworked to articulate a
general, ontological schema, Deleuze and Guattari are careful to argue that the
planes of content and expression are independent, autonomous,
and heterogeneous, functioning according to different
principles. In other words, content cannot be equated with the
“signified” and expression with the “signifier”. Both signifier and signified
are variants of expression. They don’t belong to the plane of
content at all.
Under
Deleuze and Guattari’s account, the plane of content is composed entirely of
bodies– what I call corporeal machines –affecting and being affected by one
another. The relationship of a smith to his hammer and anvil, for
example, belong to the plane of content. The way in which the interaction
of these three machines affect one another differs from the way in which
signifiers affect bodies. The perpetual hammering on the metal of the
anvil produces corporeal changes in the smith’s body. His muscle structure,
bone structure, and way of holding himself change over time. This is not
the result of expression or signs… Part of the aim of onto-cartography is to
map these complex relations, to draw virtual maps of potential alternatives to
existing assemblages, and to trace the imbrications of these planes in social
systems.
The
charge of correlationism is one that will surely be addressed more and more;
even if it is done with a wave of the hand. But on the fringe speculative
realism remains. However, what I now see happening, just a little, is that
speculative realists no longer need to justify themselves in the base
sense. They are less defensive and the forthcoming work I have been lucky
enough to read, usually in my capacity with Zero, displays a confidence that is
different than what came before.
Wilber and Aurobindo: A reply to Joe Perez,
Alan Kazlev integralworld.net [M.
Alan Kazlev - kheper.net -
For Integral World he has written two series of essays on integral
philosophy: Towards a
Larger View of Integral (4 Parts) and Integral Esotericism (8
Parts).]
In
keeping with academic convention, I use surname as mode of address in this
essay – e.g. “Wilber”, “Perez”. I make an exception with “Sri Aurobindo”
because that is the name he requested to be addressed as (as opposed to just
“Aurobindo”)… It is true that Wilber established the current Integral movement,
lifting the word from Sri Aurobindo and Jean Gebser, who each independently
defined it… It is true that Wilber identifies higher levels of consciousness
beyond Turquoise/Integral, and that he associates them with Sri Aurobindo's
ascending ladder of realisation as described by the latter in The Life
Divine. However, Wilber's interpretation of Sri Aurobindo here and
elsewhere is deeply flawed, as Brant Cortright (Psychotherapy and Spirit:
Theory and Practice in Transpersonal Psychotherapy, SUNY 1997, p78), Rod
Hemsell ("Ken Wilber
and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective") and I (“Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo” - and “An Aurobindonian vision”)
have all shown… In “An Aurobindonian vision” I have also shown how Wilber's
spiritual stages are actually based on those of his former guru Adi Da. Because
he simplistically considers all spiritual states part of the same linear
series, he claims in his tables correlating different systems (see The
Atman Project and Integral Psychology) that Da's “Seventh
Stage” and Sri Aurobindo's “Supermind” are the same…
But
the unfortunate fact remains that the whole Aurobindonian tradition has been
and is being seriously misinterpreted – I don't think bastardised is too strong
a word - by well-meaning but ignorant advocates of Integralism, attempting to remold
Sri Aurobindo's teachings as a simplistic metaphysical precursor to AQAL.
There
can be little doubt that the root of this problem lies with Wilber's own
misunderstanding of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual philosophy. As Rod Hemsell has
shown, this is apparent even in the earlier phases of his work (Atman Project –
Wilber II). Wilber himself is certainly not to be blamed for this, as there is
so much knowledge in the world today that it is simply not possible for one
human being, no matter how intelligent or how competent a speed reader, to
understand the whole world (see “Insufficient Study and Contemplation results in Superficial
Understanding of Specialized Knowledge”). And to properly understand Sri
Aurobindo and The Mother's Yoga requires tremendous sincerity and aspiration,
not just a brief skim reading. The reading itself has to be a meditation, the
pages returned to time after time. Just as with any authentic spiritual
tradition.
Wilber's
error here was then compounded through the memetic (sensu Dawkins) dispersal of
his well-meaning misinterpretations, through his own work and that of others
who have been influenced by him. As a result, more people are adopting a false
version of what Sri Aurobindo taught and achieved. That he is, so Wilber
informs us, a “theorist” (someone who spent forty years in intense practical
yoga was a theorist?).
As
with all human understanding, humanity has approached the law of karma from our
own very limited starting point. We try to essentially bring it down to a
personal level and create some kind of ethical rulebook around its operation,
or else relate the universal forces to us through some kind of inexorable
process that appears to function under certain laws or rules, but directly
interacts with our own lives and the decisions we make and the actions we take.
The
Buddhist enunciation of the universal law of karma was clearly a breakthrough
in terms of treating it as a universal action. In the West, the widening
understanding of the vast scope and intelligent activity of the universe has
systematically broadened our appreciation for the action of the Forces that are
shaping the entire universal action, including, but certainly not limited to
our individual lives.
Essentially
we are coming to a point in time where we begin to understand that the Creation
does not revolve around our own world or our own individuality, and that while
we have our role to play, and our own unique value, it is with much larger
frameworks and universal laws that we have to grapple to truly begin to
understand. Thus, the law of karma includes our own actions, but not as some
kind of directed ethical or moral reward or retribution, but as an instance of
the universal laws of action, the patterns of energy.
This
turns into a much less simplistic model than most of us have entertained to
date, and Sri Aurobindo takes up the question with the view toward
systematically reviewing it from all angles and aspects to provide a
comprehensive basis for understanding. Because we tend to look at things first
from the basis of the material world and material energy, we may want to start
this review at the point where our vision naturally first engages the issue:
“It
may be as well then to start from the physical base in approaching this
question of Karma, though we may find at last that it is from the other end of
being, from its spiritual summit rather than its material support that we must
look in order to catch its whole significance–and to fix also the limits of its
significance.” Sri Aurobindo, Rebirth
and Karma, Section I, Chapter 8, Karma, pp. 68-69
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