Value Affirms what Essence Negates

 

Psychologists have long known that the proper choice of ambient color can have a salutary effect on the psyche, improving concentration and social interaction, and inducing a feeling of comfort in the home or workplace.  Color is experienced as the visual part of the electro-magnetic spectrum that also includes the tones of musical pitch.  Because these values are directly sensed and require no intellectual mediation, color and music are widely used therapeutically and by interior designers to reduce anxiety, increase the appetite, and cheer the libido. 

The psycho-emotional response to primary sensations like color and sound suggests that such values are not mere attributes of external objects but internalized stimuli that can alter the mood and behavior of the observer.  The fact that we all have favorite colors and songs that we will often go out of our way to experience suggests that esthetic values are psychically beneficial to us.  But value exists everywhere, and we respond to it constantly.  It is the very essence of our experience. 

From the time you open your eyes to the light of dawn in the morning until you feel the softness of your bed sheets at night, value is what you search for.  We can soak up value from the warmth of the sun, respond to it in the sound of music, or rejoice in it by observing the beauty of nature.  Our attraction to value is so natural that we take it for granted.  Its presence is imminent to our senses, evoking joy and delight when it pleases us, or pain and sadness when it does not.

What is this value which we all desire and seek out in our experience of reality?  Is it merely our psycho-emotional reaction to something good and worthy of our attention?  Or does it come from the attribute of beingness in the physical world or, perhaps, from a reality beyond the physical?  Actually, Value is present in all three aspects of reality.  It is our affinity for that which is greater than ourselves.  In fact, when we speak of "being aware", what we really mean is being aware of value.  Whereas the Buddhist seeks to attain "Oneness" through the reincarnation of many lives, and the Judeo-Christian hopes to be reunited with God through "good works" in this one, the Essentialist realizes the Absolute Source in the value of existence.

Now, if that sounds like I'm suggesting that everything is value, in a metaphysical sense I am, as I shall attempt to explain.  Human beings have an innate sensibility to value; but we also are limited in the amount of value we can sense at any given time.  This means that we sense value incrementally, by degree, and we are always aware of it as relative to something else.  All value is relative in that it relates to the essential Source.  Indeed, value may be defined as the finite, differentiated sense of Essence, which is what any cognizant entity that is not Essence experiences.

But finite experience is not itself Essence; it is only the fragmented perspective of Essence that sensibility affords us.  From this differentiated sense of value, we mentally construct the forms and properties of experienced objects.  The objects of our experience are what is left when their representative values have been acquired by our being-aware.  This epistemology requires some elucidation.

All vertebrates are capable of experience and a sense of being, but man is endowed with a special capability—the discriminative cognizance of value.  Why is this important?  First of all, values tell us a great deal more about our world than can be gained from objective knowledge—most significantly, that the essence of reality is not mere facts, laws, numbers, and measurements, but their absolute integration in the primal Whole.  While subjective experience is parceled out in incremental units of value linked to the things perceived, the discerning person understands that these conditional values presuppose an unconditional Source or essential cause.

By virtue of our ability to realize the relational values of our experiential world, we affirm our valuistic connection with its Essence.  When we experience an object as a "thing" by identifying its distinguishing attributes, the object becomes a useful piece of knowledge about our world.  We can put it together with millions of other finite pieces and complete a mental jig-saw puzzle representing what the experienced universe may be like.  The utility of such a picture is that it can be communicated or published for anyone with an interest in physics or the natural sciences.  But the jig-saw image we have constructed is not a picture of Reality—it is only a picture of how the finite intellect perceives the physical universe. It's a practical tool for dealing with a differentiated space/time world, not for enlightening us as to the nature of the Essence supporting it.

Inasmuch as man is unique among the species in possessing the capability to realize value, it can be said that man is a value-oriented creature.  Values drive mankind—they are the basis of morality and ethics, they set the standards in art and literature, they establish the goals and strategies of human progress, and they are the individual's connection with his essential Source.

Jean-Paul Sartre in the last century posited that existence is an emergent system in which Being "in-itself" becomes a being "for-itself".  His existentialist ontology posited Being as the essence of reality, an objectivist conclusion that is rejected by Essentialism.  But Sartre's "being-for-itself" is a useful tool for expressing the dynamics of experience.  The human being is, indeed, a being for-itself—but it is a being with an exquisite sense of the value of otherness. For what draws the awareness of the being-for-itself to the other is its value, rather than its being. Being is grounded in nothingness, the non-thing that divides the self from all otherness.  But value works in opposition to this division of selves and things to reunify what is experienced as difference.

The void in our negated awareness is caused by its loss of Essence, not a finite object or being.  But Essence is immutable in its absoluteness—it has no existential equivalent except for one's desire of it.  For the being-aware this is Value, and although a particular object is perceived intellectually, it is the provisional value of that object which actualizes our sensibility to otherness.  In other words, we negate the otherness of the thing experienced, not its value.  Value is actualized when Essence negates nothingness to create the self/other dichotomy.  It is non-negatable, even though we only sense it in a relational context where it determines the form of the observed images retained in our conscious memory.  As earth's Choicemakers, we are the agents of value. Our cosmic purpose is to realize the value of our estranged otherness (Essence) from the finite perspective.  By incrementally reclaiming our own displaced value from otherness, we nullify the differentiated appearance of the primary negation and affirm the integrity of the Source.

Human experience is not just the intellectual act of observing and identifying phenomena.  It is the infusion of nothingness with value.  To understand how this occurs we need to analyze the dynamics of negation from a metaphysical perspective.  To put it simply, awareness is the absence of beingness, and beingness is the absence of awareness.  These "absences" or voids reflect the nothingness of the primary negation. Because awareness and beingness exist only as contingencies, there is no "being" that is not being-aware.  But the value of these essents is not a contingency, for pure sensibility is nothingness and only value can make being aware.

To be aware means to be conscious of an otherness perceived as being.  Since pure awareness is empty of content, all value resides in otherness. Realization—subjective consciousness of reality—is the infusion of nothingness with value.  This occurs whenever we become cognizant of something, that is, when the self negates (denies) its "otherness" by appropriating its conditional value "for-itself", to borrow Sartre's term.  And since we are created as "negates", having been negated by Essence, conscious experience may be understood as a secondary or double negation.  Everything in existence is differentiated and relative, including the self.  We make being aware by negating its otherness and acquiring its relative value.

Thus, what fills the void of our negated awareness is not the thing we perceive intellectually as a discrete being but its provisional value to us, which we incorporate into our experience as valuistic sensibility or emotional feeling.  Simply speaking, we negate the thing experienced by assuming its value.  The object that we experience is what remains of pure otherness when incremental value is removed from it.  Experience is really a synthesis of intellection and the value perceived.  And, because the perceived value is always finite and relative to the whole of otherness, the objects of our experience also have these attributes.

Awareness is born into the world as a pre-conscious void seeking to reclaim—to be filled or replenished by—its displaced value.  The core self is a nothingness which, by virtue of its essential origin, has the valuistic potential to become aware.  Metaphysically we are the active agents of our essential Source, free to make the decisions that will determine our being-in-the-world.  And the form of that beingness is shaped by the values we experience as autonomous beings aware of other beings—by denying their otherness while at the same time supplanting our nothingness with their value.

Because "being" is differentiated by nothingness, it must satisfy itself by assuming the identity of one of a diversity of organisms.  In the case of the human being, it begins as the conscious subjective "self" of a particular human fetus.  And not long after it has acquired the value of this organic entity, it becomes a being-aware, that is, a being aware of its own autonomous identity in relation to others.  This is what we mean by "self-consciousness", and it is the metaphysical principle by which nothingness becomes aware of value.

The human body, like all biological organisms, is proprioceptive—that is, it can respond to sense impressions produced within its own organic system.  Also, like other primates, the human animal is biologically designed to experience phenomena external to itself. As a sentient being he can hunt for food, seek out a mate, or flee from predators and other life-threatening situations in his immediate environment.  But man has two capabilities which are beyond those of the lower animals—innate intelligence and value-sensibility. By virtue of these endowments, man is a self-conscious agent.  This gives him the cognizance to make independent value judgments and the autonomy to exercise free choice.

The being of awareness is biological in that it is the locus of subjective consciousness—the body of the individual.  The essence of reality is its value relative to the individual who senses it.  To achieve this self-orientation or individual locus of reality, all other value must be suppressed, that is, made insensible to the self.  This is the function of the human brain. In addition to determining whether the perceived value is somatic (relative to the body) or experiential (relative to the external world), the brain also serves as a "filter" to exclude superfluous information which might disorient or confuse the subject.  Touch receptors throughout the body send information to the motor cortex about sensations such as texture, pain, and temperature.  These are somatic perceptions which have to do with homeostasis, or the state of the organism itself.

As for the "what" and "where" of experienced objects, the prevailing scientific view is that the region known as the posterior parietal cortex consists of a mosaic of areas, each receiving specific (visual) information relative to spacial perception.  It is this cognitive process that objectivizes value into experienced phenomena, localizing objects and events within a spatio-temporal framework.  According to neuro-physicists, the sensory information is also transmitted to appropriate motor centers so that the individual may respond to, or interact with, the objects experienced.

It is interesting to note in this connection that those who undergo a near-death experience often feel as though they are traveling through a tunnel or narrow passageway toward a "bright light".  According to Jack Cowan, a neurobiologist at the University of Chicago, brain activity that is normally kept stable is debilitated in the dying patient due to oxygen depletion of the brain as it nears death, generating stripes of activity that move across the cortex.  A severe blow to the head can cause a fully conscious person to see bright flashes of light for similar reasons.  Using brain mapping, Cowan was able to demonstrate how the stripes in the cortex would appear like concentric rings or spirals, creating the visualization of tunnel-like patterns.  While it is only speculation, the paranormal experiences reported by NDE patients, including visions of loved ones, favorite pets, and angelic entities, could be explained as the failure of the brain to perform its normal filtering of sensory values, releasing a flood of long-forgotten memories and dreams into consciousness, and thus seemingly expanding it.

In normal consciousness, however, the brain is a limiter rather than an "expander" of information received from the sense organs.  The human being is designed to experience reality as an orderly system extended beyond him in space and evolving in time. Hallucinogenic drugs and neurological disorders can alter this perspective, but the reality experienced under these conditions is no clearer, no "less illusory", than that of the unimpaired observer.  That feelings and emotions appear more intense in a drug-induced state does not mean that the user has attained a "higher level of consciousness" or a heightened understanding of reality; it simply demonstrates the effect of disproportionate values being processed by the brain and nervous system, resulting in a distorted perception of relational existence.  Only the complete cessation of brain activity can release the individual subject from the self/other dichotomy.

Because the metaphysical concept of negated nothingness has no equivalent in the empirical world, it seems to defy common logic.  Yet, it is possible to imagine the core of individual awareness as a no-thing in want of its denied essence.  When we do so, we realize that value is the human expression of this want; and, because value is ubiquitous in existence, it prevails to complete the transaction.  Man is linked to Essence by value, is directed by value, and ultimately reclaims the value of his being in the Oneness of the Absolute Source.  Life can be defined as the experiential reality by which being becomes aware of its essential value.  That is why, for the Essentialist, value is the affirmation of the creature for its uncreated Essence.

--HP

 

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