Consciousness, Spirituality, and Ontological Depth

Itay Shani

doi:10.2298/FID2504831S

Authors

Itay Shani Sun Yat Sen University in Zhuhai, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2504831S

Keywords:

cosmic consciousness, depth, intension, perennial philosophy, self-transcendence, spirituality

Abstract

This paper aims to achieve two complementary goals. The first goal is to outline and motivate a general account of spirituality along the lines of the so-called perennial philosophy. From this perspective, the essence of spirituality lies in establishing an orientation towards, and an inspirational connection to, a cosmic consciousness where the latter serves both as the ground of all infra-cosmic subjects and as an ultimate source of meaning and value. The second goal is to demonstrate that one of the advantages of this outlook on the nature of spirituality consists of the fact that it opens up the door for a potential rehabilitation of an important yet neglected idea, namely, the idea that concrete reality admits various grades of intension, or ontological depth.

References

Alan, Norman, and Jill Vance Buroker. 2022. “Port Royal Logic.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), edited by Zalta Edward N. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/port-royal-logic/.

Albahari, Miri. 2019. “Perennial Idealism: A Mystical Solution to the Mind–Body Problem.” Philosophers’ Imprint 19 (1): 1–37.

______. 2024. “Is Universal Consciousness Fit for Ground?” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 4: 3–45.

Carnap, Rudolf. 1966. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. New York: Dover Publication.

Carnap, Rudolf, Hans Hahn, and Otto Neurath. 1973 [1929]. “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Empiricism and Sociology, edited by Neurath Marie, Cohen Robert S. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Chândogya, Upanishad. 2000. The Upanishads. Translated by Müller Friedrich Max. London: Wordsworth Classics.

Clagett, Marshall. 1950. “Richard Swineshead and Late Medieval Physics: I. The Intension and Remission of Qualities.” Osiris 9: 131–61.

Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1977. Selected Papers, Vol. 2: Metaphysics. Edited by Lipsey Roger. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Bollingen Series LXXXIX)

Copleston, Frederick. 1993 [1962]. A History of Philosophy, Volume 1: Greece and Rome. New York: Image Books Doubleday.

Diaz, José Luis. 2010. “Sacred Plants and Visionary Consciousness.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9: 159–70.

Diehl, Catharine. 2012. The Theory of Intensive Magnitudes in Leibniz and Kant. PhD dissertation, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.

Eckhart, Meister. 1994. Selected Writings. London: Penguin Books.

Forman, Robert K. C. 1990. The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Frost, Gloria. 2019. “Aquinas on the Intension and Remission of Accidental Form.” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 7 (1): 116–46.

Garfield, Jay L. 2022. Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live without a Self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Goff, Philip. 2023. Why? The Purpose of the Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grant, Edward. 1977. Physical Science in the Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Gupta, Bina. 2003. CIT: Consciousness. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Hadot, Pierre. 2002. What is Ancient Philosophy? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hamilton, William. 1861. Discussions on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Hick, John. 1989. An Interpretation of Religion. London: Macmillan.

Huss, Boaz. 2014. “Spirituality: The Emergence of a New Cultural Category and Its Challenge to the Religious and the Secular.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 29 (1): 47–60.

Huxley, Aldous. 2004. The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. (Original work published 1945)

Katz, Steven T. 1978. “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism.” Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, edited by Katz Steven T. New York: Oxford University Press: pp.: 22–74.

Kukla, André, and Joel Walmsley. 2004. “Mysticism and Social Epistemology.” Episteme 1(2):139–158.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Friedrich. 1916. New Essays on Human Understanding. Chicago: Open Court. (Original work published 1756)

Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1933. The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Maharaj, Ayon [now Swami Medhananda]. 2018. Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mahoney, Edward P. 1982. “Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being According to Some Late-Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers.” Philosophies of Existence: Ancient and Medieval, edited by Morewedge Parviz. New York: Fordham University Press: pp.: 165–257.

______. 1987. “Lovejoy and the Hierarchy of Being.” Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (2): 211–30.

Maliszewski, Michael et al. 2011. “Altering Consciousness Through Sexual Activity.” In: Cardeña, Etzel and Michael Winkelman, eds. Altering Consciousness: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Vol. 2: Biological and Psychological Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger: pp.: 189–209.

Marshall, Paul. 2005. Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McDaniel, Kris. 2017. The Fragmentation of Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McPherson, David. 2017. Spirituality and the Good Life: Philosophical Approaches. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Medhananda, Swami. 2022. Swami Vivekananda Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Metzinger, Thomas. 2020. “Minimal Phenomenal Experience: Meditation, Tonic Alertness, and the Phenomenology of ‘Pure’ Consciousness.” Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 1 (1): 7.

Milton, John. 1981. Paradise Lost and Other Poems. New York: Penguin. Plato. 2018 [1871]. “Phaedrus.” Complete Works of Plato, translated by Jowett Benjamin, Burges George. Stief Books.

______. 2018 [1871]. “Symposium.” Complete Works of Plato, translated by Jowett Benjamin, Burges George. Stief Books.

Roof, Wade C. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Schuon, Frithjof. 2005. “Sophia Perennis.” In Nasr Seyyed Hossein, ed. The Essential Frithjof Schuon. ID: World Wisdom: pp.: 533–39.

Shani, Itay. 2015. “Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience.” Philosophical Papers 44 (3): 389–437.

______. 2022. “Cosmopsychism, Coherence, and World-Affirming Monism.” The Monist 105 (1): 6–24.

______. 2024. “Pure Consciousness as the Ground of the Given: Or, Why There Is No Perception without Background Reception.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 31 (5–6): 178–205.

Shani, Itay, and Joachim Keppler. 2018. “Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (3): 390–410.

Shapiro, Herman. 1959. “Walter Burley and the Intension and Remission of Forms.” Speculum 34 (3): 413–27.

Smith, Huston. 1987. “Is There a Perennial Philosophy?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 55 (3): 553–66.

______. 1992. Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions. New York: Harper Collins.

Spencer, Mary. 1971. “Why the ‘S’ in ‘Intension’?” Mind 80 (317): 114–15.

Strawson, Galen. 2024. “The Impossibility of Subjectless Experience.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 31 (5–6): 26–36.

Whitehead, Alfred N. 1967 [1933]. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press. Wilber, Ken. 1995. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Boston: Shambhala.

______. 2000. Integral Psychology. Boston: Shambhala.

Winkelman, Michael. 2010. “The Shamanic Paradigm: Evidence from Ethnology, Neuropsychology and Ethology.” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, and Culture 3 (2): 159–82.