# J J Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism **URL:** \ **Category:** Commons\ **Tags:** weird-studies, kripal\ **Created:** [April 25, 2019, 11:36pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216 "2019-04-25T23:36:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![achronon](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/achronon/32/3458_2.png) [@achronon](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/achronon)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 9:10pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/21 "2019-05-06T21:10:44Z")
Damn the spaghetti! Full speed ahead! > [@patanswer](#): > > The “ _humaniverse_ ” is my own shorthand, inspired by Wendt and Carroll Quigley, who noted that humans operate in space-time and in a “fifth” dimension he called “abstraction”. Fair enough. Like I said, I haven’t read Wendt (nor Quigley, for that matter), so I am in no position to say anything about anything they think or say. However, … The notion of “abstraction” as a “fifth dimension” (besides the Moon being in the 7th House, and Jupiter being aligned with Mars) is catchy (if that’s the right word), because Aryeh Kaplan, in his _Sepher Yetzirah: The Book of Creation_, which is his own translation and commentary on the ancient Kabbalistic text of the same name, tells us that Gen 1 (which is the basis text of which the _Sepher Yetzirah_ is the commentary) that we exist in a five-dimensional universe. I have long wondered what that means. Somewhere post-Arthur Young and the Mereon Matrix and Meru, Sir Geoffrey and I pondered on what it means to envision/understand/conceptualize/grok (?) four dimensions, and both of us without much success, so the challenge, for me at least, to get just what it is that Quigley and Kaplan may be talking about is pushing me to my limits, I fear. OK, maybe I just naturally tend to make things more complicated than they really are, but “abstraction” as a “fifth dimension” strikes me – post-Gebserianarily or post-Einsteinianarily (i.e., “time” may or may not be 4D) – as not all that convincing. Stan Tenen, from the Meru Foundation, has demonstrated that the _Sepher Yetzirah_ exhibits the same letter-level coding as Gen 1. This is, in a word, spooky, if not unnerving. It means, on the one hand, that Kaplan may be “right” (or at least accurate in his observations), and, on the other, that a more intense consciousness than our (mere) human variety may be involved in the composition. This would be significant if only in light of the fact that both texts – Gen 1 and the _Sepher Yetzirah_ – seem to be talking about consciousness itself. Given that – as far as we know – only we _humans_ are (even potentially) capable of “grokking” this is cause for concern; that is, for serious consideration of what it is we’re even talking about. For this reason, I am _always_ interested in anyone who starts talking about these things in a coherent manner. (There are enough marginal thinkers who are not contributing significantly or seriously to the discussion.) This isn’t necessarily a “project” of mine (though maybe it should be), but sometimes I read/hear things that snap my attention around to possible resolutionary approaches. Your commentary on Wendt piqued my interest for this very reason, that’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Stumpf](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/michael_stumpf/32/9139_2.png) [@Michael\_Stumpf](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/Michael_Stumpf)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/22 "2019-05-06T21:22:27Z")
[![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rTVjnBo96Ug/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCOADEOgC8quKqQMa8AEB-AH2BIAC4AOKAgwIABABGFogWChlMA8=&rs=AOn4CLCAmrwQ00OnOiwkD6m-UJpK-mUVYQ "Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay (Official Music Video)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTVjnBo96Ug) I am Feeling & Pondering on both your transmissions & I Hope this lands in a respectful way,Sitting on The Dock of the Bay seemed to vibe with what I am listening too? ---
**Author:** ![patanswer](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/patanswer/32/3897_2.png) [@patanswer](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/patanswer)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 11:17pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/23 "2019-05-06T23:17:23Z")
> [@achronon](#): > > Damn the spaghetti! Full speed ahead! 🤣 Love it! > [@achronon](#): > > “abstraction” as a “fifth dimension” strikes me – post-Gebserianarily or post-Einsteinianarily (i.e., “time” may or may not be 4D) – as not all that convincing. > "When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it. But the historian must deal with history by rational processes. Accordingly, he must be aware of the processes and difficulties to which we have referred when we try to deal with continua rationally. For history deals with changes in society. And all changes, occurring in time, involve continua. Both society and culture are, even if static, concerned with continua. Indeed, a society is a continuum of continua in five dimensions. > “When we say that a society or a civilization exists in five dimensions, we are referring to the fact that it exists in the three dimensions of space, the fourth dimension of time, and the fifth dimension of abstraction. All of these are easy to understand except the last… It is clear that every culture consists of concrete objects like clothes and weapons, of less tangible objects like emotions and feelings, and of quite abstract things like ideas.” _The Evolution of Civilizations_, Carroll Quigley (2nd ed., Indianapolis, IN, 1979), p. 99 It’s not a problem-free conception, that’s for sure. The above comes after a long discussion of what he calls “continua” where the (rational) drawing of boundaries is problematic (e.g. Zeno’s paradox or the colors of the rainbow, etc.). Then suddenly he seems to be speaking of “dimensions” as if the separations are meaningful. We cannot (in our current form at any rate) really experience “length” without “depth”, and probably not “space” without some kind of _sequence_. In the end, _numbering_ dimensions is probably less useful than stressing the connections among them. And there is where I see the point - for the human cultural and political worlds that Quigley and Wendt are primarily concerned about in their respective work, the physical and the psychological are simply part of the same… _place_. We cannot (in our current form at any rate) really experience one without the other. Now, Wendt goes from there (_Why a World State is Inevitable_ is the article in question, by the way) to stress that a certain logic of political development is involved that combines what Quigley defined as “non-rational… actors” in history and identifiable “rational processes” (i.e. the influence of ‘self-organizing’ historical systems on the options and decisions of those actors). The materialist cries foul (or at least levels charges of historicism as Popper did) at any such hint of a notion of ‘independent’ “forces”. But it may be one thing to talk about the interactions of atoms and another to talk of the interactions of ideas. _Or not_ if we are “walking quantum wave functions”… > [@achronon](#): > > Your commentary on Wendt piqued my interest for this very reason, that’s all. Ed, I _ **welcome** _ your input. I get more from one of your posts (this goes for others here as well) than I ever did from thread pages of drivel, memes, and entrenched opinions elsewhere on the internet. _Especially_ when I’m thinking out loud. I count feedback as a privilege. I think I understand where Wendt was trying to go. I’m still assessing whether he made his case; it may boil down to semantics in the end. But then again it may be about connections - like the ones that brought Kripal, Wendt, and Quigley together in my head (and Tenen is yet another name that has been on a very long list for a very long time 😢) - that ultimately link vision and results. ---
**Author:** ![johnnydavis54](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/johnnydavis54/32/114_2.png) [@johnnydavis54](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/johnnydavis54)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 12:03am UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/24 "2019-05-07T00:03:13Z")
From TJ’s dream May 2 from the Generations 3 _I put the fading daylight to my left and move forward across a wide field toward a line of woods beyond which I know there to be a dirt road. I do not choose to look behind me toward the sound of crackling flames. Their glow casts a greasy dark shadow across shifting, gathering clouds overhead._ _It is the malevolent serpent of hatred there, cold and coiled in the sky._ _I am now conscious of a fourth-wall break in the dreamscape; I am trailed by children in a Virginia field in another century, but my mind echoes with thoughts: Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Palestine, Rwanda, the Pakistan-India border, Tibet, the Rohingya of Myanmar…_ _The prophet-sage inhales. I feel… power. I address the snake._ _“Only those who imbibe your venom are vulnerable. We will survive. You are mortal.”_ _A cold, reptilian visage turns toward me, but I sense great fear. I have locked eyes with Tiamat, the dragon of chaos herself… but it is Marduk speaking._ _“Yes. You are mortal.”_ And when a fourth wall break in the dreamscape- Where does that fourth wall break come from? Could that come from the fifth? > [@patanswer](#): > > I think I understand where Wendt was trying to go. I’m still assessing whether he made his case; it may boil down to semantics in the end. Charles Taylor examines two different semantic logics- "The first aims to characterize a self standing, independent reality. We explore the external world by generating descriptions which can be clearly verified by checking them against independent self-standing realities, sometimes it is generated by sophisticated theories about underlying mechanisms. With the second, we explore the world of meanings ( which is not simply an "inner “world) by probing it through expressions-articulations, which then pan out or fail to convince and are replaced by other probes…this second zone is the site of attempts to define the shape of significance.” p.252 _The Language Animal_ Wendt advances that most dilemmas around agency, subjectivity and freedom are produced by an outdated metaphysical world, that of Newtonian classical physics. " For Wendt, there is no such problem once we adopt a quantum mechnaical worldview and see human beings as biological organisms that are both classical and quantum in nature and function. Yes, of course, our bodies are classical objects, but our forms of consciousness are not. Mind and social life are quantum mechanical phenomena, not classical objects in three dimensional space. They work like quantum mechanical phenomena, not like classical objects in three-dimensional space. A wave function is a potential reality, not an actual one. It is by definition " plural", " “paradoxical” and “multiple”. Mind is an expression of the quantum wave function, matter is an expression of its collapse as a particle… We are walking wave functions." p.115 Kripal _The Flip_ ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/original/2X/4/4bf15bfd2dcdf9a61c97e42ebea50059f55fa077.png) So, TJ, have you flipped yet? ---
**Author:** ![patanswer](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/patanswer/32/3897_2.png) [@patanswer](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/patanswer)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 12:20am UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/25 "2019-05-07T00:20:13Z")
> [@johnnydavis54](#): > > So, TJ, have you flipped yet? Flipped out, no doubt. 😁 [Edit: Ah, maybe I should clarify “made his [Wendt] case”? - I specifically refer to the inevitability of the world-state as derived from ‘final cause’ or even a combination of ‘causes’. Simple extrapolation of present trends based on past experience - especially giving things another century or so - strengthen the probability that he is right. I haven’t even begun to give serious enough thought, beyond appreciating its elegance, to his overall approach to consciousness.] ---
**Author:** ![johnnydavis54](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/johnnydavis54/32/114_2.png) [@johnnydavis54](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/johnnydavis54)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 2:11am UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/26 "2019-05-07T02:11:20Z")
> [@patanswer](#): > > I haven’t even begun to give serious enough thought, beyond appreciating its elegance, to his overall approach to consciousness. I went uptown to the grand old reading room at 42nd street library to read his book. Unfortunately, I can’t check it out. I have no room in my apartment for more books so I have to use the library but I am going to break my rule and purchase this one. After years of tortured study I feel that I am starting to get quantum mechanics. That is a great compliment, that Wendt can make this accessible to a non-physicist like myself. And he isn’t a physicist. But his brother is. Mind boggling! ---
**Author:** ![achronon](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/achronon/32/3458_2.png) [@achronon](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/achronon)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 8:10am UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/27 "2019-05-07T08:10:02Z")
> [@patanswer](#): > > [Quigley’s notion of the 5th dimension as “abstraction” i]s not a problem-free conception, that’s for sure. That’s what makes it all the more fun to ruminate on. 😬 The larger quote you provided does help contextualize the notion, however. > [@patanswer](#): > > And there is where I see the point - for the human cultural and political worlds that Quigley and Wendt are primarily concerned about in their respective work, the physical and the psychological are simply part of the same… _place_ . We cannot (in our current form at any rate) really experience one without the other. “Place”, yes; maybe “state” as well. When physicists speak of dimensions, I get the feeling they mean the term spatially. Tenen (following Young) talks about dimensions being situated 90 deg. from each other, and when I’m trying to imagine what is 90 deg. from Cartesian space, the mental machinery starts grinding, and trying to imagine what is 90 deg. from that generally generates observable wafts of smoke. But I do appreciate the added impetus for pondering about it all. > [@patanswer](#): > > The materialist cries foul (or at least levels charges of historicism as Popper did) at any such hint of a notion of ‘independent’ “forces”. But it may be one thing to talk about the interactions of atoms and another to talk of the interactions of ideas. _Or not_ if we are “walking quantum wave functions”… Well, I think it is becoming increasingly clear that the materialists are simply going to have to get over themselves. BTW, what is the source for the Wendt article? ---
**Author:** ![patanswer](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/patanswer/32/3897_2.png) [@patanswer](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/patanswer)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 11:04am UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/28 "2019-05-07T11:04:21Z")
> [@achronon](#): > > BTW, what is the source for the Wendt article? John submitted it in “Generations III”: > [@Generations III](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/generations-iii/3198/8): > > [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.322.9672&rep=rep1&type=pdf](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.322.9672&rep=rep1&type=pdf) It’s quite absorbing for someone pondering ‘how we see history’ questions (can you tell? LOL). ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Stumpf](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/user_avatar/www.infiniteconversations.com/michael_stumpf/32/9139_2.png) [@Michael\_Stumpf](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/u/Michael_Stumpf)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 12:49pm UTC](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216/29 "2019-05-07T12:49:23Z")
> [@achronon](#): > > it may be one thing to talk about the interactions of atoms and another to talk of the interactions of ideas. _Or not_ if we are “walking quantum wave functions”… ![8410054932_180fd55bcc_o](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/original/2X/6/6766f2267ea7a4fd2e78dfda891d7bbdad43f713.jpeg) ![A%20Box%20of%20Darknes](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/infiniteconversations/original/2X/6/63270d74ecf669a44db4c839a12db05b9ea256ac.jpeg) [Previous page](https://www.infiniteconversations.com/t/j-j-kripal-on-flipping-out-of-materialism/3216.md?page=1)