: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

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2018 Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Symbolics Schwartz, Michael

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Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Symbolics

Michael Schwartz Augusta University Abstract: Critical theorists and social commentators agree that modernity and postmodernity suffer from historical pathologies of world disenchantment. What might be done? Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings on elemental prac- tices, this paper investigates the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in generating a symbol- ics of the self, world, and other that is always already enchanted; an aesthetics of existence where the world itself shows forth like a work of art replete with exorbitant logics.

Keywords: Sallis, phenomenology, disenchantment, enchantment, imagination, imaginal, art, po- etics, aesthetics of existence, , Tibetan, elementals, element

Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552

Published by Digital Commons @ CIIS, 2018 1 CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 6 [2018], Iss. 6, Art. 2 Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics

(Dis)Enchantment Again In Bhaskar’s later non-dual philosophy of me- ta-reality, there are analyses of the collapse of Max Weber, early in the twentieth century, the semiotic triangle (signifier-signified- diagnosed what he termed world- referent) through the dissolving of the subject- disenchantment as due to modern rationalizing object divide, such that the world’s inherent processes: a thesis about the loss or displace- enchantment comes forth (Bhaskar, 2012). ment of meaning and value, which subsequent The present essay has elective affinities with philosophers and social theorists have re- this thesis, while making different philosophi- framed in various ways - as with Jürgen Ha- cal and spiritual emphases that allow for more bermas’s analysis of modern social systems of fine-tuned descriptions and analyses of en- money and administration that override and chanted living. “colonize” cultural lifeworlds of shared mean- Elemental Phenomenology ing and compelling life-narratives (Habermas, 1984 and 1987); where to be sure a wide range In two books – Force of the Imagination: The of critical thinkers touch on this diagnosis of Sense of the Elemental (2000) and Logic of modernity/postmodernity from complemen- the Imagination: the Expanse of the Elemental tary angles (Schwartz, 2010 and 2016). Yet a (2012) – John Sallis enacts a twisting free of Habermasian approach, for all its importance the metaphysical paradigmatics of the intelli- in our moment of fake news and post-validity gible and the sensible, into an immanent field in discourse, is in part caught within the ma- of the senses of sense, exploring in the first laise, through its leanings towards a one-sided study the conditions of the determination of discursive-centering of sense and significance, the self-showing thing (Schwartz, forthcom- flirting with an alienated form of conscious- ing). The upsurge of presence of the mere im- ness in which meaning is coming from the age, suspended between own and other, hence human side alone and no longer has a sense of “in-different,” is gathered into the more de- being “of” nature or the world. Roy Bhaskar’s terminate sense of a thing with the coming criticism of Habermas indeed on the forth of speech as . This dynamic deter- “irrealist” and anthropocentric character of minancy, against a background of the indeter- what is construed as the latter’s overly lan- minate, is intensified through three horizons – guage-oriented philosophy (Norrie, 2010). lateral, peripheral, and operational (and I would add, in part echoing remarks that Sallis What then might be a way out of this epochal himself has made, the systemic). The lateral leveling of values and pervasive disenchant- horizon is the unlimited store of profiles of the ment? In extending several previous papers on thing. The peripheral horizons are the visible phenomenologies of art and experience as surround and background to the focal thing. conditioned by social deformations (Schwartz, The operational horizon, in its instrumental 2010, 2015a, and 2016b), this essay explores a moment, is the network of equipment in line robust way of contemporary enchantment. with the analysis in Martin Heidegger’s 1927 Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of volume Being and Time. (The systemic hori- the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings zon is the patterned iterations of and amongst on elemental practices, we shall investigate the operational horizons, constituting system, the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in where the nexi of operational practices and generating a symbolics of the self, world, and systems are unable to be reduced to one an- other that is always already enchanted; invig- other without significant remainder.) All these orating an aesthetics of existence where the horizons, along with speech and the in- world itself shows forth like a work of art re- different image, are constitutive moments of plete with exorbitant logics. the thing’s self-showing. Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552 Page 2 https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/2 2 : Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Sy Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics

The imagination, marginalized in the tradition, philosophy addresses); (2) those that are more comes forward as tractive, prior to subject and local or restrictive; and (3) those proper to object, like a gift of being itself, drawing the fantasy and the sensible. Schemata, unlike in horizons around the focal thing, the retention the Kantian view, become unhinged from and pretension of all the prior conditions or submersion in any kind of transcendental sub- moments, in a hovering of determinate self- jectivity, imagination characterized even more showing; thing-hood stretched within and strongly than in the first volume as non- against the indeterminate. And beyond the pe- subjective; a condition of any modality of ripheral and systemic horizons lie another what might be termed “subject.” constitutive factor of the thing’s self-showing: the elementals. As the elementals are the from Sallis expands the senses of the elementals in which of manifestation, encompassing hori- their encompassing. Not only are there natural zons and things as an unfathomable medium elementals such as earth, sky, tempests, and that in exceeding the things of nature, also be- fire, but there are extra natural elementals as longs to nature as hyper-natural. The elemen- well, where these distinctions hinge on the tals, unlike things, have no profiles; they do articulation of human finitude centered in the not reveal themselves the way things do, proper: the proper as one’s ownmostness. Sal- drawn as they are around the various horizons lis explores four proper elementals: the (1) by the tractive imagination. All elementals natural elements, (2) seclusion as sheltering lead back to two that are primary: earth and retreat, (3) birth, and (4) death. The natural sky. Earth shelters, supports, and withdraws, a elementals indefinitely exceed the human self-closing that resists disclosure. Sky opens while, but through absorption in our senses, as an absolute recession that grants expanse, a recoil back as constitutive of our being in the pure shining that enables light as condition of world. Seclusion is a depth that exceeds pres- the visible. Elementals and things intersect, ence without being a subjective interiority overlap, and envelope one another in any (these singular accounts reminiscent of the number of manners. The imagination draws empty fecundity of “causal voidness” discov- the elementals, as encompassing, into the de- ered through Buddhist and Vedantic practic- termination of the self-showing thing. es). Birth and death are the characterized with regard to corporeity, the latter as lived capaci- In the subsequent study, the sense of the imag- ties; life stretching out between these two ex- ination deepens with Sallis’ advancing of the tremes, neither of which are present but as en- tradition from a logic of the understanding to a compassing elementals bestow and delimit logic of the imagination; such that one can one’s ownmost possibilities of existence. allow for formal logics that adhere to the prin- ciple of non-contradiction and exorbitant Proper Appropriation and Tibetan Bud- logics that do not. In its drawing together and dhist Exercises holding apart the constitutive moments of self- showing, imagination deploys schemata that As encompassing, the proper elementals of are the spacing of things – spacing itself as the nature, seclusion, birth and death are not static ontological event-ing of the space-time of be- or constant in the force and logics of the imag- ings (schemata in their specificity inseparable ination but vary in their respective intensities from manifestation, hence neither empty con- in co-constituting the field of sense. This dif- tainers nor mere formal dimensions). There ferential intensity has been, in various line- are three kinds of schemata: (1) those compre- ages, appropriated and refolded through trans- hensive of manifestation (the type that formational practice. If lacking in the kind of Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552

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phenomenological analyses and philosophical articulations of human transformation in the articulations offered by Sallis, the Tibetan Western traditions might well prove valuable Buddhist tradition abounds with procedures to researchers in consciousness studies, dis- that appropriate and refold each of the proper closing not yet disclosed background social elementals as he has so carefully articulated conditions and concerns behind such research them – natural, seclusion, birth, and death – projects in the first place. Where one of these with the effect of reconstituting the field of conditions, or so is the present argument, is sense and its “logics” (logoi). For the sake of the modern / postmodern disenchantment of focus, we shall delimit discussion to the natu- the world. ral elementals. Unlike for Sallis, in which the number of natu- In the Tibetan tradition, the proper appropria- ral elementals is open-ended, in Tibetan Bud- tion of the natural elementals has a number of dhism there are five elements the combina- outcomes, including a quality of intensifica- tions of which are the from which of gross- tion that precipitates a new order of self- dimensional natural phenomena. For Sallis, showing -- as if the natural elements, coming the natural elementals are human and extra- forth in excess while always in encompassing human. Something similar is the case in Tibet- withdrawal, show forth as a dimension of the an Buddhism, with the distinction that the field of sense that we typically refer to as the properly natural elementals animate emotional subtle (in contrast to the gross dimension of energies: when conflicted and contracted, nature and human artifacts). While this gener- these emotional energies operate as the five ative intensification of the natural elementals poisons; when liberated in and as the non-dual can burst forward at any time for just about field of sense, they release as the five wis- anyone, and in a spontaneous manner, practice doms. Great emphasis is placed upon the of some sort is most often required for this transmutation of the emotions from dualistic self-showing of the subtle to come forth and contraction and affliction to non-dualistic wis- do so with increasing depth, force, and stabil- dom as a path of liberation and as a gathering ity. We shall thus consider some Tibetan prac- of skillful means to aid others on the pathless tices, how they work, and what they regularly path of freedom. accomplish, all as philosophically elucidated by an elemental phenomenology, performing a Tibetan Buddhism practices of the elementals kind of comparative moment not only of phi- of nature are many. For example, Ngakpa losophy but also of understood in Chogyam and Khandro Dechen, in their man- light of Michael Foucault’s late phase of work ual Spectrum of Ecstasy: Embracing Emotions on ethics as well as Peter Sloterdijk’s an- as the Path of Inner (1997), forward a thropotechnics. Indeed, Foucault’s later re- preliminary practice of dwelling with and at- search centered on historical practices of self- tuning to each of the natural elements, so to transformation under the title of an ethics of clarify especially one’s afflictive dualistic en- care (Schwartz, 1999). While more recently ergies. As regards water: German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (2013) has unfolded a historical genealogy, seemingly According to the dualistic vision of the unknown in consciousness studies and self- water element experiences of our spa- development circles, of the rise in Western cious nature are perceived as threaten- modernity practices of self-transformation, ing. From this sensation of fear and illu- what he calls anthropotechnics. These two de- sory lack of security, we fabricate the cisively philosophical-cum-historical distorted of anger and aggression Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552 Page 4 https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/2 4 : Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Sy Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics

According to the non-dual vision of the white elemental water; she pours that white water element, experiences of our spa- light into the crown of the head; it flows into cious nature are discovered in their nat- the solar plexus, dissolving contracted emo- ural condition as the energy of clarity tive-sensations, a white mirror manifesting in and luminosity. This is something that this bodily location. There are additional nu- can learnt non-intellectually through ex- ances and stages to this practice and its visual- periencing the nature of the water ele- ization procedures, with the intended outcome ment itself. We only need to look at the the transmutation of contracted water energies ways in which water performs in our of anger and aggression into mirror-like pris- world to begin to understand this aspect tine awareness. of what we are. More elaborate varjayana practices also center Water can be opaque. It can surge with on visualizations. In the generation stage, one glittering bubbles as it thrashes against dissolves the solid sense of bodily self and projecting rocks; or it rolls and tumbles arises as a being called a yidam, made up of at the foot of cliffs. The tremendous translucent elemental lights, transmuting the power of “white water” has to be treated afflictive emotions while seeding wisdom ca- with considerable caution – its current pacities as skillful means. In more advances of aggression is lethal…Water can boil stages, the visualization is expanded to the and spit with fury in a cauldron, or in a entire field of sense, now arising as a populat- geo-thermal spring. It can froth and ed mandala of elemental colored light. Each spray with vitriolic disregard, it can dis- and all arise as shining, elemental luminosity, play qualities of rage, with no sense of empty and blissful. In the beginning, such vis- self-control. Water displays the attributes ualizations are mental fabrications. Over time of anger in a variety of ways. (pp. 139- however the fabricated visualizations magnet- 140) ize, mobilize and intensify the elementals themselves, such that subtle imagery begins to This pointing out instruction attunes us to wa- self-arise – first during practice, then during ter as illuminative of the afflictive side of the post-mediation; with the subtle dimension emotional spectrum. Other kinds of attune- coming to take on a life of its own, no longer ments along with one-pointed meditative prac- scripted by the practice. Starting as imagina- tices are further mobilized to transmute anger tive fabrications, generation stage exercises and aggression into mirror-like clarity and lu- end up bringing forth an everyday field of minosity – akin to a calm and purified lake, sense that is an intertwining of the gross and perfectly still and clear. subtle dimensions.

Very common in the Tibetan tradition as start- Cartesian Subtleties at the Limit ing point are visualizing processes that deploy fabricated images of the imagination. Lama What then about the subtle dimension? In a Ken McLeod (2001), in the manual Wake Up brave if uneven book Prometheus and Atlas, to Your Life, presents a practice of the five Jordan Jorjani (2016) argues that the subtle dakinis, each one of the five working with one domain, what he calls in a more contracted of the contracted natural elementals of the and ambiguous register, the spectral, was ex- properly human. To cite water again, one vis- cluded and even perhaps expelled from the ualizes a translucent white goddess standing in outset of the Cartesian subject-object ontolo- front of oneself, holding a vase, containing gy. To wit, either subtle imagery and sound is Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552

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necessarily a mental projection, a fantasy in To explore this experience, he walked over to the decaying sense of that term - far from what what was appearing as a radiant wall. He dis- Dante and later in the Renaissance was cele- covered that his sense of touch corresponded brated as alta fantasia, “exalted imagination,” to the visual sense of the wall itself. And to the which was so decisive in the elite pictorial and door knob. And to various items of furniture. poetic culture which mobilized the radical Despite there being no photonic light to stimu- shift in the Western sense of art and artist late the optic nerves, the gross room was (Schwartz, 1997) - or it has some material- showing forth as radiant subtle light. After the objective basis (exhaustively explainable by session, he reported the experience to his neural patterns), or is some enacted constella- teacher, who promptly danced a Tibetan jig of tion of these terms. Yet the evidence points to joy, relaying that this was indeed the intended the insufficiency of these variants of - outcome of yangti practice – in other words, matter, subject-object ontologies. that there is a long lineage of human beings who have had this kind of experience during In the Dzogchen teachings of Tibetan Bud- yangti retreat. A Cartesian ontology has trou- dhism, there are a number of practices con- ble accounting in full for such phenomena – ducted in dark retreat. In the appendix to his there was no objective light input; nor could celebrated book The Opening of Vision, David the subtle-radiant visioning be merely subjec- Michael Levin (1988) recounts that towards tive, a mental projection of some sort, since it the end of a dark retreat, there appeared to had “objective” correlation with the gross him, in the midst of absolute darkness and in sense of touch. the complete absence of photonic light, a vi- sionary image that only later did he discover is What is important here to keep in mind is that a decisive and venerable symbol in the lineage the self-showing of the subtle, as intertwining iconography. While the vision itself might be with gross dimensions in the field of sense, accounted for as a projection of the mind hav- can happen spontaneously; yet most often ing neural net groundings (and the latter is to does so through practice. Foucault is im- be sure part of the mechanisms involved), the portant here. In his later work he reminds us semantic element cannot be so readily ex- that the pre-modern traditions put great stress plained in such terms – and yet throughout on prior ascetical training as a pre-condition of much of consciousness studies, this kind of truth; in our context, that trainings of specific phenomena is regularly and dogmatically ex- kinds are the pre-condition for these modes of plained away or ignored rather than ap- elemental self-showing coming forth with sta- proached with the wonder and curiosity it bility and depth. To the extent that such prac- commands. To give a second case. One of my tices are repeatable and their outcomes more thogal teachers, Jackson Peterson, recounts his than happenstance -- even if they are esoteric experience during a 24-hour dark retreat prop- and thus far in humanity’s history somewhat er to the Dozgchen practice of yangti. Several rare – the results of such trainings are akin to hours into the session, in the absence of pho- the margins of the text pressing our sense of tonic light, it was as if a light-switch suddenly the text itself: here the “margins” of modes of got turned on, as the room reappeared as vivid human experience reshaping our sense of the as if in the light of day. For a while he was what is properly possible and actual. Such convinced that there was a skylight above that marginal experiences, repeatable if atypical, had been opened; and yet there was none to are like a “supplement” that “deconstructs” found – as there was no photonic light in the pre-given and tacit ontological assumptions room. and schemas. Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552 Page 6 https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/2 6 : Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Sy Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics

The World of Art Perhaps this is what art is always already as- piring towards -- yet in its artefactual distinc- In Force of the Imagination, Sallis forwards tiveness, in its spacing from its environs in that the poetic imagination is a doubling of the manners that depend on the specificity of an tractive imagination, the intensification of the artistic matrix, art in the end is a kind of fail- latter to the second power. It is poetic because ure in its modern and post-modern promise of it does not create from nothing nor produce or world-enchantment. Art can point to world- reproduce a prior paradigm (as with a mental enchantment, art can show us and attune us to content that is to be “expressed”) but ontolog- the not yet seen and heard, but art remains ically brings forth—echoing Heidegger’s other than the environs from which it is creative retrieval and interpretation of poiesis. spaced. Perhaps then, too, we have here clues And what is poetically brought forth is art, to a latent impulse of avantgardist and neo- where the artwork is composed so to bring avantgardist works -- like that of Marcel Du- forth an imaginative doubling that deepens champ’s readymades, Alan Kaprow’s Happen- configuring and intensifies the shining of any ings, or Daniel Buren’s early striped canvases content or form - “a moment of the expanse of -- which attemps to re-integrate art and life in self-showing with its elemental-horizonal con- the wake of the modernist differentiation of art figuration.” Art can show us what has not yet from other socio-cultural institutions and val- been seen, including a showing of self- ue spheres, this modernist differentiation of art showing—hence complementary to Sallis’ re- as “autonomous” intuited by avantgard and casting of phenomenology as having a mo- neoavantgard artists as a split between art and ment of monstrology, the theoretical pointing everyday life: modernist art sealed off in the to the thing’s showing of itself. Through art, in museum having only indirect impact in trans- a manner more concrete and singular than figuring the world outside the museum’s walls with monstrology, we are instructed to see (Bürger, 1984). anew. Where the artwork, as artefactual, en- tails the casting of a matrix - Sallis here refig- This is not to say that art does not have its uring the inherited notions of the media of art place and distinctive importance. I would ar- (Schwartz, 2016a). gue that more than ever we need benefit from great art. It is to say however that there are Likewise, the proper appropriation and refold- other ways that may well fulfill the conatus ing of the natural elementals can lead to a towards enchantment more directly and po- doubling in self-showing that is the intertwin- tently. Not then a poetics of art alone to coun- ing of gross and subtle dimensions: the natural ter modern technics, but what one contempo- elementals as the from which of gross nature rary Vipassana teacher calls a “cosmopoetics and also of its own self-showing as subtle of being (Burbea, 2016). light, imagery, and sound. This doubling of the imagination, in parallel to the poetic imag- Imaginal Symbolics ination, is what we call the imaginal. And it is through the force of the imaginal that the What then of enchantment? world comes forth like a work of art. The In Force of the Imagination, Sallis offers an flowers sing, the leaves are alive, the grass exacting account of the crossings of mere im- murmurs a yet to be heard sense. Nature and age and language, that the mere image in and the world become inherently valuable, inher- of itself is both indeterminate as regards ently “meaningful.” The world comes forth as thinghood and also comes forth, in that thingly enchanted. indeterminancy, into presence; and then when Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552

Published by Digital Commons @ CIIS, 2018 7 CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 6 [2018], Iss. 6, Art. 2 Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics

folded with language the mere image takes on analysis of dreamwork. Such exorbitant a determinate sense of thinghood, with pres- logics abound in the imaginal doubling of the ence now differed and deferred - the image as natural elementals, involving distinctive image and language as language each exceed- schemata with unique spacings and temporali- ing one another in this thingly determination. ties in the interweaving and interpenetration of gross and subtle dimensions in the field of When it comes to the mere images of the im- sense. Such exorbitant logics, it seems to me, aginal, the sense of presence can be less sta- is one of the most fascinating arenas of philo- ble, such mere imagery already harboring a sophical inquiry as complement to research in felt-potency of meaning without yet being ex- consciousness studies. plicitly meaningful. As such, whereas the gross mere image is mute; the subtle mere im- Revitalizing an Aesthetics of Existence age is always already murmuring. In turn, the explicit use of language teases out this poten- Elemental phenomenology, as developed by cy of meaning in the subtle imagery, generat- Sallis, continuously enacts a twisting free of ing a greater determinancy of the imaginal im- the intelligible as paradigm of the sensible, in agery, while there always being an explicit lieu of a multi-horizonal productivity of the sense that the languaging of the sense of the field of sense. In the wake of this deconstruc- imaginal image never exhausts, in the slight- tive reconstruction, aesthetics is seen as tied to est, the potency of that murmuring. a subjectivism based in the feeling and self- feeling of a subject, and as such has been said All languaging of and about the imaginal im- to have no place in a scheme that is getting- agery is however not simply valid or equally over subject and object ontologies. That said, resonant. The subtle imagery can, and in it can be valuable to revive the senses of aes- group practice does, arise for more than just thetics within an elemental phenomenology, oneself. In group settings, when a subtle im- no longer as subjective, but as a term proper to age comes forth, it can be sensed by more than the field of sense in the intensification of the one person, can be pointed to and commented elementals as the doubling of tractive imagi- on by the group as regards color, location in nation as poetic or imaginal. the gross environment, and the like, and ex- plored in its meaning in the to and from dis- Beauty and sublimity reveal themselves as cussion – all of which demonstrating that it is plurals: various modes of shining. With the more than reductively “subjective” (again call- varying of the intensity of the from which of ing into question assumptions proper to mod- an elemental’s encompassing, along with ern ontologies, as we saw with the yangti dark which elementals are at a given moment prin- retreat practice). cipally constellated by the imagination, the field of sense has different modes of shining The enchanted world that arises is often re- (where certain “sublimities” can also involve plete with unusual logics. As indeed, in Logic elementals other than those that are natural). of the Imagination, Sallis makes the forceful Said otherwise, via the imaginal there are var- case that prior to any logic of the understand- ious ways in which the gross and subtle be- ing are logics of the imagination that involve come interrelated, entailing an open-ended various spacings, meaning various space-times typology of modes of shining of the field of and tensed-places; inclusive of non- sense (Schwartz, 2018). contradictory to dialectical to exbortant logics, the latter as exemplified through Freud’s Corresponding author: [email protected] Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/ ISSN 2575-5552 Page 8 https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/conscjournal/vol6/iss6/2 8 : Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation to Imaginal Sy Consciousness: Ideas and Research for the Twenty First Century | Summer 2018 | Vol 6 | Issue 6 Schwartz, M., Sourcing enchantment: From elemental appropriation to imaginal symbolics

Dwelling in and as a world of imaginal en- of art, murmuring with the potency of intrinsic chantment is to live then an aesthetics of ex- meaningfulness, enticing care and adoration, istence. The phrase is from the last phase of deepening the true sense of the world in its Michel Foucault’s writings. It has received wondrous and often wild dances of exorbitant divergent interpretations. Whatever its signifi- logics. cance for Foucault’s late work, here we are adapting the phrase for the intensification of A cosmopoetic path open to all. elementality in its doubling as imaginal sym- bolics. This aesthetics of existence is not about I-shining, not about a being self- referentially beautiful and lustrously seduc- References tive. An upgraded aesthetics of existence need avoid pathological tendencies, proper to mo- Bhaskar, R. (1993). Dialectics: The pulse of dernity and postmodernity, of what Bhaskar freedom. London and New York: Verso. (1994), echoing the philosopher Hegel, diag- nosed as the syndrome of the “beautiful soul” Bhaskar, R. (1994). Plato etc.: The problems – one who unwittingly a petty moralizing of philosophy and their resolution. aesthetic that betrays a secreted alienation and London and New York: Verso. disengaged ironizing. Instead, an elementally mature aesthetics of existence intensifies our Bhaskar, R . (2012). The philosophy of meta capacities for the moral and for the true – en- reality: Creativity, love and freedom. gendering love and compassion, and joyous London and New York: Routledge. comportment, curbing harmful impulses and acts, intensifying spontaneous altruism and Burbea, R. (2016). Re-enchanting the cosmos: mutual celebration - as well as complexifying The poetry of perception. Audio re- and clarifying the true sense of exorbitant trieved from logics of the enchanted world. Indeed, at the http://dharmaseed.org/retreats/3049/. dawn of modernity, the celebrated poet and critic Schiller (1795) looked to art as unifying Bürger, P. (1984). Theory of the avant-garde. power to counter the fragmenting tendencies University of Minnesota Press: Minne- of modern existence: where an enchanted aes- apolis. thetics of existence, construed in an elemental light, begins to concretize that vision. Chögyam, N. with Déchen, K. (1997). Spec- trum of ecstasy: Embracing emotions as With philosophical rigor, elemental phenome- the path of inner tantra. New York & nology points out the always already of the London: Aro Books. natural elementals as proper to human being and the field of sense. A tradition of trans- Jorjani. J. R. (2016). Prometheus and atlas. formative practice, like that of Tibetan Bud- Arktos: London. dhism, offers us established procedures for folding and intensifying the force of the from Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communica- which of the natural elementals such that there tive action: Reason and the rationaliza- is a doubling of the tractive imagination as tion of society (Vol. 1). Boston: Beacon imaginal, the world coming forth like a work Press.

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Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communica- Sallis, J. (2016b). The return of nature: On the tive action: Lifeworld and system, a beyond of sense. Bloomington and In- critique of functionalist reason (Vol. dianapolis: Indiana University Press. 2). Boston: Beacon Press. Schiller, F (1795). Über die ästhetische er- Levin, D. M. (1988). The opening of vision: ziehung des menschen in einer reihe Nihilism and the postmodern situation. von briefen. Routledge: New York and London. Schwartz, M. (1997). Raphael’s Authorship in McLeod, K. (2001). Wake up to your life: the Expulsion of Heliodorus. The Art Discovering the buddhist path of atten- Bulletin, 79, 467-492. tion. New York: HaperCollins. Schwartz, M. (1999). Repetition and Ethics in Norrie, Alan. (2010). Dialectic and difference: Late Foucault. Telos, 117, 113-132. Dialectical critical realism and the grounds of justice. London and New Schwartz, M. (2010). Introspection and Trans- York: Routledge. formation in Philosophy Today. In (Eds.) J. Wirth. D. Jones, and M. Sallis, J. (1980). The gathering of reason. Ath- Schwartz, The Gift of logos (pp. 181- ens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 193). Cambridge UK: Cambridge 1980. Scholars Series.

Sallis, J. (2000). Force of the imagination: The Schwartz, M. (2015a). In the of Whole- sense of the elemental. Bloomington ness: Integral Art and its Enchantment and Indianapolis: Indiana University Aesthetic.(Art Exhibition Book Cata- Press. log). Sebastopol, CA: MetaIntegral Foundation. Sallis, J. (2008a). Transfigurements: On the true sense of art. Chicago and London: Schwartz (2015b). MetaReality and the Dy- The University of Chicago Press namic Calling of the Good. Journal of Critical Realism, 14 (4), 381-396. Sallis, J. (2008b). The verge of philosophy. Chicago and London: The University Schwartz, M. (2016a). On the Post- of Chicago Press. of Painting: Raphael at the Limit. In (Eds.) J. Wirth, M. Sallis, J. (2012). Logic of the imagination: Schwartz, and D. Jones, On the true The expanse of the elemental. Bloom- sense of art: A critical companion to ington and Indianapolis: Indiana the transfigurements of john sallis (pp. University Press. 60-75). Evanston, Illinois: Northwest- ern University Press. Sallis, J. (2016a). The figure of nature: On greek origins. Bloomington and Indi- Schwartz, M. (2016b). Transfiguring the Eve- anapolis: Indiana University ryday: Socio-Cultural Ontologies Press. andPhilosophical Transgression. Inte- gral Leadership Review, 16 (2).

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