"According to reductionism, seemingly more complex events and things can be entirely explained and understood in terms of seemingly less complex events and things.”
“Reductionism involves over-simplifying complex phenomena, either by discounting contradictory elements of a totality or by collapsing them into other elements without accounting for their specific characteristics.”
A massive light bulb went off when I learned how negation-based nonduality is an example of Spiritual reductionism, and how it follows the exact same formula as Scientific reductionism (materialism) it frowns upon. From a high level, reductionism is a common thread that weaves together de-realizing nondualisms, a thread that once pulled on, seems to unravel the fabric of reality. Yes, breaking things down is important in understanding something, what it’s founded on, but things are not just their most basic, foundational level!
Denying the reality that phenomena are greater than the sum of their parts, Scientific reductionism reduces the spiritual to the material and spiritual reductionism does the inverse, reducing the material to the spiritual. Both offer us an incomplete perspective of reality, but I've come to feel that the pitfalls of the latter, of trying to collapse all form into formlessness, misguidedly doing so in the name of "Ultimate Truth," has a greater potential for damage, for one, draining reality from the preciousness of human life.
I share Aurobindo's perspective that the pitfalls of reducing form to formlessness, in the name of "Ultimate Truth" is a more grave mistake leading to greater tragedy...
A commentator notes that "Aurobindo explains how under the powerful influence of this type of experience it is easy to draw inaccurate conclusions about the nature of the spiritual life and the right relationship to the manifest world. He suggests that the dangers here are “parallel” to the materialist denial of spirit but “more complete, more final, more perilous in its effects on the individuals or collectivities that hear its potent call."
In other words, we can get lost in matter and materialism, but we can also get lost in spirit and a kind of idealism in which only that is real—spirit, Brahman, and so on. For Aurobindo, this second negation is the more dangerous and powerful delusion.”
What's an alternative that avoids both kinds of reductionism? With the help of a few kindred spirits, I discovered the perspective of emergentism, and it has been a portal a self and world-affirming unity expere that started my own journey of emergence from the vast, murky waters of non-dual de-realization.
It's about the ground of Being's evolutionary journey of becoming an ever-more colorful, dynamic relationship with itself that we are an inextricable part of. Can you feel this difference!?
“Reductionism involves over-simplifying complex phenomena, either by discounting contradictory elements of a totality or by collapsing them into other elements without accounting for their specific characteristics.”
A massive light bulb went off when I learned how negation-based nonduality is an example of Spiritual reductionism, and how it follows the exact same formula as Scientific reductionism (materialism) it frowns upon. From a high level, reductionism is a common thread that weaves together de-realizing nondualisms, a thread that once pulled on, seems to unravel the fabric of reality. Yes, breaking things down is important in understanding something, what it’s founded on, but things are not just their most basic, foundational level!
Denying the reality that phenomena are greater than the sum of their parts, Scientific reductionism reduces the spiritual to the material and spiritual reductionism does the inverse, reducing the material to the spiritual. Both offer us an incomplete perspective of reality, but I've come to feel that the pitfalls of the latter, of trying to collapse all form into formlessness, misguidedly doing so in the name of "Ultimate Truth," has a greater potential for damage, for one, draining reality from the preciousness of human life.
I share Aurobindo's perspective that the pitfalls of reducing form to formlessness, in the name of "Ultimate Truth" is a more grave mistake leading to greater tragedy...
A commentator notes that "Aurobindo explains how under the powerful influence of this type of experience it is easy to draw inaccurate conclusions about the nature of the spiritual life and the right relationship to the manifest world. He suggests that the dangers here are “parallel” to the materialist denial of spirit but “more complete, more final, more perilous in its effects on the individuals or collectivities that hear its potent call."
In other words, we can get lost in matter and materialism, but we can also get lost in spirit and a kind of idealism in which only that is real—spirit, Brahman, and so on. For Aurobindo, this second negation is the more dangerous and powerful delusion.”
What's an alternative that avoids both kinds of reductionism? With the help of a few kindred spirits, I discovered the perspective of emergentism, and it has been a portal a self and world-affirming unity expere that started my own journey of emergence from the vast, murky waters of non-dual de-realization.
It's about the ground of Being's evolutionary journey of becoming an ever-more colorful, dynamic relationship with itself that we are an inextricable part of. Can you feel this difference!?