experience of the metaphysical

[Paracelsus]

But you haven't made the case that this is intrinsic to the world as opposed to intrinsic to us. Certainly when you experience the sublime it seems as if it should emanate from the world. But the sublime is an experience, not an intrinsic quality.[/quote]

I would say that external trigers effecting internal states, and these would be both emotive, affective and physical combine with the actions transpiring in the environment to produce a subjective response. But the sublime as experienced by I at moments like these, because of a combination of elements that I have outlined, caused a response in me both physical and affective.

I didn't go with the intention of having an epiphany while listening to Mahler. The circumstances were ripe for it to happen and it did.

I don't think the sublime emanates from the world, it is in the world and occasionally we connect with it. For me it was in the music of Mahler that i encountered that night. This projection of the sublime on to the world was a particular fallacy of 20th Century writers that the experience of the Divine or Spiritual had to be anchored in the world via a specific event, a moment of Satori. When in affect it transcended what they/we know as the normal world and they took an internal subjective experience and gave it objective form in the world. For example think The Razors Edge as just one example.

I think that we as sentient beings who are both culturally conditioned and possessing subjective awareness attempt to clarify and classify events that occur to us so we are able to make sense of them. The Spiritual IMHO is an internal function and one way the spiritual is made manifest is though our creative abilities which we then project the results on to and in to the world for others to experience.

It would stand to reason that if the spiritual is an intrinsic quality then it is a common denominator possessed by all beings and is revealed by specific action and form that produces something for example music which is experienced by others, or maybe the spiritual is made manifest in an action afforded from one person to another.

[nameless]

Originally Posted by vajrasattva

The mundane world is defined by the laws we come to know in physics. But when do we cross the line from physics into metaphysics?

The 'mundane' world consists of all sorts of arbitrary 'distinctions', the 'duality' of existence.
The 'arcane' admits of no such 'line' (arbitrary distinctions), hence the 'Oneness/Completeness' of each and every universe in each and every moment.

[YoungButWise]

metaphysics can only be experienced and reflected upon.

[Paracelsus]

Originally Posted by YoungButWise

metaphysics can only be experienced and reflected upon.

Can it? I thought it was a form of mental calisthenics which produced a physical reaction depending upon the nature of the rumination. And it is also part of the shared discursive experience with others where insights are shared and opened up for further discussion.

[de Silentio]

Originally Posted by YoungButWise

metaphysics can only be experienced and reflected upon.

Would you care to explain why metaphysics can only be experienced and reflected upon?

[Aedes]

If something can "only" be experienced and reflected upon, what is left besides those two??

[Whoever]

Maybe what is being referred to here is not metaphysics, which has a very clear definition, but what lies beyond metaphysics. Metaphysics sits firmly in Nameless's mundane world of distinctions and contradictions. Beyond this lies Reality itself, and this is what some claim can be known directly, and not by abstraction and computation.

[sarek]

Those such as myself that have not received the blessing of direct inspiration can only attempt to understand aforementioned Reality through the application of the mind toward solving the riddles of metaphysics.
That is strictly the domain of logic and reason and indeed also of distinctions and contradictions.

[Whoever]

Originally Posted by sarek

Those such as myself that have not received the blessing of direct inspiration can only attempt to understand aforementioned Reality through the application of the mind toward solving the riddles of metaphysics.
That is strictly the domain of logic and reason and indeed also of distinctions and contradictions.

I agree, but with the proviso that because we have not yet received the blessing of direct inspiration it would not follow that we 'can only' settle for metaphysics. On this basis someone could say that because they do not understand metaphysics they can only attempt to understand Reality via direct inspiration.

[boagie]

Originally Posted by Aedes

If something can "only" be experienced and reflected upon, what is left besides those two??

Aedes,

Your support of religion is inconsistent with what you are saying here. Care to explain?