RAW DATA
This work is rooted in a deep concern for the relationship between belief and knowledge in contemporary approaches to the unknown.
The vessel for this investigation is the concept of the expedition, which charts an evolving historical model of organized preparation and entry into the unknown with the intent of producing knowledge.
The classical expedition demonstrates a reciprocal relationship between belief and knowledge. Belief in what is to be found initiates technic, rational preparation for technical approach and entry to the unknown. Traverse of the region produces knowledge, which adjusts belief about the unknown.
By contrast the hyper-modern expedition is organized by a vast standing reserve of knowledge wherein nothing is truly unknown. Prior knowledge, data, is married to technic for the production of greater knowledge and more sophisticated technic. Belief is unnecessary. This infinite compounding of knowledge needs no interior catalyst.
The classical expedition roughly parallels the individual development of consciousness. Understanding of reality is constantly adjusted by enacting inner beliefs and receiving knowledge in the form of exterior response. Reality is synthesized through reciprocal motion, the oscillation between belief and knowledge, interior and exterior, objective and symbolic.
The hyper-modern expedition is unmoored from the natural reciprocal movement of the psyche. It is entirely one-sided and externally focused. Reality is defined by its ability to produce knowledge, a tool for the achievement of aims and the production of greater knowledge. The hyper-modern schema obviates the symbolic dimension of the expedition. It approaches pure technic and more closely resembles a digital consciousness than a human consciousness.
The consciousness of pure technic rejects the reality of the unknown region, the unconscious. The accelerating predominance of technical consciousness produces disorientation and anxiety because it fails to describe the lived experience of reality, where encounter with the unknown is pervasive. Restoration of equilibrium necessitates a compensatory movement, a conscious trajectory toward the unconscious. The intent of this work is to propose a vehicle of countermotion, a new model: the Symbolically Authentic expedition.
SYMBOLICALLY AUTHENTIC PRECEPTS
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Technic must be transmuted from a tool for the production of knowledge into a vessel for psychospiritual development.
Development consists in a technical approach to the unconscious and conscious assimilation of contents produced by approach.
The unconscious cannot be met directly. It must be approached by traverse or circumambulation.
The unconscious is fundamentally irrational. Approach to the unconscious must eschew rational pragmatism and embrace paradox. Paradox is the vital indicator of a living process.
The unconscious expresses itself through symbols, as in dreams or fantasies. The unconscious is approached symbolically, by analogy. Technical approach is the creation of an individual psychospiritual mythology manifested through symbolic acts. Personal myth is the vessel for assimilation of symbols produced by the unconscious.
The technical approach is a process of oscillation between conscious and unconscious trajectories, a synthesis of faith and technic. The unconscious produces a fantasy, the irrational destination. The conscious mind employs technic to move toward the fantasy. Effected with profound awareness of the impossibility of realizing fantasy, the application of technic becomes an act of faith. Faith that the process of conscious effort enacted with focused awareness of the unconscious will produce value. Not the fantasy, but an enigmatic end of equal allure: the creation of a whole through synthesis of opposites.
Relationship to faith necessitates relationship to doubt. Doubt is an autonomous corrective to belief. Entry into doubt is the first movement of the new expedition, and the encounter with doubt guides the approach to the center.
The solution of a conflict between the conscious and unconscious is always irrational. The irrational product is a point of psychospiritual orientation, a directional marker. The value of the Symbolically Authentic Expedition cannot be understood objectively. Its value is the efficacity of the spiritual datums it produces to aid the individual in the approach to the center.